The Disconnect Between Us and Them

I don’t know about the rest of the world, but lots of us sure are in a bubble. There seems to be a real disconnect between what people want to build/invest in and what people in the real world actually need and want to pay for. Just as sample of what I’ve witnessed in the past few years:


Ask HN: How do you like my file sharing app? 

Ask HN: How do you like my social app for niche ? 

Ask HN: How do you like my twitter app? 

Ask HN: How do you like my facebook app? 

Ask HN: How do you like my iphone app? 

Ask HN: How do you like my facebook app that writes twitter apps? 

Ask HN: How do you like my game? 

Ask HN: How do you like my photo sharing app? 

Ask HN: How do you like my video sharing app? 

Ask HN: How do I monetize my free flashcard app? 

Ask HN: How do you like my app that helps other hackers to do ? 

Ask HN: How do I get traffic to my freemium app? 

Ask HN: How do I get angels/VCs interested? 

Ask HN: Look what I wrote this weekend! 

Ask HN: Look what I wrote in one night! 

Ask HN: Look what I wrote in 7 seconds!


Customer 1: How can we sell through Amazon.com? 

Customer 2: How can we reduce inventory by $300 million? 

Customer 3: How can we increase conversion from 2% to 4%? 

Customer 4: How can we use software to reduce energy costs? 

Customer 5: How can we migrate one app into another? 

Customer 6: How can we get our phones to talk to our legacy apps? 

Customer 7: How can we take orders through the internet? 

Customer 8: How can we get our software package to do ? 

Customer 9: How can we reduce credit card fraud? 

Customer 10: How can we increase SEO effectiveness? 

Customer 11: How can we connect fulfillment and ecommerce? 

Customer 12: How can we increase revenue? 

Customers 13-200: How can we increase profitability?