A generation ago, Masayoshi Son compared himself to both Jesus Christ and the Beatles. It's a bold self-assessment from the founder of SoftBank, the Japanese telecommunications giant that has poured billions into venture capital funds around the world. But perhaps Son's most telling comparison isn't with religious figures or iconic bands — it's his vision for how technology should reshape humanity.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Son explained that the SoftBank Vision Fund would tackle the biggest challenges and risks facing humanity today. The framing sounds noble. Critics might note that the historical context matters here: many of the so-called innovations backed by venture capital firms have already existed for decades or centuries. What Silicon Valley calls disruption is often just reinvention.
The Bus That Wasn't
Consider the transportation sector. Lyft announced a service called Lyft Shuttle, which would be cheaper than a taxi and run on pre-designated routes — picking passengers up and dropping them off at regular stops. This describes a bus. Uber launched a similar service allowing riders to save money by waiting at pre-arranged stops, sharing rides with strangers, and getting dropped off along predetermined routes. That's also a bus.
Elon Musk announced his idea for a bus on Twitter, calling it the Boring Company Urban Loop System. The concept promised thousands of small stations the size of a single parking space that would take passengers very close to their destination, blending seamlessly into city fabric rather than a small number of big subway stations. When the Boring Company built the Las Vegas Loop, however, the result was far less ambitious: Teslas driving slowly through an unnecessarily small tunnel. The most disappointing transportation innovation in history is now being described as just cars in a hole.
The pattern here is consistent. Tech Bros have repeatedly invented things that already existed — and sometimes made them worse.
The Product Problem
Silicon Valley's worst inventions are the ones pitched as tech products when no real technology was involved, or where existing technology solved problems nobody needed solved.
A prime example is the Hydrate Spark, a connected water bottle that tracks your water intake and glows to remind you not to forget to drink. The bottle syncs with a smartphone app so hydration records can be stored in the cloud. Amazon reviews show users praising how it integrates with their phones — one user going by the name Daniel says he loves how it recalculates his daily water needs, noting that he honestly can't think of anything wrong with it. As a testament to its durability, he writes that it survived Burning Man.
Of course it did. But here's the real test: if you drink from a different container, how will the bottle know how hydrated you are? The app might be useful for letting your bottle know you've cheated on it — and then it'll glow in a different color to indicate disappointment. Otherwise healthy people started saying they felt hypoglycemic and dehydrated instead of hungry and thirsty about fifteen or twenty years ago. Now people are charging bottles overnight and connecting them to phones so they no longer have to rely on their own hypothalamus for basic physiological functions.
Then there's Soylent, or Tau — meal replacement shakes invented by a software engineer named Rob Reinhardt who resolved to treat food as an engineering problem rather than a time-consuming hassle. This is essentially Slim Fast for Tech Bros. A New York Times review described the product as punishingly boring and joyless, causing flatulence as a side effect. The inventor responded that this side effect was likely temporary and just the result of adjusting to the government-recommended amount of dietary fiber.
The Juicero Disaster
One of the most amusing non-tech tech products in recent years was Juicero, which raised $120 million in venture capital funding from firms like Google Ventures and Kleiner Perkins. A reporter at Vox described its business plan as a pitch perfect parody of contemporary startup culture. The inventor compared himself to Steve Jobs and explained that Juicero squeezed juice with the force of two Teslas — a standard unit of weight that has become Silicon Valley's preferred measurement.
Each Juicero pouch contains one pico-Tesla of chopped fruit, which is meaningless but sounds impressive. One investor told press they were drawn to the idea of an internet-connected device that transforms single-serving packets of chopped fruits and vegetables into a refreshing healthy beverage. Another said Juicero was building a platform for a new model of food delivery with a subscription-based model reminiscent of other food delivery startups like Blue Apron and Naturebox.
But when a Bloomberg reporter squeezed the fruit bags by hand, they yielded nearly the same amount of juice as the $400 device — and it was often quicker. Juicero responded that most people would prefer to use the machine because the process is more consistent and less messy. Turns out people didn't want to use the machine, and the company went bankrupt. The founder was last seen promoting forty-dollar jugs of what he calls raw water — Tech speak for dirty water collected by trespassing across private property under cover of night.
The Internet Tea Pot
Toria was another technology innovation from Mountain View with a pitch that elegantly blended the rich tradition of tea with modern tech to create the perfect contemporary tea experience. This was a $1,500 internet-connected teapot with an app using machine learning and advanced algorithms to produce the perfect cup of tea.
The five-star reviews are priceless. A user named Robert writes he loves this machine — noting you don't need the pods because you have the app, and you can throw any loose leaf tea in it. That sounds great, wait till Robert learns that he doesn't need the app either. Another reviewer, Seth, seems to love the teapot but realizes no one is updating the app now that the company went bankrupt. He writes in all caps: you can't use Toria if you don't have a smartphone.
The true usability comes from the app — on the surface it's the best tea maker money can buy, changing how he drinks and makes tea for the better. But underneath is a ticking time bomb of uncertainty. If the app isn't updated, he'll eventually lose the ability to use his Toria.
The Lunch Break
One of the clearest giveaways that food isn't a big deal for Tech workers came when Meera, chief people officer at the food delivery app Just Eat, posted on LinkedIn that the company had invented the Power Hour. This was an hour during the workday when employees could take a break from meetings, go for a walk, even have lunch. She finished her post saying another way they continue to brilliantly enhance the lives of just eaters everywhere.
Yes, Meera had invented the lunch break. The LinkedIn post was quickly deleted after people made fun of it — and Just Eat told press the general public had humorously brought to their attention that they didn't do a very good job of explaining their intention to remind staff to prioritize their own well-being and get away from their laptops.
The Pause Pod
Another great invention was the Pause Pod, pitched as a private popup space free from stressful moments. Designed by a team of inventors and advertisers based in Sweden, here's a picture — that's a tent. A tent in your office. The inventor told press that during the initial crowdfunding round they set out to raise $110,000 but instead brought in over $100,000 with pre-orders, growing to about $140,000 with nearly 2,000 pause pods ordered.
The founder explained you'd get it if you're familiar with feeling stressed and doing meditation or mindfulness. After people made fun of it on Twitter, the founder said he had never claimed it wasn't a tent — which is true.
Bodega
Tech Bros invented roommates calling it co-living where people live together having their own spaces but with some shared rooms. With Bodega, they invented the vending machine, raising $2.5 million in funding for what was described as smart store kiosks powered by AI that you can operate using your phone.
You don't even have to work in Tech to come up with these ideas. In 2020, a Canadian reporter pitched her startup idea on Twitter: private backyards for people who don't have private backyards. She said she'd pay five dollars to rent a fenced area for an hour so she could safely play fetch with her dog while doing an outdoor summer workout.
If it works for bikes and office space, why not land? Lauren made the mistake of pitching this idea to the public on Twitter rather than to venture capitalists — and instead of raising money, people just made fun of her for inventing public parks.
Tech Bros have repeatedly invented things that already existed — and sometimes made them worse.
Bottom Line
The strongest part of Patrick Boyle's argument is exposing how Silicon Valley frames reinvention as innovation — taking concepts that have existed for decades or even centuries and presenting them as groundbreaking. His biggest vulnerability is the same one facing any skeptical piece: there's nothing inherently wrong with applying technology to old problems, even if the solutions already exist. The real criticism lies in the funding priorities and the hubris of claiming solving humanity's challenges when the actual products solve almost nothing worth solving. Watch for the pattern — every year brings new language around ancient concepts, and venture capital money makes it sound like something new.