This is IMHO very much an example of "permaculture"-ish thinking, at least in the original spirit of the philosophy.*
Studying and leveraging natural dynamics (e.g. the role the glaciers previously played), paying attention to energetics (in the physical sense), avoiding waste by clever system design (e.g. harvesting the gravitational potential energy upstream that would otherwise be dissipated, volume/surface ratio, etc).
For those who like this kind of thing, ref. also the returns on swaling dry areas, Geoff Lawton's "Greening the Desert" work, Alan Savory's surprising conclusions about the restorative value of animals in Africa, etc.
Anyhow, what a great story. Thanks to the OP for the point-out!
* I use original in terms of the older original work by Bill Mollison and Masanobu Fukuoka, who had a more general systems take on ethics. More modern interpretations tend to be more political and also come to some more limiting conclusions.
^this.
Thank you for providing some perspective. Both of my parents immigrated to the US from countries occupied or torn apart by Communism. I think the many downsides of the Communist ideology are lost to younger modern Americans (and I think many Western Europeans?)... the Cold War is not even a memory for many, and its easy to deconstruct its lessons as part of oikophobic self-criticism. It seems fashionable to expound Leftist ideology today and extol the virtues of Communism since "now we have the technology to do it right!". Even the "This time we'll do Communism right!" refrain is historically old.
For a more modern example of pervasive, invasive control, look no further than China. Why confiscate glitzy consumer toys when you can just monitor and control everything? ;)
I spent a semester in Budapest back in '92, and I recall a Central European History professor wryly observing: "The only Marxists left are all in the West."
@fuzzygroup:
First, this is awesome. It's a great example of channeling annoyance at Badness. As someone said, "Better to light a candle than curse the darkness".
I tend to agree with a lot of your points.
Re: JobHound, can you clarify your thoughts on what sort of privacy users should expect? Obviously a lot the value to those fully in the hunt will be using it to efficiently navigate public sites, but there are also private opportunities and some that might be sensitive. Any thoughts? Obviously easy to work around by separating job sets, but thought it might be valuable to others, too.
A thought: Don't let some of the (valid) criticism alone dissuade you from reading this.
IMO the author makes some very valid points about fuzzy products and endpoints in the current AI/data/ML/magic craze. These are under-articulated elsewhere, because, well hey there's a lot of money flowing! Who wants to be a killjoy and not "get it" (just like in 1999 ;)?
Two more specific points:
1. The descriptions of the CEO are eerily familiar to me. This guy is almost an archetype. Reminds me of a person I've worked with in that role who was also associated with a similar-ish company. It really paints the con-game side of all this.
2. A deeper point (and worth the read for me) was the author's thinking about how all this didn't fit existing needs and workflows and then has a chilling thought:
"It’s possible that the market for a user-hostile data
system that inaccurately predicts the future and turns its
human operators into automatons exists after all, and is
large."
You can make an argument that this kind of thing has already happened in modern customer service and, with greater negative impact, in healthcare. I.e. where the tail of easy metrics and saleable endpoints ends up wagging the dog of quality.
Invisible Fence is a fantastic product that gives great value to many people. Seems to me that this could be the same. Note that Invisible Fence offers expertise in install, dog training, etc, over and above the DIY kits.
We recently put a deer fence around about a half acre and it was not inexpensive.
Another upside is that this would be reconfigurable. And there'd be a ton of ML-extractable insights for customer and the company.
PS: Skimming, I originally read the intent as "a fence to keep drones out", which is funny.
Reading through this thread with great interest, I actually have to wonder what the OP's criteria really are. I'd guess that lokendrachauhan's assumption is probably valid, but that is somewhat based on my stereotypes (and being currently involved in a venture that is driven by these kinds of aspirations on the part of the CEO, not always to good effect, IMHO).
@OP, what are your general guidelines for a "good idea"?
Look at the range of approaches discussed: from Dane Maxwell's approach to focused SaaS solopreneur to selling to big industries or the government (long lead-times). Plus, some of the ideas mentioned are stunning.
Ideas per se are not lacking. $B+ ideas with low-risk and high differentiation might be ;)
Also, you description of "great team" sounds a lot like "bankable resumes", but it is unclear what experience you guys have that would actually be accretive to building an early-stage startup. There are a lot of smart people who want to be involved in big deals. If your PE guy is not actually serving as an SME for a finance-related product, and primarily brings a rolodex and smell of money on his CV, then maybe he should be an investor or perhaps on the board instead?
Consider also your tech SME, and that you've only 1 tech person of 3. Although I do not assume a doctoral degree means no practical skills (I think there's actually some discrimination against doctorates out there), does this guy also have practical experience in small SW efforts? It seems a red flag that he doesn't have ML application ideas.
I don't intend this to sound mean, in fact I identify with your situation in a few ways, I'm just reflecting some honest thoughts after 3 startups.
Have you considered choosing something, even if it isn't perfect, to use as a "forcing function" to get the juices flowing in your group and vet them as a good team? I understand the opportunity cost of time, but actually doing something might galvanize your thinking.
Studying and leveraging natural dynamics (e.g. the role the glaciers previously played), paying attention to energetics (in the physical sense), avoiding waste by clever system design (e.g. harvesting the gravitational potential energy upstream that would otherwise be dissipated, volume/surface ratio, etc).
For those who like this kind of thing, ref. also the returns on swaling dry areas, Geoff Lawton's "Greening the Desert" work, Alan Savory's surprising conclusions about the restorative value of animals in Africa, etc.
Anyhow, what a great story. Thanks to the OP for the point-out!
* I use original in terms of the older original work by Bill Mollison and Masanobu Fukuoka, who had a more general systems take on ethics. More modern interpretations tend to be more political and also come to some more limiting conclusions.
ETA examples and fix grammar