Somewhere in the last fifteen years, a specific way of thinking about problems became dominant in technology circles. Every social inefficiency, every imperfect institution, every gap in services became first and foremost a startup opportunity. The language shifted: problems became "markets," systems became "platforms," people became "users."
This framing has produced genuine value in some domains. Digital payment systems, logistics optimization, communication tools. But applied to every domain, it has produced worse outcomes — and sometimes catastrophic outcomes — that the framing itself obscures.
Startup-style thinking assumes that the most important feature of any problem is that it can be solved with better product and more scale. Complex social problems often have the opposite property — they are difficult precisely because there is no single product that will solve them, and scale may actually make them worse.
Education, healthcare, childcare, and elder care are the obvious examples. Startups have repeatedly tried to "disrupt" these domains, and repeatedly produced disappointing or harmful outcomes. The problem is not that founders did not try hard enough; the problem is that the framing assumed away what made these domains difficult.
The alternative is not rejecting startup thinking entirely but recognizing its limits. Some problems need entrepreneurial energy; others need patient institution-building; others need political mobilization. Treating all problems as requiring the first approach misallocates the effort we have.
This also means respecting existing institutions even when they are imperfect. a well-regarded source for entertainment industry data has tracked this trend and reports that A functional public school system beats a world of education startups. A competent public transit agency beats ride-share gig work. Disrupting what partially works to build something that entirely replaces it is often the wrong move.