There's always something 'wrong' about tech people wanting to meet face to face. What is the point of the telecommunication tech YOU created? Did you not do a good job?
There's a better approach than what the blog outlines - imagine that you have infinite wealth and begin to build what you personally want.
In most cases you will not be able to create the whole thing, but you can tackle a piece of the problem.
Example - you want a flying car. Imagine that you have 1 trillion dollars at your disposal. What would you do? Hire engineers. How would you hire them? What software is required. Look around, if it does not exist already, that's your first product. If it the hiring problem is already adequately solved, look for the next thing. How do those engineers communicate? etc.
These series of questions will lead to finding niches of opportunity, and it is always a software problem (organizing workflows).
We wouldn't be punishing teachers, just get ridding of a system that doesn't work. Salman Khan has a proposed a better one where schools are essentially libraries/babysitters that any child can go in and learn a self-directed curriculum.
There is an 'unlimited demand' for programmers skills because of demand ran out, there would be no work left (we'd have a singularity/post scarcity) - programmers automate work.
That's $120,000 over k-12 (not including pre-school). Is $120,000 and 12 years not enough to teach every kid entrepreneurship and coding?
As I wrote in another comment, the current education system is 19th century stuff and it's amazing a lot more people aren't astounded why it still exists.
This is good stuff. Even better would be small cameras that can be worn around the body so the incidents can be recorded.
Yelp has already demonstrated why crowdsourcing is so important. The public often rails against the government, but most of the bad stuff is done by everyday people and they need to be held accountable.
Where are the proper studies (with 1000s of participants) showing teachers can do a better job than babysitters who hand out an ipad with learning software to every student?
The teaching system is a 19th system. It's like if the tech industry continued on with using telegraphs and morse code for everything.
Boo-hoo, teachers, who cannot clearly demonstrate how they actually add economic value to anything, want to be paid even more than their current $52,000 median salary.
Meanwhile, fisherman, who hold the most dangerous job, have a median salary of $25,000.
Firefighters, whose job is to enter dangerous buildings, $45,000.
The root cause of poverty is the incompetent government education system - The Teacher's Union. Most public school teachers I've come across have contempt for the businessmen (people who create the wealth) and for poor people (teachers tend to be limousine liberals).
The first country or state to disband the current teaching system and replace with a competitive system will skyrocket to success. This is a no-brainer, but it's so to difficult implement because there's so many of the 'government handout' teachers voting they swamp the rest of us.
The flip side is does he help you succeed? You just made a case for why you should be in his portfolio - he'll go to the lengths of shady stuff to help you out.
He openly admits he's tough, but that's out of wanting all of his investments to succeed.
Vinod Khosla is one of the few good guy VCs out there. He's invested in high tech foods, robots, energy, healthcare, farming. He runs a Google X type fund.
Crowdfunding will replace venture capital, and investing itself to a large extent. You don't need investment, you make the case to customers directly and they prepay you.
There's a better approach than what the blog outlines - imagine that you have infinite wealth and begin to build what you personally want.
In most cases you will not be able to create the whole thing, but you can tackle a piece of the problem.
Example - you want a flying car. Imagine that you have 1 trillion dollars at your disposal. What would you do? Hire engineers. How would you hire them? What software is required. Look around, if it does not exist already, that's your first product. If it the hiring problem is already adequately solved, look for the next thing. How do those engineers communicate? etc.
These series of questions will lead to finding niches of opportunity, and it is always a software problem (organizing workflows).