I think boffinism's comment below hits it, but to also add -- its important to try and find a charitable interpretation of comments when possible. Here I think empathy was meant literally as understanding other people's needs and points of view. If you don't know people with some problem directly, and also don't know how to find them -- how sure are you that the problem you are solving is real and in need of a practical solution? You have to understand user needs very well to build a novel product that people want to use. Its not about software startups solving the worlds problems -- I think its just a very general point about solving problems you understand and not ones you don't have any experience with.

To give a more concrete example, I know of a successul life insurance company. It was started because the founders had a bad experience with purchasing life insurance. They then worked with (and as) life insurance agents to better understand the customer (and insurer's) needs. THEN they built a company, one solution at a time.

I feel like 'and you don't know where they are' is maybe the redeeming phrase in halpert's post. If you have an idea that you think would help some people, and you have no idea where such people are concentrated... maybe it's a sign you don't know enough about said people to really be able to help them?

He did not say „lack empathy, making you a bad person“.

He said „lack empathy for building this particular type of software“, meaning you would not be getting enough emotional feedback (due to lack of connections).