new wisdom of the web, dont start a company!
By now most of you have heard, seen, read, gotten the vibe that Flickr founders Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake have landed on the cover of Newsweek with a byline of "We put "we" back in web.". I find it funny that while the magazine reads The new wisdom of the web... Caterina rambled off last week a list ofreasons NOT to start a company in this new line of business. Which of course was then countered by 37 Signals.
Ok so does Caternia have a point? Yes and No. Part of me think she's just gotten too close to really making it, in fact, she's made it, maybe the buzz or danger of not making it is gone. That buzz or whatever ya want to call it is often what drives a biz to really succeed. So now she's part of Yahoo. Done. I also think on the west coast, yer being ambushed by every ajax, unconference, mashup, api, golden ticket idea/gathering/place on the planet right now. Yer right Caterina, its not Vancouver. You can still be obscure if you really want too though.
Caterina's viewpoint is her own and its based off alot of experience, so I gotta respect that. But I also get the vibe that its a bit like fashionable trends - the cat is outa the bag on social networks, tagging, api's and mashups, and now they're not cool or something. Its funny just when corporate culture discovers it.. and of course wants to cash in, suddenly its not a good idea. See thats what kills web ideas. When big biz wants to cash in. The minute an influx of cash arrives on the scene to create the next myspace or flickr, the audience sniffs this obvious ploy out and boom the disappear, the market crashes, 2.0 dies, and from the ashes 3.0 rises up.
That could very well be the future right there. The players are making the scene now. Its almost like a quest to buy or attain that which should survive. Yahoo has deemed that flickr, delicious.. should survive... NewsCorp says myspace should survive... heh, and google? Google is its own long haul of a game really. They don't want microsoft, they want to reinvent how people interact, communicate, depend on the internet, and they got a pretty good darn lead on that.
Now 37 signals disagrees with Caterina. And of course they would, they've gone from being a design firm, to designing web applications, to making money telling people how to design, make and sell web applications. They're whole biz is optimism, its the sell, you can't diss the sell, so i'd expect them to totally disagree with Caterina, otherwise their book I bought just a few weeks ago would be null and void.
Personally I think its a good time to start a company anytime you have sufficient passion to go the distance. While everyone is scrambling to define what web 2.0 is, even its coin master oreiliey and all, I think the key aspect of web2.0 is the synergy of ideas unbounded in creativity, sheer ability, business sense and more. Simply put, people are exploring the possibility of anything and everything in one massive persistently engaging every expanding network. 2.0 is about what's happening right now on the scene that creates. Sheer creativity is at the core not business sense, there is no real business sense. That is factored in after the core need is built. This is great for people who want to think out-loud and explore the possibilities, and its great for the entrepreneurs that will comb thru the thousands of ideas to find what they think could be, and it'll crash on the beaches of common day corporations that expect them be more that what they are.
So i see the caution in Caterina's words, the chance in 37signals words, but in the end it's my own gut feeling that will lead me, and hope to god that anyone out there with a idea right now is not reading either one of them. (though 37signals does kinda give ya the golden key to do it, and believe.. but dont expect mondo riches)
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In other news, another favorite subject of mine is location based anything, and here we have it - a firefox plugin that allows you to find the closest location of whatever you are looking for. Cool idea. Probably most useful when traveling.