Every founder is protective over his ideas, and he has every reason to be. For example, Steve Jobs will let Microsoft down for supposedly taking the GUI. Thinking of an idea is hard and many founders believe that they are the only ones working their ideas. More often than not, there is another founder thinking exactly the same thing. Naturally, I would feel the same way, but a part of me also knows that great work also come from collaboration and feedback.
One person believes in sharing the idea is Jyri Engeström, founder of Jaiku, now part of Google. When I spoke to him during Gigaom’s Mobilize conference, he told me basically got his startup off the ground by posting his idea on his blog. He shared his idea, people thought it was cool and joined. His logic was simple: it’s the execution, not the idea. If someone really wanted to copy you, it’s going to happen. Moreover, if someone was working on the same idea, it’s better to know now than to find out cluelessly after months of hard work. TechCrunch took a similar approach with its $200 laptop endeavor.
I’m not sure how comfortable I’d feel about going public with ideas from very beginning, but what the hell. In spirit of the post, I figured I’d throw out an idea I’ve been thinking about.
Meeting Strangers. Facebook is good for managing all your real life friends, but not so good at meeting new people. MySpace is more suited for it, but still awkward and not meaningful. Currently, only dating sites seem to dominate this category. However, if you think about it, we are already meeting people online, just not through any one destination sites. One example is bloggers. You think Robert Scoble got to know Dave Winer just randomly? No, they blogged about each other and then started communicating through other methods.
My vision is not to make a centralized social network, but to make a decentralized network that helps people engage in one another. I am not interested in a Robert Scoble’s profile pic, I’m interested in his online activity: his blog, his flickr, his facebook. I want to build a widget that you can plug into any site, allowing to network to any other site with that widget. It seems like Deluux might be doing something similar, and if they are, awesome. I want to be able to discover other small bloggers who are interested in tech. Or, I want to find a person who chat with about photography and DSLR’s. Almost like a discovery network. As you can see, it’s all brainstorming right now, but I would love to hear some input; don’t be all secretive.
I’d like to invite anyone interested to contact me or leave a comment. We can get a virtual team to work on it for fun.
Writer: Jeff Wang. I just graduated from UC Berkeley, majoring in Computer Science. Most posts will be dedicated to young entreprenuers.
Add New Comment
Viewing 9 Comments
Thanks. Your comment is awaiting approval by a moderator.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Add New Comment
Trackbacks
(Trackback URL)
October 21, 2008 at 5:59 am
[...] I wrote a post about unconventional method of sharing ideas. My idea was about building a better way to ...