Imagine you are standing at a busy intersection where every third car is just a middleman driving back and forth, charging a small fee for moving things that could have stayed put. You are paying for the inefficiencies of an outdated system every time you pay your rent, buy groceries, or pay your phone bill.
Andrew Yang notes that the next surge of startups is moving away from purely digital software and toward lowering the actual cost of living. These companies are using artificial intelligence (automated decision-making software) to strip away the expensive, slow-moving administrative layers (the secondary processes and paperwork) that inflate the price of essential services.
The Efficiency Engine
Think of these startups as a specialized plumber for bloated industries. Instead of building a flashy new product, they are identifying exactly where the pipes are leaking money in sectors like housing and supply chain logistics, and using algorithms to patch those leaks. They act like a card catalogue that can automatically reorganize the world's most inefficient logistics networks, ensuring that goods and services move in the shortest, cheapest route possible.
For a single mother working as a school teacher, this shift means her monthly rental application—which previously cost hundreds in 'administrative processing fees' and weeks of manual background checks—is handled by an automated system in seconds for a fraction of the cost. Because the landlord no longer needs an army of clerks to process credit reports and employment history, she pays lower monthly rent, giving her extra breathing room in her budget to cover groceries without financial anxiety at the checkout line.
Technology is at its most potent not when it invents a new problem for us to solve, but when it systematically removes the obstacles we were forced to pay for yesterday. The most successful businesses of the coming decade will likely be the ones that quietly make your life cheaper, rather than the ones that demand more of your attention.
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