'Silicon Valley Is Missing Unicorns Because It Doesn't Understand Poor People' (cnbc.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Silicon Valley might be hunting unicorns in the wrong places. According to one top federal health official, entrepreneurs and investors are overlooking one massive population: Low-income Americans who qualify for Medicaid. That's a big mistake, given that new funds are available for those that are bringing IT innovation to the space, said Medicaid chief medical officer Andrey Ostrovsky. "My gut is that it's a big opportunity with $500 billion in federal spend every year in a system that hasn't evolved technologically much since 1965," Ostrovsky said. "There are unicorns sitting in there," he added.
How about an app that signals when it's time for your renewal and gives you bus directions to the closest carousel?
...good luck targeting poor people with VC money.
If you get in there as an entrepreneur, you'll be suffocating under a mounting of paperwork before being demonized by Democrats for trying to make a profit. And before you can build a real business, you can bet that Congress is going to pull out the rug from under your business model anyway by reforming government health care yet again. Sorry, but "here's a bucket of government money, go build something" is just not an attractive proposition even under the best of conditions, let alone when it involves poor people and a politically controversial area of public policy..
The best you can hope for at this point is that, as physicians exit the market, the big corporations that take over their functions will be able to invest some money in technology and innovation.
Oracle has already been practicing, and is perfectly poised to swallow gigatons of money while providing crap software to the medical insurance industry.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Silicon Valley understands poor people well enough, and doesn't want anything to do with them. It's that simple.
won't for much longer. There's $880 billion in cuts coming to offset the tax cuts being proposed. I'm in Arizona and we have a law on the books that automatically rejects anyone for our low income health care program (AHCSS) if they're single. The law was preempted when Obama threatened to withhold Medicare funds from the old folks unless we also covered the poor. The stupid thing being that the money coming from the Feds to pay for low income people's health care brought more dollars to the state than we were spending. But around here we don't like paying for poor people to have, well, anything really.
Anyway, when those tax cuts hit and the funds stop the law kicks back in and anyone single gets kicked off their health care. Period. I got a buddy with type-I diabetes who didn't have his insulin until Obama made Arizona pay for it. We're gonna go back to struggling to get his insulin now.
In most of America the only money to be made in poor people is exploiting them because that's all we're allowed to do.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
A friend of mine put together a plan to provide eye exams to seniors in nursing homes. He got to the point where he had employees lined up, made agreements with optometrists to make prescription glasses, and even got the agreements with the nursing homes. Then the coverage rules changed and the business model was no longer viable.
Silicon Valley might be hunting unicorns in the wrong places.
Endangered species weren't a good enough kill for them so they are going after our cryptozoological entities? THOSE BASTARDS!
This is why Bigfoot refuses to work in IT. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I blame Starbucks, quite frankly.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Then get off your 400 pound ass, get rid of the attitude, and do it.
I'm 350 pounds. I take public transit to work everyday from San Jose to Palo Alto. I rubbed shoulders with the homeless, the minimum wage workers who clean toilets, and the Indian workers who complain about heating their condos with 20-foot-tall ceilings. Last night I took the train home because the express bus was full and the driver wouldn't let ride standing up. There were more homeless tents along the river than there was along the freeway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicorn_(finance)
But no you're not one of those poor people.
According to Slashdot, anyone making $100K+ per year or less in Silicon Valley is poor. Otherwise, no one would give me grief for making $50K+ per year.
You're always promising you'll be a centokilonaire real soon now as soon as you figure out to run nmap.
Citation please?
Startups that Wall Street will value at $1B+.
You're always promising you'll be a centokilonaire real soon now as soon as you figure out to run nmap.
Citation please?
(#54385055)
I'm studying for my InfoSec certifications and my next job will be in the $100K+ range.
(#54385055) [slashdot.org]
I'm studying for my InfoSec certifications and my next job will be in the $100K+ range.
What does that have to do with being a "centokilonaire"?
Healthcare has made leaps and bounds, and it has trickled out to every segment of society. Even the poorest of the poor receive medical care in hospitals with advanced monitoring equipment and by doctors trained in modern techniques. This story reeks of bullshit. The bureaucracy may still be stuck in the past, but that's government. Very few innovations have come out of government business practices. Or ever will. For very fundamental reasons having to do with difficulties in managing large organizations with multiple conflicting objectives.
Next you'll ask, "WTF is nmap?"
I'm wondering why you're using nonexistent word instead of writing in clear English. Millennial?
by their bootstraps. Though it's telling that the phrase most often used to describe getting ahead in life through nothing more than simple hard work is also physically impossible...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
we do still want poor. If you come here you'll see McMansions right next to scary looking trailer homes. The rich don't like to pay for their services. How do you think they get and stay rich? So they need to keep the poor close by. We use our drug policy to control them. Chances are if you're poor somebody you're nearby has drugs on them and the way the laws work it's basically guilt by association. So if the poors get too uppity we send the cops through to bust everybody and it's 5 year minimum mandatory sentences for all (in a private prison no less).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
at least the honest ones do. The Trial Lawyers who hang onto our party because the other side wants tort reform (which, BTW, you do not want if you like having any recourse whatsoever when a mega-corp does something awful)... them not so much.
We're not going to demonize you if you don't act like a demon. If you come up with a clever scheme to siphon billions into your pocket away from actual health care then yeah, we'll demonize you. You're a demon. Stop it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The confluence of robotics and medicine will eventually result in some sort of Autodoc appliance that will diagnose and repair most common issues. Now *that* is a trillion dollar market.
The VCs I talked to, who were interested in this sector, all started sitting on their funds ever since Trump came into power. It's just not clear how these programs will be affected.
Today it's all about who you ARE and WHO YOU KNOW.
This is a very unfortunate trend, today you're basically invisible to the entire industry unless you got 20+ years experience + are the same age as your experience, plus have amazing references and are willing to work overtime without extra compensation.
Doesn't matter if you can code their socks off, doesn't matter if you even won prizes and awards for your skills, the only thing that matters if you have some papers from your accredited school, and some networked friends that can vouch for you.
And god forbid if you're over 40, you're doomed buddy.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
It's not just health care that could use reform, but local government as well. We're stuck using antiquated software systems which use old databases. Software used to manage Autopsy Records, Park Picnic Registration, Incident Response Systems, Office of Emergency Services, Voter registration, DMV Database, Even simple HR applications like PeopleSoft.
Walk into any Local, County, or State Gov't's IT shop and point a finger, you'll find something that needs replacement ASAP.
A 100K salary in Silicon Valley doesn't go very far, so the net worth wouldn't be particularly high.
I wouldn't be so sure about that. Everyone thought Ronald Read was a poor man because he lived frugally and worked all his life as gas station attendant and later as a janitor. When he died at the age of 92, he left $8M to the local hospital and library.
http://www.joshuakennon.com/janitor-ronald-read-leaves-behind-8000000-secret-fortune/
Maybe they ate all the unicorns
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Can you live in Silicon Valley with a salary of $100k or less?
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Can you live in Silicon Valley with a salary of $100k or less?
Yes, if you live a modest lifestyle. If you want the American Dream of having it all (big house, big cars, big wife and big kides), it gets expensive in a hurry.
If you read the details on the money he's offering (called the "90/10 Rule"), it's 50% to 90% of the cost to build new software and 50% to 75% of the cost to maintain it, with theoretically the rest to be provided by your state...?
I appreciate that they're trying to get something going, and they're working within some insane limits put on them by contradictory mandates, but this is not a proposal to get quality work done. Implying this is a good deal does not help his credibility. This is a proposal for charity work (which is fine... just don't pretend this is a deal VCs are going to jump on).
It's a hard world, but real quality work requires a financial return of a multiple of the cost to make something, not a fraction of the cost to make something.
HUD says if you make less than 103K$ you are "poor"... http://www.mercurynews.com/201... I'm glad my buddy DJ in Southeast Oklahoma busts his ass to cut firewood and feed people's cows, fix fences, do brush and tractor work so he can ship money off to "poor" people in the SF BA via his tax return. I'll make sure to call him on his feature phone in the land of zero data bars to tell him this. Maybe y'all will be able to hear his head explode from the coasts. I'll call at noon Central time tomorrow, let's see if the call gets through.
The whole idea that Silicon Valley VCs are somehow *looking* for unicorn companies or unicorn ideas is totally ass-backward.
Silicon Valley VCs believe they can *create* unicorns by throwing money at them. They aren't looking for them per-se. They are looking for the "right team", the "right investment", etc... The actual idea? Maybe a company can pivot to an idea before the iron grows cold and they are off to the next team. Or not.
A billion dollar valuation (aka unicorn) simply means VCs have managed to get some 3rd or 4th round chumps to dump a bunch of money into a company for a microscopic share of equity. The smart investors either came in early, or have financing structures with warrants that are dilutive (meaning they didn't actually invest at unicorn levels) unlike the employees that usually promised fully diluted shares some day. The whole fiction of unicorns is simply a media creation and has nothing to do with the market potential of a company. Like Enron or Adelphia accounting, it's a fiction that only has to do with the esoteric machinations of valuation and financing a startup.
I suspect the main reason nobody is pivoting towards medicaid recipients is that silicon valley companies probably don't think they can compete with the fraud levels that are out there. If some SV company thought they figured out a way to skim medicaid dollars, they probably can't hold a candle to what people are already doing to the system. It's hard to beat scammers at their own game (esp if you are trying to play fair). On the other hand, maybe a Uber-like company might want to tackle this, but I don't know if that would be a good thing.
cento = 100 kilo = K
Next you'll ask, "WTF is nmap?"
lol are you fucking serious? Any other words you made up that you expect everybody else to know?
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
He outed you as a dickhead. Suck it up.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Yes, there is profit to be made with modernizing medicaid
But no, that profit won't be earned by the poor people on medicaid. It's not the dependants of a system that can profit from rebuilding it. They can't even shape it.
If you want to give those people a say, go ahead, but that won't bring VC money to medicaid.
bickerdyke
Seriously though, I think it's an investment opportunity with revolutionary potential. But I'm kinda guessing, so maybe you shouldn't put too much weight on my answer. Even if it's exactly what I think it is, I still have no idea why they'd call it a unicorn.
I can say that there are probably poor people everywhere because the poverty threshold is defined regionally according to the cost of food - 3x what it costs to buy just enough food to survive.
"Big" wife and "big" kids? Well I guess when you weigh 350 lbs you don't have many options.
When I mean "big," I'm mean bigger than me. I used to be the proverbial fat kid in school. But now there are fat people everywhere who are much bigger than me.
Also you wouldn't need such a big car if you could fit into a regular-sized one.
My last two cars was a 1999 Pontiac Grand Prix and 1999 Ford Taurus. I had no problems sitting behind the steering wheel.
Maybe you should try walking you fat tub of shit.
https://twitter.com/cdreimer/status/858405712317210624
Silicon Valley doesn't understand life outside of Silicon Valley. There are a whole lot of places in the country that don't have wireless internet service yet they build products that expect it.
I just did a literal spit take.
Get used to it.
Somebody says, "Try walking, you fat tub of shit," and you show evidence that once, a few weeks ago, you walked on a treadmill so slowly that you could never walk to anyplace in a practical manner?
I originally posted that picture in response to another asshat on Slashdot who wrote that I needed a bowl of candy to keep me motivated on the treadmill. Walking 3MPH with a 3% incline on a treadmill puts my heart in cardio zone. The treadmill is but one part of my exercise routine.
unicorns --private, venture-backed companies valued at a billion dollars or more
source:
How Unicorns Grow - Harvard Business Review
https://hbr.org/2016/01/how-un...
-- Each tock of the Planck clock is a new world and here we are still life. --
Right, in addition to walking slowly, there's also:
- 2.5 ounce candy-bar curls
- 10 second wind sprint to the vending machine
- holding your breath for 20 seconds while you down an entire liter of soda
- deadlifting crates of garbage energy bars
https://twitter.com/cdreimer/status/861287512802705408/
So you have a fat fetish or something?
Only women with hips. The kind of hips that will carry a baby or two.
I had a Taurus in the 90's, that thing was a g'damn boat.
A coworker at Cisco had an original Hummer and security was also tagging him because he took up two parking spots with the wheels in the center of each parking spot.
Why are you proud of how you look?
Because being ashamed of being fat doesn't win gold medals.
[...] Coronary heart disease [...]
I have had high blood pressure in 30 years.
[...] Cancer, Stroke [...]
I don't smoke.
[...] Dementia [...]
I read three or four books per month.
[...] Diabetes, Depression [...]
A low-carb diet for the last seven years have reduced my chances for diabetes and depression.
[...] Arthritis [...]
I don't run.
[...] Obesity [...]
Even if my body fat went to zero, I will still be fat.
[...] Sexual dysfunction [...]
The boys downstairs are perky as ever.
[...] Sleep disorders [...]
I get up at 4:30AM and start work at 7:00AM. I sleep in late on the weekends, waking up at 6:30AM. I'm in bed by 8:30PM each night.
Take and follow some of the excellent nutrition and weight loss advice [...]
The Super-size Me diet? The Snickers diet? Two-dozen eggs per week diet? No thanks.
With 2br rents being $3500 month, no, you cannot "live" on the penninsula for less than 100K
Bad news. Most of those who do work for a living, as opposed to slinging sh!t on Slashdot, are making far less than $100K
With 2br rents being $3500 month, no, you cannot "live" on the penninsula for less than 100K
I pay $1466 per month for my 475-sqft studio apartment in San Jose. I still save 20% of my income.
And just how many 2br 475ft^2 apartments are there?
That's like a 6x6 bedroom for each assuming a kitchen and tiny "living room".
So, any kids?
No, you do not "Live" on 50K/yr on the Penninsula
That puts your expenses at 2514 per month, leaving you with $652 [...]
I pull down $4166 per month before taxes and my budget is $2828 per month with extra cash not allocated to anything in particular.
God forbid you have a significant financial emergency.
You mean like not working for two years (2009-2010), underemployed for six months (working 20 hours per month), and having $25 in checking after filing for Chapter Seven bankruptcy in 2011? Been there, done that.
You are working poor in the Valley.
You didn't include my brokerage, retirement and savings accounts (~$10,000). Not too many working poor have access to banking services.
You are barely even covering your expenses.
I'm covering all of my expenses every month.
That's like a 6x6 bedroom for each assuming a kitchen and tiny "living room".
I've seen places like that in downtown San Jose. Old Victorians converted into boarding homes.
No, you do not "Live" on 50K/yr on the Penninsula
I live in San Jose and work in Palo Alto. The only people who care about the Peninsula are the people too poor to live in San Francisco.
NOT being ashamed of being fat justifies staying fat, ruining your health, eating like shit, and never trying to improve yourself.
I diet, I work out and improve myself all the time. You reject that because it doesn't fit you perception of a fat person.. Being ashamed of myself, wallowing in piety and feeling sorry for myself will not make me skinnier.
HUD says if you make less than 103K$ you are "poor"...
With a five year waiting list for new openings.
then take it away from the old people. They use _way_ more health care and didn't pay nearly enough in Medicare taxes to cover what they use. Screw everybody or screw nobody. Arizona's flush will billionaires who retired here (you'd be surprised how many). We wanted our cake and to eat it too. We wanted free money for the old people that vote and to abandon the working poor who can't make it to the polls.
You're problem isn't you drank the Kool-Aid, you're problem is you don't have the political will or guts to take care of your poor. Neither do we. You do a much better job.
And the Feds enforced like mother fucking crazy. We don't want them to enforce. We hire those people to be maids, cooks, and farm hands. We bitch and moan about it all day long but in the end we turn a blind eye. Obama deported them like crazy. It's one of the things the left hit him on (that and the drone strikes).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
All those midwest hundredairs are jealous you can make it work, keep up the good fight.
Cheap storage VM.
For a family of 4.
It's nice to hear someone still stuck in the righteous anger of why don't I have what you have or why do you deserve that instead of solving problems like where are families with kids going to live.
Just reminds me why I'm trying to get out of the red state I live in.
Cheap storage VM.
Which proves my point