YYCombinator and their Silicon Valley counterparts often talk about the value of geography. The best ideas, we are led to believe, come from a small stretch of earth close to San Francisco.

James Fallows in a recent Atlantic essay describes how most of America’s elite believe in “The Big Sort” — that to be successful, one must be sorted into a few metro areas: San Francisco, New York, Boston, perhaps Seattle or Washington D.C. When it comes to people investing in new ideas, this is absolutely true. 78% of investment in startups goes to three states (New York, Massachusetts, California). While in the past 20 years startup investing has increased 300% in those states, it has actually declined in the other 47 across the country.

Silicon Valley has become a “monocrop” culture where entrepreneurs are well-educated, have frictionless access to capital, and have their basic needs taken care of. The majority of resources today are going to entrepreneurs whose lived experience is in well-off, well-connected cities.

Successful startups are born at places like Y-Combinator and go through the venture capital gauntlet frictionlessly — the same way big factory farms across America churn out cheap corn and beef.

Yet there is a problem with monocrop culture: ultimately, you deplete the soil. In a recent podcast with Kleiner Perkins partner Randy Komisar and legendary Silicon Valley “coach” Bill Campbell — mentor to Steve Jobs and Larry Page — Randy asked whether, over time, entrepreneurs were solving increasingly frivolous problems. Campbell responded, tellingly, that entrepreneurs solve problems that they can understand.

“While you and I might think Snapchat is frivolous,” Campbell said, “my grandchildren find it a great solution for how better to communicate with their friends.”

Snapchat may be solving an important problem for well-connected young people in America who don’t have to worry about basic needs. But whether it’s unemployed young people in St. Louis looking for their next paycheck or a family in Flint, Michigan worried about clean water, many Americans have more immediate problems.

But the entrepreneurs there — “those people” —often don’t have access to resources or opportunities to solve their problems. And Silicon Valley can’t foresee a future where St. Louis or Flint could create the jobs of the future.

Because most of today’s entrepreneurs have their basic needs taken care of, their problem-solving often seems frivolous to the rest of the country.

Take Uber, for example. Uber’s great at solving how people with smartphones and disposable income can get around major cities — a small fraction of the global population. Uber is less good at helping the drivers, whose income is much lower than the riders, benefit from this new paradigm. Uber has hailed their impact as letting people work flexibly and use assets more productively, but strategically is investing hugely in driverless cars.

And we don’t blame Travis Kalanick (actually we do, but that’s not the point of this story). Uber’s founders’ experiences are as riders, not drivers. But imagine an ownership structure in which, for example, drivers could earn fractional equity in the company for each ride they gave. What if a percentage of the $50B valuation were shared among the drivers, based on a merit-based system?

We’re not saying that Uber should do this (they can’t at this stage); we are saying that if Uber’s leadership had different lived experiences, the company might look different.