I love to rip on 'social startups' as much as any good hacker, and I basically start my day with a cup of coffee and the 'startup guys' video.
reading this article, though, something clicked for me. why does it matter that there are startups out there that are constantly pivoting or not producing real products? what is the loss?
one statement I've seen put forward is that the startup energy would capture smart people who could be our next Feynman or Shannon and instead of having them do real science, we figure out how to get them to click on ads. I can appreciate this fear, however, I've spent a lot of time on university campuses lately and I've met a very large number of very smart and very motivated young people who are getting educated in real science and have a passion to go into the world and change it. They won't go figure out how to get people to click ads.
is the fear that these little pivoting media startups will seriously suck all of the spare cash out of the economy and we will wind up doing nothing but producing Twitter clones? if you produce this analysis, in my opinion, you should step back and consider that maybe you're too close to the bubble.
so what's the harm with having the brogrammers produce products that no one wants to use? do you have a backlog of awesome work that you wish was being done, could be done by these constantly pivoting wunderkinds, but isn't? maybe you should start a company!
Well it depends a bit when you pivot. I'm guessing most people pivot before actually coming out with their product, simply because they don't know what they really want and they have no idea how to do it either.
Pivoting is good when you're already out there with your idea and then understand that you need to adjust to your customers needs. It is not when you don't really know what to do and just experiment with other peoples money to find out what YOU want.
reading this article, though, something clicked for me. why does it matter that there are startups out there that are constantly pivoting or not producing real products? what is the loss?
one statement I've seen put forward is that the startup energy would capture smart people who could be our next Feynman or Shannon and instead of having them do real science, we figure out how to get them to click on ads. I can appreciate this fear, however, I've spent a lot of time on university campuses lately and I've met a very large number of very smart and very motivated young people who are getting educated in real science and have a passion to go into the world and change it. They won't go figure out how to get people to click ads.
is the fear that these little pivoting media startups will seriously suck all of the spare cash out of the economy and we will wind up doing nothing but producing Twitter clones? if you produce this analysis, in my opinion, you should step back and consider that maybe you're too close to the bubble.
so what's the harm with having the brogrammers produce products that no one wants to use? do you have a backlog of awesome work that you wish was being done, could be done by these constantly pivoting wunderkinds, but isn't? maybe you should start a company!