Re: what startups can do to increase prosperity for everyone:
Find ways of destroying harmful institutions by replacing them with better ones-- a perfect example to pursue is the institution of health insurance in the USA, which is explicitly harmful to people, inefficient, inhumane, and completely entrenched in multiple other institutions. Find a way to get people cheaper and better care, and they'll flock to you.
There's other ways, of course, but the gist is that rather than focusing on relatively irrelevant problems (getting takeout easier, booking flights easier, etc), startups could choose to tackle actually difficult problems such as political corruption, exploitation of the poor, existential angst, etc. These issues aren't traditionally simple to monetize.
Find ways of destroying harmful institutions by replacing them with better ones-- a perfect example to pursue is the institution of health insurance in the USA, which is explicitly harmful to people, inefficient, inhumane, and completely entrenched in multiple other institutions. Find a way to get people cheaper and better care, and they'll flock to you.
There's other ways, of course, but the gist is that rather than focusing on relatively irrelevant problems (getting takeout easier, booking flights easier, etc), startups could choose to tackle actually difficult problems such as political corruption, exploitation of the poor, existential angst, etc. These issues aren't traditionally simple to monetize.