During the past week I was looking for topics to write about and there was a few rather interesting ones even though they weren’t exactly scoops. But that’s not what I want to write about. I want to write about all the useless web apps that I kept finding when I was looking for something useful.
I admit there’s some truth in that if you just fiddle around and create nifty little apps or services you can make something very useful in the end, but only if you believe there’s something much more than that, something big and game changing in the end. For example, I agree that fiddling is largely how Twitter got started. But if it’s for a quick buck or quick success and you’re putting all your time and energy into it, it’s just cutting short your potential as a human being and wasting all our time.
When I was looking for a story to write, this was one of the lost sheeps I found: “The driving force behind WhosRich is a basic human trait – people’s love to show off in front of the others” … “The mission of WhosRich is to satisfy mankind’s urge to be noticed.” Now, if I were an investor I would be much likely to invest my money into a company who’s mission is to organize all the world’s information and make it accessible. Would such an mission statement be realistic? Probably not, but that’s not the point. You need to have a big vision since without it it’s not only unlikely you do something remarkable, it’s impossible.
There was much talk about this development in the latest TC50 event. Some people were not impressed on the quality of the startups present. The hunger to change the world was just not there. Maybe it’s where we are in the economic cycle or the fact that the Internet has matured and some people (including investors) confuse that with less potential for disruptive innovations (which its not), but I think we could and should do better.
In the video Sarah Lacy talks with Tim O’reilly on what he’d like to see in a startup and that’s not just there. See the original post here.
I agree that Nordic and Baltic entrepreneurs as well as the whole startup scene should take many thing from the Silicon Valley, but let’s not take this one. We can do better than just more useless apps.
the wonderful cartoon is a hugh macleod
