San Francisco tech firms too focused on solving problems for First World elite

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[Commentary] In this column, I'm focusing on whether the companies created as part of the rise of San Francisco (CA) as the region's tech capital are contributing to the watering down of the industry's overall ambition. My take: They are. This boom has been knocked for being tech lite, with entrepreneurs working hard to address the First World problems of the young, wealthy urbanite -- where to eat, how to get the laundry done, whom to date, what to drink. Hipness is the business plan. And many of the sillier ideas are in San Francisco.

It makes sense. There's a concentration here of young tech professionals looking for a way to outsource the mundane chores that eat up a lot of time. The dense geography of the city makes it a perfect petri dish for testing services powered by mobile apps of any stripe. But many folks are thoroughly unimpressed with what the city's startups are doing with all that loot. "What is going on in San Francisco is the death of disruption," said Steve Blank, a serial entrepreneur who teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford and Berkeley. Many are particularly critical of the rash of companies, mostly based in that city, that are essentially new digital middlemen for existing services. They are often referred to as "Airbnb for X" or "Uber for X," with X being anything -- boats, dogs, food, doctors, alcohol or weed. The city, says Blank, is "a sea of non-interesting ideas."


San Francisco tech firms too focused on solving problems for First World elite