Hard Problems.

The challenge

“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks.” — Jeff Hammerbacher, 2011

Our mission

Helping tech people to work on the hard problems that matter in the world: problems like public health, climate change, poverty, and good government.

While Silicon Valley is focused on AI, VR, new subscription models, and, yes, ads, many people in the real world are trying to tackle the hard problems of climate change, public health, poverty, and other issues that affect us all.

Programmers and designers know these issues matter but wring their hands and standby, unsure how to have any positive impact... choosing to focus on making big money and working on trendy new technologies.

It’s time to refocus the tech world on what matters most. It’s time to build new relations between doctors, environmentalists, scientists, not-for-profit leaders, public servants, and others tackling the world’s hardest problems with technologists who can help make practical tools to help solve them.

Made up of a multi-skilled team of very experienced tech veterans and other subject-matter experts. Hard Problems is taking the lead in this effort - whether it’s building teams to work on issues, solving problems with robust long-term solutions, finding ways to fund tech initiatives, and inspiring a new generation of tech workers to champion the work on these fundamentally important problems.

We are in the earliest stages of forming Hard Problems. We don’t have all of the answers, but we’ll start anyhow and learn along the way.

Office

4th Floor, 1 Rivington Place, London EC2A 3BA