People and Problems

Wondermark has an interesting and funny commentary on how people think about homelessness: click here.

It's funny, but it's true - many people (me included) talk a lot about what needs to be done to "solve the problem of homelessness", but a lot of that talk (mine included) is just "smug ideas about stuff".

When S & G is operating at its best, it's about personal interaction with people, not about solving the problem. I think what we can offer to the people living on the streets is just that - we treat them as people, not as a problem.

Please don't misunderstand me, though - there are a lot of good people trying to solve this, and I would love for them to succeed. I think it would be wonderful to get to a point where nobody is homeless. I do not object to people or organizations working on getting us there.

I just don't think that this is the main focus of S & G - we are more about connecting with people where they are at, trying to provide a little help, since homelessness has not been solved yet.

This post seems a little bit unfocused, but I'm kind of thinking out loud here. What do you think? Does my description of S & G's raison d'être make sense? Does it match your idea?

Startups and Charities

Hacker and entrepreneur Paul Graham recently posted a fascinating essay on his website called Be Good. He makes the point that a startup in its early stages is similar to a charity - it's trying to do something that people want, and it's not too worried about money.

He goes from there to think about the idea of creating a startup instead of a charity to fix whatever issue you're passionate about. He says:

How wide is this territory? Would all good nonprofits be good companies? Possibly not. What makes Google so valuable is that their users have money. If you make people with money love you, you can probably get some of it. But could you also base a successful startup on behaving like a nonprofit to people who don't have money? Could you, for example, grow a successful startup out of curing an unfashionable but deadly disease like malaria?

I'm not sure, but I suspect that if you pushed this idea, you'd be surprised how far it would go.

As an aside, a couple of people in the comments thread pointed out that there is someone trying to create a social networking site that will focus on eradicating malaria.

This all got me thinking about helping the homeless - I can't think of a way to create a startup that would help the homeless, so I'd like to throw this idea out there to all of you - is there some radically different thing we could do here? I don't know, but it's worth thinking about.

Effect of Current Economy on the Homeless

I wonder how the current economy and potential for a coming recession will effect the level of homelessness in our region as well as potential job opportunities for people on the streets. Just a thought. Nothing more for this post.