New RFS – Breakthrough Technologies

This sounds terrific, but it doesn&#x27;t seem self-consistent between wanting companies with the scale of ambition of SpaceX and Tesla, but insisting on early momentum being critical and avoiding a big and expensive initial project.<p>Tesla took four years to introduce their first product, the Roadster. When they went public two years later, they had gone through a net loss of around 300 million dollars, and were still two years away from introducing the Model S. Even then, it had a few near-death experiences. SpaceX took 200 million dollars of investment, and took four years to launch their first flight, which failed. Over the next two years, their second and third flights also failed. Neither company really showed momentum until seven to nine years after founding.<p>It would be nice to see a clear path from a three-month-to-demo-day minimum viable product to a breakthrough company that overturns a capital-intensive industry, but it&#x27;s hard to think of good examples of this so far. At the least, it would probably require substantial development before applying to YC, and&#x2F;or starting with a very limited prototype.

There&#x27;s a new sheriff in town. Previously YC treated some of these things, especially &quot;AI&quot; (whatever that means) as third rails. They&#x27;ve funded an extremely broad range of companies, but if you go back and check their past investments most of the areas listed in this RFS are underrepresented. Infrastructure, food and water, biotech, robotics...YC could be reaching much higher in terms of ambition than it has in the past. This will also mean more failures, but sama is smart and tough enough to hold on through it.<p>But realistically, how could YC get involved with early stage startups in most of these categories? Examples like SpaceX and Tesla don&#x27;t have minimum viable products. You can&#x27;t build part of an engine in three months and then show it off on demo day. Creating solutions for these problems at the most rudimentary level will require months if not years of effort and significant financial backing. It&#x27;s hard for two guys in a garage to build a prototype 10X battery or come up with innovative biotechnology. In order to get in on these ideas early enough for it to make sense, YC might have to start throwing caution to the wind and accept founders who have only drawings and computer models. It&#x27;s just so difficult for a small group of people to have a noticeable effect on problems on this scale.<p>The best way to get involved with the next world changing idea might be to choose capable and intelligent people and say &quot;I&#x27;m willing to bet on anything that you do, even if you&#x27;re not sure what it is or if it changes completely tomorrow&quot;. I think YC already has a process for accepting single founders without concrete ideas and they could expand on that. Or start making changes to attract founders whose companies are farther along in their development. No matter what they do, setting big goals usually doesn&#x27;t hurt. I hope that the YCombinator organization is willing to make some of the changes necessary to move closer to them.

I hope someone is crazy enough for the Tall Tower project. It is the kind of project the Human Race needs to convince ourselves that we are still capable of getting Big Things done.<p>If you don&#x27;t know about it already, it is a project jump-started in part by Neal Stephenson, to build a 15km tall tower.<p><a href="http://hieroglyph.asu.edu/project/the-tall-tower/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;hieroglyph.asu.edu&#x2F;project&#x2F;the-tall-tower&#x2F;</a><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TE0n_5qPmRM" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=TE0n_5qPmRM</a>

&quot;It used to be the case that governments funded a lot of development of breakthrough technologies. The bad news is that they have mostly stopped&quot;<p>That statement is very passive. There has been a shift in the past 30-35 years in public perception as to whether or not government is an agent of good (with noted problems) or if it is unfortunately necessary but the smaller it is the better we are all off. Unfortunately, in my view, those who believe in investing in basic research are losing out to those who believe the existing market structure is always superior.<p>I&#x27;m highly doubtful that YC or other similar groups really have the stomach for the long term investment that is necessary to make up for that loss of government backing. If your model is that waving a couple hundred million dollars around will induce a eureka moment in somebody smart, it is bound to be a failure. Real breakthroughs typically seem like breakthroughs but actually were the result of spending decades and a lot of money searching dead ends and making incremental progress.<p>At best it seems like YC can pick some slightly higher hanging fruit than the current model allows, but they can&#x27;t afford to reach very high.

I feel like this is a big shift in focus for YC and for the industry if others follow suit. This will do a lot of good in changing the image of the typical startup, from who starts them to what their ambitions are, signaling to those in other industries that the valley isn&#x27;t just about young code-slingers and iOS apps. I hope this encourages people in STEM with years of specialized domain experience to look at starting a company as a seriously viable option.

SpaceX and Tesla were really possible because of the large amounts of money that Elon put into the companies, it is estimated that Elon invested $100MM into SpaceX. his extremely impressive resume was not enough to receive the level of funding to get the company off the ground (get it?)<p>how can a first time entrepreneur actually receive substantial investment without putting in such a large personal investment?

I can&#x27;t help feeling that there&#x27;s just too much in this RFS and that much of it lies beyond the expertise of YC. The lack of focus means that the only message I can take away is that YC wants fewer frivolous startups. SpaceX and Tesla are fine for inspiration but they have absolutely exceptional funding - no YC company is going to have access to those opportunities. I&#x27;m all for ambition but I don&#x27;t see how this RFS is realistic.

&quot;Science. Science seems broken. The current funding models are broken and favor political skill over scientific genius. We need new business models for basic research. There are a lot of areas where scientific developments can have huge commercial applications — materials, neuroscience, climate engineering, and cheaper&#x2F;better ways to get to space, just to name a few—and we’d love to figure out a way for it to happen. &quot;<p>I think he misunderstands the meaning of the term &quot;basic research&quot;:<p>&quot;Basic research (also called pure research or fundamental research) is a systematic study directed toward greater knowledge or understanding of the fundamental aspects of phenomena without specific applications or products in mind.&quot; (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_research" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Basic_research</a>)<p>So the very idea of basic research is that there are no forseeable commercial applications (or indeed any practical applications).<p>Personally, I think that private funding is NOT suited to finance fundamental research, since the time horizon there is way too long for most VC companies, and I doubt that many of them would finance something &quot;just because it is interesting and we don&#x27;t understand it yet&quot;.

I like the ambition but a lot of Startups like this will have their roots in basic research (read: University labs). That leads to interesting dynamics (and issues) with the founding teams. e.g. Profs who have been critical in developing tech but are not jumping ship into the startup lifestyle (although continued involvement is key). I&#x27;ve seen this play out with some ugly stories (people got screwed) and some enlightened ones (balance was struck). Does YC have any views&#x2F;experience with this?<p>Fwiw, I&#x27;m working on internet infrastructure (see profile)

<i>&quot;It used to be the case that governments funded a lot of development of breakthrough technologies. The bad news is that they have mostly stopped; the good news is that the leverage of technology is such that now small startups can do what used to take the resources of nations.&quot;</i><p>Honest question: if small startups can now do what used to take the resources of nations, isn&#x27;t there something even cooler that the resources of a nation could do? I&#x27;m not knocking what small startups can and do achieve, but in the last few years I&#x27;ve started feeling like the humanity is sort of giving up on big ambitions and ideals of unity, of making big breakthroughs together.

Why should YC be involved in areas where it has no experience?<p>The money YC gives is minimal, so the main benefit for YC involvement is experience. If YC has nobody who has expert knowledge in biotech, it would be waste of everyones time to get involved.<p>Another thing is money. Most science startups need more than just people with PhD&#x27;s willing to live with ramens. They need lab equipment, samples etc that cost tens and hundreds of thousands dollars.

<i>&gt; We’re interested in better ways for people to live somewhere nice, work together, and have easier commutes.</i><p><i>&gt; If a company needs to raise a billion dollars of funding over the course of its life, that doesn’t scare us—in fact, that’s a plus.</i><p>San Francisco&#x27;s city government is falling over themselves to legalize and encourage in-law units, whether they&#x27;re built in basements, garages, wherever. The problem is that the permitting process is a byzantine nightmare, and working with the local construction industry is equally maddening and fraught with peril. Also, because of Prop 13, a lot of homeowners are sitting on property that&#x27;s disproportionally valuable compared to their liquid assets, and so there are a lot of situations where people can&#x27;t afford to build an in-law unit, even though (if they could) it would pay for itself very quickly.<p>Therefore, I think someone needs to create the SolarCity of SF in-law units. The company takes care of all the paperwork and even pays for all the construction. In return, they get a cut of the rent for the next 20 years.<p>If you take my idea and run with it, all I ask in return is that, once you hit your first billion in revenue, you put a bust of me in your headquarters&#x27; lobby.

Relevant: Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/science/billionaires-with-big-ideas-are-privatizing-american-science.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;03&#x2F;16&#x2F;science&#x2F;billionaires-with-...</a><p>Discussion: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7406572" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=7406572</a>

YC will need a change in their funding model if they want to fund these type of technologies. $14k to $20k is irrelevant if you need 3 years R&amp;D and&#x2F;or $5M capital to prototype; we need new metrics for funding businesses with high capital cost and&#x2F;or long incubation time.

&quot;It used to be the case that governments funded a lot of development of breakthrough technologies. The bad news is that they have mostly stopped&quot;<p>I have to plug the newest BBC In Our Time podcast on absolute zero - where basic science research (hey let&#x27;s see how cold we can make this gas? Cool! Now this one?) provided refrigeration, superconductivity, superfluids, MRI scanners and more.<p>We cannot think VC can replace government long term funding but we can and should support VCs who are willing to go all in on long term funding and make it cool again. Politicians will go a long way on just standing next to billionaire investors for photoshoots.

A distinction between actual breakthrough companies and meta-breakthrough ones would be nice. Companies that enable others to magnify their efforts (such as <a href="https://experiment.com/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;experiment.com&#x2F;</a>) are different from ones that create new tech (Tesla&#x2F;SpaceX). Meta companies have fuzzier goals and have longer term goals than tech ones. They are also, perhaps, more software oriented than tech ones.

&quot;Of particular interest to us are ways to use the Internet to fix government—for example, crowdfunding social services.&quot;<p>Aren&#x27;t all social services crowdfunded?

In any startup, there&#x27;s broad categories of risk. One is whether it&#x27;s a market risk (we have the tech to solve problems, but we don&#x27;t know if anyone has this problem), or if it&#x27;s a technology risk (we know this to be a problem, but we don&#x27;t know if we can solve it with tech).<p>For the last couple of years, we&#x27;ve been taking existing technologies, and applying them to different markets or creating new markets. AirBnb, Uber, Homejoy, Twitter are good examples of this.<p>This can&#x27;t last forever on any one existing tech, and so @sama&#x27;s just calling for startups that are technology risks instead of market risks. Such startups may be more capital intensive, but not to the point where it&#x27;s a non-starter unless you have 100 mil, like others are talking about.

&quot;We’re especially interested in preventative healthcare, as this is probably the highest-leverage way to improve health. &quot;<p>I think the best preventative healthcare is a population (I almost said cohort (yikes)) that is educated enough (with all that entails) to make better short term and long-term decisions for themselves, including developing the desire to become and stay healthy, to know how to weigh the risks of activities, to know how to find information for themselves and evaluate such information with a critical and logical mind. This would also go a long way in helping our political process.<p>Is this a tall order? You bet. Beyond horizon, but desperately needed.

I would imagine that these types of startups don&#x27;t work with YC&#x27;s traditional valuation and round sizes. I hope they start changing the terms, especially as they now have enough data to find a better &quot;break even&quot; number.<p>For instance, I&#x27;m tackling energy economics, and doing business development alone in this industry dwarfs YC&#x27;s round.

Am I the only one who doesn&#x27;t know what RFS stands for? Its not clear from AcronymFinder either.

So my lab is working on treatment and vaccine candidates for early childhood infections -- some of which have severe health impacts in second and third world countries. We&#x27;re primarily government funded (state and NIH), but we&#x27;d love more collaboration with our clinical counterparts, especially not in the US. Would YC back a company whose sole purpose is to interface between wetlab people and people people? I would like to setup a group that does this, but its seems infeasible without the right corporate connections.

We&#x27;re dead serious about applying and getting in YC.<p>We do RFS #8 (Ephemeralization Apps) and now, thanks to this post, we&#x27;re also on the RFS &quot;Improving healthcare&quot;.<p>I have a request to existing founders, mentors or partners of YC:<p>We have an amazing team and a real problem we&#x27;re solving in healthcare. Hundreds of doctors are waiting to use our app. I&#x27;m wondering if you could help us by reviewing our application and sharing some feedback&#x2F;advices. Please don&#x27;t be shy, that would be <i>really</i> appreciated. Just ping me phzbox at gmail

&quot;We&#x27;re interested in ways to use the Internet to fix government&quot;<p>That&#x27;s what Loomio is doing: <a href="http://boingboing.net/2014/03/19/loomio-democratic-decision-ma.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;boingboing.net&#x2F;2014&#x2F;03&#x2F;19&#x2F;loomio-democratic-decision-...</a><p>Building infrastructure for citizens to self-govern. Using the internet to enable large-scale decision-making, without the need of large government.

I have wanted to experiment with some ideas that would solve &quot;real world&quot; problems, but software has always been vastly more accessible. Maybe YC could also consider funding companies with consumer products aimed at making other fields more accessible at home. Sort of analogues to the cheap personal computer. Like the Personal Lab, Personal Biobrick Lab, Personal Fab Lab.<p>Another idea is just any consumer focused startup in one of the areas he focused on. For example an inexpensive solar panel kit you could buy at Walmart. Or maybe advanced hydroponics kits for people to grow some of their own food. I believe the key to really taking advantage of new technologies in an efficient way is to get them widely distributed and into the hands of individuals and families. And I think that high tech solutions to a number of traditionally highly centralized or large organization-driven areas such as energy and food production can make better distribution of those things practical and will result in not only a more efficient but also more robust and secure future for families.

This list seems like YC is (publicly, at least) expanding their vision. Previous RFS lists seemed mostly like software ideas, while this list seems more focused on problems and markets, regardless of technology.

Metacomment: I like how you are copying PGs use of footnotes, but please copy his html as well and make them link back and forth.

Finally! That &quot;build something on Twitter&quot; was irrelevant 3 years ago. Especially once Twitter implemented a system-wide ceiling which capped any new ideas user base to 100k users. I&#x27;m glad to see that you&#x27;re focusing on products that aren&#x27;t routed in social media. Bravo Sam.

Separately this messages needs to be carried front and center on the YC homepage and become part of an outbound marketing effort and materials as well as PR.<p>If not how would someone who doesn&#x27;t know about YC or follow it (or read this blog post on HN) know to apply if that is what they are contemplating doing?<p>YC has for sure tons of applicants. But there are almost certainly a large number of people out there that don&#x27;t know the ropes and don&#x27;t know it even exists. There is really (afaik) no widespread farm team development that feeds into YC.

&gt; Of particular interest to us are ways to use the Internet to fix government—for example, crowdfunding social services.<p>I have an unannounced goal in my projects to achieve something bigger than this... to use the internet to change political systems, the structure of them and how populaces engage with them.<p>I think it has to be fait accompli though, already done. It will take a generation to achieve fully and putting it in a pitch deck or advertising it before it&#x27;s done is only going to allow people to attack it before it&#x27;s taken root.<p>I truly believe this is possible and achievable. But when I share the plan (in person, not on the internet) and get passionate about politics, a few are inspired and believe... and most think I&#x27;m off-the-planet crazy (though they don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s unachievable).<p>Fait accompli... I need to get it done for it to be already done.<p>I believe the company is going to be successful, make a huge return for investors, and change the lives of users (I&#x27;ve seen that first-hand already). But I also believe it can be a trojan horse for a set of ideas that can change societies and how we choose to be governed.<p>I&#x27;d largely got to the point where I wasn&#x27;t going to consider YC, but if they&#x27;re serious about this one and can be more ambitious, I might be tempted to apply.

This is an excellent example Brand expansion. Whether through product depth or diversification successful brands all have to do this. What&#x27;s especially impressive to me is that Mr. Altman has seen that by expanding the incubator platform, to technologies that previously were not included as primary entrepreneurial drivers (AI &#x2F; Urban), Mr. Altman has opened the doors to an incredible amount of work that has already been done at research institutions world wide and is ready for investor grooming. It will be interesting to see who responds, and what they can bring to the table. My guess is that it won&#x27;t be the bounty that YC has seen in software, but that there will be some really interesting winners that fit the scale &#x2F; mvp problem inherent in YC&#x27;s process just right. Hopefully the other incubators will follow suit. The world needs more than disruptive &#x2F; labor saving software. The world needs more and better technology all around.

Please add this RFS to the dropdown on the application.

Some ideas around transportation:<p>- smart pothole patches. Currently patches barely make the road any more driveable and uneven road surfaces result in billions in economic loss due to accidents, repairs, and traffic.<p>- drone machine equipment. Employ operators in the midwest in trailers while they control equipment all over the world. You&#x27;ll get few accidents and utilize resources more efficiently. Put the operators in geographically advantageous locations and you can run the equipment 24&#x2F;7.<p>- Volunteer traffic shaping network. I figure all you need is 15-20 volunteer drivers to effectively eliminate rush hour stop and go traffic on one side of a highway by throttling throughput. Create an app to help coordinate and reward them.

I can understand a) this will diversify their portfolio b) increase their risk negligibly c) increase their long term positive variance appreciably.<p>But how on earth will participating in YC help? its not some damn webapp or incrementalizable b2c&#x2F;b2b product. Some things also don&#x27;t have a natural exit, even if the biz outcomes are grand and&#x2F;or interesting.<p>seriously, convince me its worth my time to apply even though I don&#x27;t want investors. please. (I know many folks who did YC and are happy with it, I just don&#x27;t see how it&#x27;d help in the domains I do work in.)

My faith in humanity has been restored a little bit with this article. I hope more of Silicon Valley focuses on breakthrough technologies, since the rest of the world tries to rip off the valley anyway.

I would assume companies applying to this RFS would be mostly in their later stages and probably already have some type of funding. A lot of these seem to require significant costs up front.<p>One thing that makes YC and other incubators so amazing is people who didn&#x27;t grow up with a wealthy family and have financial obligations such as student loans can hack together a prototype over a weekend, apply to YC, and have almost as good of a chance of getting in as anyone else. I can totally see why YC would want to fund later stage companies though.

As an active investor in the energy space, I would love to hear how Sam&#x2F;YC see their model working here. The MVP and concept of early sales is something that is very difficult in this and many of the other markets they mentioned. We try with all of our companies to partner with larger organizations and generate early, profitable revenue. But it is difficult in many industries and there is still a large capital need.<p>That being said, would love to attend a YC non-software demo day.

I can&#x27;t help but feel there&#x27;s a few major gaps on this list - helping reinvent financial services, and using technology to improve lives in developing economies

I&#x27;m personally very encouraged that YC is open to civic data startups. I think there&#x27;s still a lot of low hanging fruit in government for hackers to solve.

To build a huge, breakthrough company requires people that have or can master the road to get there. Can&#x27;t just jump to that without any experience and expect to execute well. As such, I see YC reaching out to folks that would otherwise consider GSB, HBS or Haas by working with teams that have more experience, eg, putting aside some of the valley ageism.

This is great news. Many colleges and universities have been focusing on these types of startups for the past 5-10 years for their own VC type competitions, and now YC is seeing the value in them too. Hopefully many others will follow suit. Rock Health has been doing this for a while and has been pretty successful in the biotech&#x2F;healthcare scene.

This feels like a response to the recent NASA &quot;end of civilization&quot; report. <a href="http://www.ryot.org/nasa-figured-civilization-end-gonna-your-lifetime/608677" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ryot.org&#x2F;nasa-figured-civilization-end-gonna-your...</a>

Bristol Space Planes fit this bill, have a talented team, and are actively seeking funding: <a href="http://bristolspaceplanes.com/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bristolspaceplanes.com&#x2F;</a><p>They&#x27;re trying to make space travel much cheaper with re-usable launches.

My ultimate goal is to work on a project like this. For now though, I have a hard enough time coming up with <i>bad</i> ideas. I can&#x27;t imagine how I&#x27;ll end up in a position where I know how to fix real problems.

I thought it was interesting (and a bit funny) to see powered exoskeletons on an RFS so close to Elon Musk&#x27;s companies, given the running joke about him being the real life Tony Stark.

I&#x27;d so love to work on nuclear energy, making Thorium approchable for the masses.<p>Checklist: - find a superstar physics team - get 0.5B in funding.<p>Seriously, Thorium rocks. Look it up.

Any chance we can form an Ideas list please folks:<p>My starter for ten:<p>&quot;The Internet lets people around the world coordinate action&quot; HelpYourNeighbour.com Given certain amounts of basic training and oversight, social services could outsource small amounts of care to anyone willing to help - elderly person in need of trip to doctors, local park needs trees planting. All this is kind of sort of done on adhoc basis by charities - seems very inefficient and probably lacks the network effect lift that a single government approved point has.

&gt; &quot;We are getting close to spending 20% of our GDP on healthcare; this is unsustainable.&quot;<p>Really? Why should 20% be unsustainable?

Any possibility of extending the deadline due to the new RFS?

He has a very PGesque style of writing.

Big point: We want to start with what we have and get to what we want.<p>So, how the heck to do that?<p>Maybe what we are doing is just using computing to automate what we have long done manually. Then we know how the heck to do that and mostly just need to program it.<p>Maybe we can think of a reasonably good way to do that using just intuitive heuristics and just need to program those.<p>But, what else can we do?<p>Here&#x27;s an example: Suppose at a server farm we have a system and want to monitor it for any problems not seen before. Suppose the system can report 100 times a second numerical data on each of 12 variables. Suppose the server farm is relatively stable and we can collect such data for three months, let the data &#x27;age&#x27;, and be fairly sure that the system was operating &#x27;normally&#x27; (correctly, without problems) during those three months.<p>Now what? In real time, how do we monitor the system? AI &#x27;expert systems&#x27;? Been there; done that; don&#x27;t think so.<p>And our customers are highly concerned about both detection rate and false alarm rate. The 12 variables used carefully seem to promise a good detection rate, but what the heck to do about keeping false alarm rate down? Intuitive heuristics? I don&#x27;t think so. Something in &#x27;machine learning&#x27;? I doubt it. Now what?<p>Okay, it&#x27;s a research problem in the applied mathematics of applied probability.<p>Okay, what&#x27;s the lesson here? The applied math now should be seen as the uniquely powerful crucial methodology for much of the progress we seek, say, in the RFS. Why? Because in a strong sense, math has by far the most powerful methodology in civilization. How? Why? Because applied math can take what we have, use that as hypotheses in mathematical&#x2F;logical deductions and, with theorems and proofs, come up with mathematical consequences that are rock solid logically and give us what the heck we want, far beyond anything we ever did manually or could ever guess with intuitive heuristics.<p>Net, the key methodology for much of the progress we want, that is, taking what we have and getting to what we want, is some applied math, with theorems and proofs, possibly in part or largely original, and sometimes with some advanced math prerequisites. Such math promises to be one of the most important pillars for the exploitation of computing in the future, assuming that we do get such exploitation.<p>So far I have yet to see &quot;applied math&quot; mentioned on the Web site of any venture firm.<p>Another example? Sure: Take the data we have and get to what we want in, say, ad targeting. So, sure, there are lots of techniques for ad targeting, but what are the more powerful techniques, say, that give much more effective ad targeting, and how do we find and confirm the power of such techniques? Well, in some cases, maybe most, the best methodology will be some math such as I described.<p>VC, YC, SV, entrepreneurship, computing, etc. will have to take applied math quite seriously or miss out on a lot of what might have been and struggle for decades in nearly useless mud wrestling instead.<p>You&#x27;ve been warned. Be warned. You neglect applied math and you can&#x27;t win and must lose compared with what is possible, big time. Did I mention that the theorems and proofs of applied math form the most powerful methodology in civilization? Believe it.

Scrolled down to healthcare, and wow, clearly no domain experience. Spend another year researching and listening first.

This is fantastic. Now I&#x27;d like to see the people with the capital to fund the series As and Bs of these companies make a similar commitment. Don&#x27;t leave the future entirely in the hands of Musk and Thiel.

&gt; Throughout history, when the cost of energy has come down a lot (for example, with the steam engine)<p>I&#x27;m going to have to review my physics textbook, but I could swear that steam engine <i>consumes</i> energy.<p>edit: Can&#x27;t believe I&#x27;m getting downvoted. I thought this place was full of pedantic engineers, like me?<p>The steam engine turns energy into work. If anything, it probably increased the price of energy (at least temporarily, until the steam engine was put to work in the fossil fuels mining business).

my idea: a social network for startups who believe they are changing the world. It will be called ignoranceOfYouth.com.<p>In all seriousness, fixing my local animal shelter&#x27;s web site has a bigger impact on this planet than 99% of Silly Valley&#x27;s app lottery.

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