As people have already said, this is a ridiculous case of survivor bias and to be fair, they are kind of stupid ideas. One is basically bookmarks, but with a nice UI and sharing, and the other is a kind of poorly made way to share short video clips. I met a kid making a video sharing app that was miles better just last week.
What a stupid idea
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Re: What a stupid idea
#62Every killer idea is stupid until success betrays its obviousness. Most inspired ideas are probably stupid. And finally, many ideas are just plain stupid. The trick is to ignore your gut reaction and ask yourself, "If this amazingly stupid idea is executed perfectly, is there a real market for this?" Women "pinning" their desires? Check. People sharing incredibly easy-to-compose video? Check.
Don't confuse the dancer with the dance.
Re: What a stupid idea
#63I like the first line on the last paragraph -
"The future is extremely hard to see through the lens of the present."
What we do in the present can affect the future but we can not predict what will actually happen. There's too much variables involved.
Re: What a stupid idea
#64I know the feeling. For me it was in the stock market. I had a chance to invest a substantial amount in gold about 13 years ago with someone who wanted to dump his gold stocks at a discounted price. I scoffed at the idea and thought it was stupid. Well, we all know how that turned out....
Re: What a stupid idea
#65A well-written humblebrag.
It reads that way a little but as a front-end dev I've had sit-downs with a few founders trying to hire me and in some cases I thought their ideas were stupid. It didn't seem like they wanted my opinion on their idea as much as they wanted to get me excited about the future they are trying to create.
Turns out one of them succeeded in a sense.
Re: What a stupid idea
#66There are so many things that seemed like a stupid idea to me: - Seinfeld: Who is this guy, really? - Frasier: Come on, a spinoff? (So, I didn't realize spinoffs were a thing) - Twitter: Haiku and vanity plates for the Internet. - Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream: Salty Caramel, you've got to be kidding me. I don't want salty ice cream. - Arrested Development: Wait, Jason Bateman. He was so bland on The Hogan Family. - Ther…
That's an awesome list.
Re: What a stupid idea
#67Dustin, let's meet at The Creamery. I gotta stupid idea to show you :)
Re: What a stupid idea
#68There are so many things that seemed like a stupid idea to me: - Seinfeld: Who is this guy, really? - Frasier: Come on, a spinoff? (So, I didn't realize spinoffs were a thing) - Twitter: Haiku and vanity plates for the Internet. - Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream: Salty Caramel, you've got to be kidding me. I don't want salty ice cream. - Arrested Development: Wait, Jason Bateman. He was so bland on The Hogan Family. - Ther…
I don't know, most of those initial reactions make sense to me.
I think it's as simple as others are saying: in a market full of humans, making sense is not a dependency of success. and many of us justify the things that succeed after the fact.
If we're dismissing things for good reasons, I don't think we should try to inhibit our reasoning in order to just be less discriminating. Instead, the magic (or at least seemingly magic to engineers such as myself, when it works) of marketing is to account for and scrutinize based on the irrational.
Re: What a stupid idea
#69This article highlights the few times he was wrong. But what about all the lunches where he left thinking 'what a stupid idea' and was right.
Re: What a stupid idea
#70In the early 1980s, CompuServe's marketeers thought the CB Simulator was dumb. It brought in most of the money. Here we are in 2013 and there's Twitter.