思考与写作miter.mit.edu
并不异域的底层阶级
The Unexotic Underclass
2013 — 2016，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
这篇文章批评科技创业圈把资源集中在高支付能力、时髦的用户身上，而忽视退伍军人、单亲母亲、低收入者等“不异域的下层阶级”。作者认为这些群体有真实而紧迫的需求，也蕴藏被忽视的创业机会，呼吁创业者真正面向他们做产品，而不是只追逐熟悉的高端市场。
为什么经久不衰：它点出了科技行业选择用户时的阶层盲区，以及“靠近钱”与“解决真实问题”之间的张力，因此多年后仍值得讨论。
HN 评论精选
智能手机对底层生活改善巨大，但服务非典型用户创业难走VC模式，软件解决一切也被夸大。
我部分赞同这篇文章。虽然我也对硅谷把过多资源投在手机社交游戏上感到不满，但智能手机及其低端产品极大改善了更广泛美国人的生活质量。对现金少、责任多的人来说，通勤、申请福利、预约并按时看医生、上班办事时照看孩子，几乎没有什么事是智能手机不能帮上忙的。作为面向非典型用户做产品的创业者，挑战很多且大多不适合VC融资路径：要让人付钱、要能盈利地服务他们，而客户中相当比例问题复杂；他们消费的多数软件由应用/亚马逊/谷歌/脸书/微软巨头来写，因为可用垄断租金补贴到零，并用呼叫树、网页应用和自动化流程处理客服麻烦。还有“每个问题都有软件方案”的过度热情，有时被夸大了。
patio11查看英文原文
I like parts of this article more than others. For example, while I share a certain sense of frustration that SV seems to spend a disproportionate amount of resources on mobifotosocialgames, smartphones and their downmarket progeny are an enormous quality-of-life improvement for broader America. There's virtually nothing a cash-poor-responsibility-rich person needs to do that having a smartphone does not make them better at. Commute to work? Apply for benefits? Schedule appointments with doctors? Successfully keep those appointments? Keep tabs on kids while working/errands? A smart phone makes you better. As an entrepreneur who makes stuff for people who are not the usual suspects, the challenges to doing this are numerous and largely not conducive to the VC-funded trajectory. You have to convince people to pay you money for your services, you have to be able to service those customers profitably, and the customers are disproportionately pathological. Most of the software they consume is getting written by AppAmaGooFaceSoft because they can underwrite it with their massive monopoly rents, subsidize the cost straight down to zero, and deal with the CS headaches attendant in serving poor people by sending them to a call tree / web app backended by a Markov chain backended by /dev/null. There's also a bit of "every problem has a software solution" enthusiasm which is, well, a bit overstated. (Sometimes this isn't stated outright, but when you expect to do something meaningful on e.g. $500k in an angel round, you implicitly expect to do something meaningful 100% in software, because $500k isn't even enough to launch a single McDonalds in the real world.) Many problems have an 80% software solution attached to a 20% "interface with the real world" mandatory bit. The marginal cost of that last bit, though, is hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars per client served. Or it has highly non-trivial political/regulatory barriers to entry, like "Convince an incompetent, intransigent, and politically invulnerable agency to disemploy half their workforce, who are by the way mostly veterans, whose main professional competence is doing an important thing slowly, poorly, and expensively."
面向不精明用户容易被欺诈激励挤出，好产品应先服务上层再下沉。
基本问题是：为精明人做产品时，利益是一致的。精明人只在你做出好产品时才付钱，所以你赚钱的唯一方式就是真正做好事、创造对别人有用的产品。这是吸引很多人创业的幸运巧合——我们造东西、创造价值、拿到报酬。为不那么精明的人做产品时，最容易赚钱的方法是骗他们；即使你不想玩脏的，也会被玩脏的人赶出市场。你会和那些把产品弄得看起来超值（零首付、零利率！）但长期坑客户的人竞争。你想卖公平产品，但不精明的人会忽略它，买看起来更划算的骗人产品。不精明的人买好产品，通常是通过更精明人群的口碑传播。所以若想为下层阶级做好产品，先为精明中上层做，好了会像邮件、智能手机等一样下沉。
bokonist查看英文原文
Here is the basic problem. When you build a product for savvy people, your interests are aligned. Savvy people will only pay you money when you build a good product. Thus, the only way you can make money is by actually doing good, by creating a product useful to other people. This is the happy coincidence that draws so many to entrepreneurship - we get to build things, create value, and get paid $$$. When you build a product for less than savvy people, the easiest way to make money is by tricking them. Even if if you do not want to play dirty, you will be driven out of the market by people who do. You will be competing against people who make something look like a great deal (no down payment, zero percent APR!) but where it turns out the customer is getting screwed in the long term. You might want to sell a fair product, but since you are selling to less than savvy people, they ignore your product and buy the product that is tricking them, that looks like a better deal than it is. When less savvy people buy good products, it's usually products that are being passed on via reputation by the more savvy set. Thus if you want to build good products for the underclass, build it first for savvy upper-middle class people, and if it is good, it will eventually filter down, like email, smart phones, and a hundred other technologies have.
底层缺乏现金和财富，商业上瞄准顶层40%更合理。
很简单。不异域的下层阶级没有现金。2007年底层60%只拥有全国4.2%的财富。说实在，只瞄准顶层40%才合理。掷20面骰，掷1归底层60%，2到20归顶层40%，你要从哪个市场赚钱？收入分布没那么悬殊，但底层60%不创造财富有原因，部分是因为钱都花在必需品和小额低开销奢侈品上。让这些群体更负担得起某些东西确实能赚钱，但这似乎不是人们谈论的宏大问题。
ebiester查看英文原文
It's pretty simple. The Unexotic Underclass Doesn't Have Cash. In 2007, the bottom 60% of the country had 4.2% of the country's wealth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Distribution_of_Wealth,_2007.jpg Frankly, it doesn't make sense to target anyone but the top 40% of the country. Roll a 20 sided die. If you roll a 1, put in the pile that goes to the bottom 60%. If you roll a 2-20, put it in the money that goes to the top 40% of the country. Which market are you going to get money from? I can tell you which market I'm looking at. Now, the distribution of income isn't as disparate, but there's a reason that the bottom 60% isn't generating wealth, and it's partially because they're spending all of their money on essentials and small, low overhead luxuries. Is it true that you can make a good amount of money in making things more affordable to these segments? Sure, but these don't seem to be the grand problems people are talking about.
简单CRUD应用可解决退伍军人福利申请积压，社会价值大。
我注意到HN开发者常嘲笑CRUD应用无聊，但简单CRUD应用就能让退伍军人的医疗福利申请全部无纸化，几分钟而不是几个月完成和批准，让他们更快获得所需护理。为需要却付不起多少钱的人做CRUD应用，可以做很多好事。
kyllo查看英文原文
I noticed that devs on HN often sneer at CRUD apps because they're boring to build, but meanwhile a simple CRUD app could do something like make all these veterans' medical benefit claims paperless so that they can get filled out and approved in minutes rather than months, and they could get the care they need sooner. One could do a lot of good by just making CRUD apps for people who need them and can't afford to pay much for them.
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