{"id":43472,"date":"2023-10-20T15:28:50","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:28:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/young-and-self-absorbed-startups-replacing-missing-mothers-ben-hammersley-says-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:28:50","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:28:50","slug":"young-and-self-absorbed-startups-replacing-missing-mothers-ben-hammersley-says-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/young-and-self-absorbed-startups-replacing-missing-mothers-ben-hammersley-says-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cYoung and self-absorbed\u201d: Startups replacing missing mothers, Ben Hammersley says – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Not enough entrepreneurs are creating solutions for people who aren\u2019t young and single, according to futurist Ben Hammersley.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI think there\u2019s a huge opportunity to address the needs of an early thirties stay-at-home mother,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cOr the time-poor forty-something guy who wants to spend his weekends with his 10-year-old rather than mowing the lawn.<\/p>\n

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\u201cOne of the notable trends in San Francisco startups at the moment, and once you\u2019ve noticed you can\u2019t stop seeing it, so many new startups are effectively replacing the mothers the founders left at home.<\/p>\n

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\u201c20-something dudes who\u2018ve just dropped out of college, and they can\u2019t boil water and make their own bed. So that\u2019s the market they see. There are so many food delivery startups, shopping delivery startups, getting people to clean your house.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s not their fault they\u2019re young and self-absorbed. I think it\u2019s a massively missed opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Hammersley, an author, and former deputy editor of Wired<\/i>, who\u2019s speaking at Wired for Wonder in Melbourne later this month, is currently living in Los Angeles with his partner and 11-month old daughter, and a host of different types of AI. Not truly sentient AI, but between five and 10 really clever internet-connected devices.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s part of an investigation into the ways people will interact with robots as they become an increasingly large part of home life. Hamersley has noticed some of the technology hasn\u2019t been designed with a family in mind, like Amazon\u2019s virtual assistant Echo.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s very interesting seeing how my 11-month-old baby daughter reacts to these sorts of devices, and thinking through the way you as a parent interact with AI in your home, when you\u2019re doing so in front of a child,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cA good example is the Amazon Echo, that I have in the kitchen. It doesn\u2019t react to you when you say \u2018thank you\u2019. You end up being quite rude to it. But you\u2019d never be rude to a waitress in front of your child.<\/p>\n

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\u201cYou\u2019re dealing them in a social context, and a family context, which is different from being a single male technologist in San Francisco.\u201d<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s natural for entrepreneurs to found, or for investors to fund, startups that are solving problems they\u2019re familiar with, one of many reasons why diversity is important.<\/p>\n

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Hammersley points to the limitations of Fitbit and Apple\u2019s Health Kit as symptoms of an industry dominated by males.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe Jawbone or the Fitbit are basically midlife crisis\u2019 being made into electronic devices. The particular type of fitness (they promote)is effectively preventing middle-aged men from heart attacks,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cVery rarely do you see anything that is centred around other non-executive lifestyles. You don\u2019t see anything around reproductive health, or anything that helps the parent of a young child keep fit.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s only in the upcoming version of iOS that Apple Health, which was unveiled with great fanfare, has a period tracker in it, a thing of great importance to half the population.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s a slightly weird, shocking omission. There\u2019s missed opportunity in these massive markets, and we\u2019re not talking about taking a Fibit, shrinking it and pinking it.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s a real problem for society and the startup scene which are missing out on enormous amounts of potential. And I think creating a social backlash in many cities.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe local pollies will no longer be awed by having a startup community in their city because they\u2019ll say \u2018you\u2019re not helping out anyone other than yourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Raising your<\/i> first round of capital<\/i><\/a>? Starting a<\/i> crowdfunding campaign<\/i><\/a>? Want to grow your business<\/i> with Instagram?<\/i><\/a> StartupSmart School can help.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not enough entrepreneurs are creating solutions for people who aren\u2019t young and single, according to futurist Ben Hammersley.   \u201cI<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59776,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43472"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}