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What a stupid idea

dcurt.is

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Re: What a stupid idea

#111

Post by gnarbarian »

robbiep wrote: post #109
jdietrich wrote: post #104

Success is not validation of an idea and we should be ashamed to think so. Cigarettes are one of the most successful consumer products on earth. Inhaling a lungful of carcinogenic smoke several hundred times a day is undoubtedly a stupid idea. Tobacco has made a small number of people incomprehensibly rich, to the great detriment of humanity. Personally, I think nearly all of these 'social' startups are bad news. Not…

Well said. I quietly dispair at the shortened attention spans and clamour for 'likes' and 'follows' that have resulted... Whilst I browse Instagram and refresh Facebook. I am a walking contradiction...

I like to blame "Loony Toons" for my short attention span.

Re: What a stupid idea

#112

Post by steeve »

jdietrich wrote: post #104

Success is not validation of an idea and we should be ashamed to think so. Cigarettes are one of the most successful consumer products on earth. Inhaling a lungful of carcinogenic smoke several hundred times a day is undoubtedly a stupid idea. Tobacco has made a small number of people incomprehensibly rich, to the great detriment of humanity. Personally, I think nearly all of these 'social' startups are bad news. Not…

You know what, that was surprisingly insightful.

Re: What a stupid idea

#113

Post by phaus »

redshirtrob wrote: post #49

There 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…

Salted caramel has always been and will always be awesome.

Another deceptively awesome dessert is chocolate with pepper in it. Sounds weird, but its actually one of the original ways that cocoa was enjoyed.

What kills me about ice cream is the immense popularity of all of the stupid "Ben and Jerry's" style knock-offs that use a 10:1 candy:ice cream ratio. When I want to eat ice cream, it doesn't mean that I really want a candy bar.

Re: What a stupid idea

#114

Post by wpietri »

pfitzsimmons wrote: post #90
sramsay wrote: post #60

I more often experience the facepalm of watching an uncomplicated idea turn into a global sensation. It's 2005 (hardly the distant technological past), and someone gets the idea for a site where you can store and watch videos. This is not some kind of radical technological innovation. This is not something beyond the ambit of current capabilities. This is not some brazen insight into the future. This is a site. Where…

Well, to be sure the magic ingredient in Youtube's success was not the idea of uploading and watching videos. Many people were working on video sharing at that time (myself included). Youtube's secret was that the founders were already successful entrepreneurs who were well connected to VC's. Thus they had access to the capital that allowed them to lose ungodly amounts of money in the quest for growth.

Well, they also had an impressively cavalier attitude to copyright. Which was a major advantage.

But they also had excellent design sense. YouTube made uploading, viewing, and sharing content very, very easy. I did some consulting for a semi-competitor, so I paid a lot of attention to the market then. YouTube did a great job, which helped them get users, which surely didn't hurt with VCs.

Also, Crunchbase says they took $3.5m from Sequoia to start, and then $8m a few months later, and my recollection was that later tranche was really just to spend on bandwidth and servers. Google bought them a few months later. So they didn't lose what I'd call ungodly amounts of VC money; that's less than 1% of what Facebook received before IPOing.

Re: What a stupid idea

#115

Post by nemothekid »

ekianjo wrote: post #96
hobs wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I still think pintrest and vine are dumb, its just they have a lot of users. Just because you think something is dumb doesn't mean it isnt a viable business model. People sell virtual rubies to people building ruby houses all day every day, and that is dumb.

I had the same comment below. Does popularity make up for it being stupid in the first place? So, because someone can get rich, does it mean his idea was right? Well, maybe in a business sense, the idea was not wrong if you could gather enough fools to back you up, but that does not make it less of a stupid idea.

How does one define a stupid or smart idea? Do I have to chip away at world hunger for my idea to be smart? Or do I have make a billion dollars for my idea to smart? The production of the iPhone has contributed to the suicide of a lot of people. Is the iPhone a stupid idea? On what scale of success does an idea have to achieve? If Groupon only made a select few rich at the expense of others, was a smart idea on the founders part, or not? Does the founder really care, or does he regret it?

Given all these factors, its clear you can't have an objectively stupid or smart idea. I think the only right questions you can ask are "How are you going to execute on it?" and decide whether or not the founder is stupid or not. I'm not sure there are many people on the planet who can, given the idea for Instagram, sell it for a billion dollars.

At the end of the day all you really have is your confidence in an idea, and confidence in the founder's ability to execute on it. Knowing whether or not an idea is stupid really requires a sort of omnipotence on your part. Was it the right time? Instagram would be a stupid idea in 1995. Did the founder execute well enough? Was the market too small? There are too many variables that go into deciding whether an idea is "stupid" or not.

Re: What a stupid idea

#116

Post by coldtea »

dangrossman wrote: post #105
coldtea wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, you have a veritable talent for liking half-baked ho-hum stuff! I mean: 1) Google Wave -- a confused mess of a mail/im/web/social offering that didn't exactly knew what it was and solved non problems. 2) Gnome 3 -- Gnome 2 had languished for years. Why would 3 change that, especially since most of the changes planned were incremental ho-hum stuff combined with arbitrary rewrites of core technologies sure to take…

What a mean-spirited and off-base comment. "Nuff said"? The Zune guys were 6 years ahead of the rest of the business -- their UI & UX design work became the basis for Windows Phone, Windows 8/RT and Xbox today. Zune failed because it was an expensive MP3 player launched when MP3 players as a category were being consumed by more capable general purpose devices, not because it was half-baked.

>"Nuff said"? The Zune guys were 6 years ahead of the rest of the business -- their UI & UX design work became the basis for Windows Phone, Windows 8/RT and Xbox today.

Notice how you say that "The Zune guys were 6 years ahead of the rest of the business" and "it was an expensive MP3 player launched when MP3 players as a category were being consumed by more capable general purpose devices" (so, behind the rest of the business). It can't be both.

The whole product/ease of use/market/ecosystem etc (which is what matters) was subpar. And the market had much better products already.

Also, I'm not sure why you tout the Zune UI/UX work either. The only thing it had going for it was the visual look, not the feel or the interaction. So it was mostly a pretty graphic design, not a great UX. Same for Metro/Windows 8. It's not like that got any good reviews. Mostly a mismatch of traditional Windows and an out of place, and quite restricting and ill-thought touch UI. Oh, and it's not like Windows Phone got anywhere either. Nice looks, as a concept, but they forgot that design is how it works -- not how it looks.

Re: What a stupid idea

#117

Post by dangrossman »

coldtea wrote: post #116
dangrossman wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a mean-spirited and off-base comment. "Nuff said"? The Zune guys were 6 years ahead of the rest of the business -- their UI & UX design work became the basis for Windows Phone, Windows 8/RT and Xbox today. Zune failed because it was an expensive MP3 player launched when MP3 players as a category were being consumed by more capable general purpose devices, not because it was half-baked.

> "Nuff said"? The Zune guys were 6 years ahead of the rest of the business -- their UI & UX design work became the basis for Windows Phone, Windows 8/RT and Xbox today. Notice how you say that "The Zune guys were 6 years ahead of the rest of the business" and "it was an expensive MP3 player launched when MP3 players as a category were being consumed by more capable general purpose devices" (so, behind the rest of th…

/strong disagree

Zune & Zune HD had extremely favorable reviews, both from critics and customers. It was a solid product with a solid ecosystem. Engadget's review recommended it primarily on the Zune Pass and Zune Marketplace components. CNET called it "the best portable music and video experiences money can buy", while highlighting the subscription music integration. PC Mag's review called it "the best PMP you can buy outside the iTunes universe". This sentiment was industry-wide. There was nothing half-baked about it; that's not why it failed in the marketplace.

Re: What a stupid idea

#118

Post by Myrmornis »

This is simply a vehicle for the author to show off about how he was consulted by well-known startups before they were big. These articles by dcurtis are a very ugly portrait of San Francisco tech culture. For example it beggars belief that this one was not written as a parody: http://dcurt.is/the-best

Re: What a stupid idea

#119

Post by akamaka »

jdietrich wrote: post #104

Success is not validation of an idea and we should be ashamed to think so. Cigarettes are one of the most successful consumer products on earth. Inhaling a lungful of carcinogenic smoke several hundred times a day is undoubtedly a stupid idea. Tobacco has made a small number of people incomprehensibly rich, to the great detriment of humanity. Personally, I think nearly all of these 'social' startups are bad news. Not…

Very well argued. I'm usually very dismissive of people who complain about companies pursuing seemingly unimportant goals, because at one time cars, electronics, and personal computers also seemed like frivolous toys. However, you make a very persuasive case.

And, to answer your final question, no, I don't really care. I grew up being lectured on how TV was the "idiot tube", so the idea of of society being full of people wasting their time is something I've gotten quite used to.

Re: What a stupid idea

#120

Post by hkyeti »

jdietrich wrote: post #104

Success is not validation of an idea and we should be ashamed to think so. Cigarettes are one of the most successful consumer products on earth. Inhaling a lungful of carcinogenic smoke several hundred times a day is undoubtedly a stupid idea. Tobacco has made a small number of people incomprehensibly rich, to the great detriment of humanity. Personally, I think nearly all of these 'social' startups are bad news. Not…

Of course non profits and major breakthroughs in health, equality and development are important.

But what's the point of life if you don't have art, joy, entertainment?

If you love art, what makes enjoying beautiful fashion, destinations, decor, creations somehow lessened and put into a bucket of fetishism.

My girlfriend loves Pinterest as a way to take a few minutes from her busy working schedule and relax and appreciate the beauty of the images and participate in a community.

I'd suggest countless millions of women around the world feel the same way.

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