The reality is that the people investing the money don't want hard problems.
They just want scale, viral growth, network effect, more ways to sell advertising. Most of the money today is on completely superfluous crap, and that's why the economy is on the mud.
Why invest on improving individuals, when you can just distract them and reach for their pockets?
As I said previously – solving bigger/hard problems is one path to long-term success.
IMHO, this is one of the more clear cases where VC interests are directly at odds with the interests of post-IPO investors – particularly the ones more likely to be interested in long-term gains (people investing for retirement/retirement funds among others)
They just want scale, viral growth, network effect, more ways to sell advertising. Most of the money today is on completely superfluous crap, and that's why the economy is on the mud.
Why invest on improving individuals, when you can just distract them and reach for their pockets?