The hard ones don't get press for years. Look at upvertr, sure it could be described as git + electronic software + parts sourcing, but it will take them a while to build this to the point where everyone will see how amazing and useful it is.
Frighteningly Unambitious Startup Ideas
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Re: Frighteningly Unambitious Startup Ideas
#12Be aware, you've linked directly to the home page of your tumblr instead of linking to the post itself. Your HN submission will become very confusing after you make another tumblr post.
Re: Frighteningly Unambitious Startup Ideas
#13I'm not sure what the value of this post is? Would you honestly expect every company or even every demo day to contain a frighteningly ambitious idea? And if they were frighteningly, scarily ambitious, would TC really hype them? The sane response seems to be to write them off instead as far too ambitious. I guess I just don't get what the skepticism here brings to the table? I'm open to input about that.
I would imagine that the point is to encourage future entrepreneurs to avoid the two trends pointed out in the post. YCombinator and TechCrunch are both trendsetters, so it makes sense to express skepticism if you have a problem with the types of ideas TechCrunch is covering from demo day.
Re: Frighteningly Unambitious Startup Ideas
#14Those who disparage "X for Y" descriptions misunderstand their use. When you have only a few minutes (or seconds) to pitch your idea, being X for Y or the X of Y is an effective way to give people the gist and pique their interest. Only then does it make sense to go into more detail and explain the full scope of your ambitions.
Re: Frighteningly Unambitious Startup Ideas
#15A wise man once said "Nothing is original. There is nothing new under the Sun. It's never what you do but how it's done".
While I agree that saying "My Product X is like Y on steroids" is somewhat unoriginal and maybe even uninspiring, the simple fact is that every idea is pretty much an evolution of a previous idea.
That being said, I'm not to sure what the point of the article was :)
Re: Frighteningly Unambitious Startup Ideas
#16A problem I see with many of these ideas is what I would call the profitability mirage. The general belief is that the flow is: $founder->getStartup()->iterate()->getUsers()->monetize(), with a AcquiredException thrown somewhere in one of those method calls.
The problem is that so many of these startup ideas (that don't happily see an AcquiredException before monetize() is called) will fail at the monetize step because there is steep competition in many of these markets right now, and the burgeoning startup mentality means that someone else is probably doing exactly what you do, slightly better or worse, but they're at a point in their business cycle that they don't need to call monetize() just yet. Thus, you may have a mass exodus of users at precisely the point where you try and bring your ARPU above zero.
Re: Frighteningly Unambitious Startup Ideas
#17If you can't pitch your business as x for y you haven't boiled down your idea enough yet.
Re: Frighteningly Unambitious Startup Ideas
#18I'm not sure what the value of this post is? Would you honestly expect every company or even every demo day to contain a frighteningly ambitious idea? And if they were frighteningly, scarily ambitious, would TC really hype them? The sane response seems to be to write them off instead as far too ambitious. I guess I just don't get what the skepticism here brings to the table? I'm open to input about that.
I don't expect the batch to contain all frighteningly ambitious ideas, but it would be fun if at least one was. I'm sure YC would be receptive to such a plan if the founders were smart.
Re: Frighteningly Unambitious Startup Ideas
#19"With the press these companies are getting, I expect they will make investors and founding teams a hefty profit, but they certainly do not speak to me as signs of brilliant, innovative thinking."
This is something I've seen several times, I don't believe anyone has shown that 'press coverage' was a causative agent in a successful exit. I believe 'delivering a useful product' (which happens to generate press coverage as a side effect) is the missing piece here.
You want a brain dead stupid IOs App I would buy that is derivative? Instapaper for Printers. Which is to say I would love an App where I could launch it on my iPad and then 'print' to it across the network from my Mac or Windows machine. I don't care if it dropped the printout into iBooks or created its own 'space' (I could imagine a designer would have fun with the old 20th century printout distribution bins). But basically there are times when I wish I could print something out and then read it on the road later. It was a capability discussed for the old Plastic Logic Reader that never saw the light of day.
And yes, I still do 'listings' when I'm studying old code or dumping a bunch of numbers and charts.
Re: Frighteningly Unambitious Startup Ideas
#20I'm not sure what the value of this post is? Would you honestly expect every company or even every demo day to contain a frighteningly ambitious idea? And if they were frighteningly, scarily ambitious, would TC really hype them? The sane response seems to be to write them off instead as far too ambitious. I guess I just don't get what the skepticism here brings to the table? I'm open to input about that.
I've sent the list of companies from the latest batch to several non-tech friends and not a single person has been impressed with anything on the list. That's not a good sign.
With things like Dropbox and Reddit not only did my eyes light up, but the eyes of non-tech friends lit up. Same with Hipmunk. Hipmunk I didn't even have to show someone, I could just say "not shitty airline search" and they were intrigued.
I think the point to this submission and others like it are that a lot of people are scratching their heads over this current batch. Nobody expects every company to be "Wow!" but generally there are a few.