Entrepreneur 2 be

As my last semester advances I find myself involved in more and more group projects. 3 of my classes have long term group projects. In addition, I am a participant in the Merrill Lynch competition where 4 of us communicate on a daily basis and meet weekly. I am getting more and more frustrated with the task of finding time where all people can meet during the week. This back and forth email swapping and trying to match availability is a nightmare. Not that those people have no time they can meet, but if it takes 6 emails to figure it out, then there’s definitely an inefficiency to be corrected.

How difficult is to make a little site where people can post their free time. Co-workers will be able to check out each other’s free times, and see on the fly if all four anywhere. If not, you can easily see the whole chart and figure out where would be the most plausible place to do a little effort and squeeze a bit more time.

My airport extreme died few days ago. I restarted it a billion times, restarted the cable modem too. I had the weirdest problem - one computer gets the real IP and all others get distributed ones that start with 10.0.1.x and they don’t work. After tweaks, changes in name, hard resets I figured out somebody plugged the cable in the local port instead of the WAN port.

In the process of trying to figure out what the heck was going on, I made desperate tries to search for the problem in Google. I found a billion problems, all different from mine. I had to read the full threads to see what is actually going on and to find out the guy forgot to plug the cable. I thought how useless all those forums are. The days of the forums for that purpose are gone. Now that wikipedia demonstrated the power of crowdsourcing for building an almost complete set of knowledge on a certain topic and well organized too, it is time to dare a little more and aim at gathering the full pack of information and not answering only random questions that pop up.

So here is another startup opportunity: If you could make site where people can build trees with branched problems, specified tests and complete solutions for a certain product, no one would ever go to forums anymore. Basically a well done flow chart but real life problems instead of variables and expressions. For example, you start from the beginning: Is it powered? The you check the lights, and either go to branches for fixing power either you go forward to next step. And at every level you are told specifically how to check what you don’t know and what it means. All of this of course has to be editable by the public. Getting all the possible problems for an airport express I am sure is actually much more achievable than it seems, considering how many millions of people there are that have knowledge on the topic.

It is basically a flowchart. I am sure a lot of companies use flow chart for problems, but I think time has come for this to become a standard practice for consumers to crowdsource all possible outcomes into one manageable application.As with all other ideas I have posted I believe there is huge potential, it is not difficult to make but I am just busy with other projects and just don’t have the resources to create it. If you do decide to do it, write out a message, I will give you extra hints, ideas, maybe help with other things. I definitely want to be a tester and can bring bunch of users too

Trigger: I went for another weekend to Boston. I was thinking about Artificial Intelligence and how I can make a simple Artificial Neural Network to learn some simple concept. How could I get in touch with someone that knows how to do that? I am in Boston after all, there are plenty of amazing colleges (MIT, Harvard blah blah) that have professors teaching this stuff. And as a matter of fact as I am walking around the streets of Boston, I am probably seeing them all around…except, I don’t know it.

The Problem: The big problem, I thought, was that no one knows anything about anyone on the streets. These are people that just come and go without giving you one bit of information (the look of a person is exception, which if you think about it is the prime way of meeting people online - pictures). At the same time, plenty of people that go past you in the grocery store are probably very interesting people with whom you can connect very well. The only way to find anything about strangers is to talk to them. But how do you know who to talk to? Should you act like a nuts job and talk to anyone?

The Idea: It would have been nice therefore to have a website where you can put specific information you are characterized with and information you are looking in other people. In my case I am looking for someone that is working with ANN. Once I setup those preferences I walk out to the open world. I carry a phone/watch/device that connects wirelessly to other such devices, checks the preferences of two people walking by each other and beeps if they match.

This way, I can walk around in CompUSA and meet ‘randomly’ a professor in ANN that was looking for a flat screen, he would probably be more than happy to talk about it, since he posted it on his profile for that specific reason. This taps into a totally new way of dating/meeting services, because it has the following very important advantages:
. . . (1) It is much more natural. There is a very big problem with dating sites: it’s the notion that if you are signing up on one, you are probably doing it out of despair b/c you have tried all your real life alternatives (or so you think). This moral underlying guilt prevents many people from using such services. But if you could meet someone in such a natural random way (on the street while shopping) then things look a whole lot different.
. . . (2) Confidentiality of information. There are many cases in which you want to make a piece of information available to the public but at the same time really only to certain people and not to others. Take a weird but true example - HIV positive person. He wants to find a date (most probably HIV positive too) so he has to state that fact and make it available to public. However it would have been nice if only the other HIV positive people new, rather than just about anyone that can exploit that information. Thus your device will only beep on the right occasions.

Difficulties: I discussed it for few days with Alek. We had the idea of making it work with cell phones because it will be easier to start the service. However, it turns out GPRS and bluetooth will not be a very likely option. Wifi could work if the area is fully covered, but again, I think cell phones are at a disadvantage. Also anything else that is more practical (a watch or a device specifically designed for the purpose) will be too expensive and will require investment and experience, neither of which we have. You got better ideas on execution, get in touch with me! You have that ready? I will definitely sign up!

Trigger: I was walking on Times Square and I saw a huge advertisement that looked like a canvas with random drawings on it. I don’t remember what it was exactly, but I thought, “What if I could make a huge gynormous or endless canvas where everybody would be able to draw whatever they want. Somewhat like an endless graffiti? How about if you could purchase of your area? how about if you could add multimedia? How about if you allow user created flash applications? How about if you make it a real estate business?…”

How: I wanted to make it on my own, but needed time and money. Requires extensive communication with server and the mouse movements need to be well sync-ed with users. My friend Alek needed to help me with the backend, I was going to make the fronted with flash.

Mistake: It was nearly impossible to explain it. It takes me hours and hours to explain the complicated idea and the possibilities that arise. I need paper to draw, I need then to always answer many questions and often by these questions I would think that the person facing me totally does not understand what kinda of digital world I am talking about.

The Story: As we thought we had to get some funding. One of the few things we did was apply for Ycombinator.com. Paul Graham did ask me some stuff after we submitted the application (which didn’t surprise me, given the very limited paragraphs in which we had to explain the idea). We didn’t get accepted for one reason or another. Between the feeling of rejection, the ambition, and the excitement we decided that we should try it out even if we didn’t get the funding. And so we started. It took us only 2, 3 days to give up. Over those days, we argued each trying to impose their own vision of how this idea can be done and what it should be like. It turns out it was so complicated in terms of concept that both of us founders had different idea to the point we didn’t even write one line of code before we let go. After all PG had made a good choice.

There was thousand ways of explaining it. “Social networking with a spatial perspective”, “Facebook on 3d”, “Drawing canvas where you could lay your web page at coordinates 300:320″, or “The useful Second Life.”

Every time I tried to explain it with a different term, it would confuse the listener even more. If I had it built maybe people would get the idea. But I can’t do it on my own, which is why I am posting it. It would look like a mix of GE’s drawing site,
http://www.imaginationcubed.com
Eric Deis’s experiment which works better when there are more people:
http://ericdeis.com/content/beautyandchaos/beautyandchaos.php
Google Maps:
http://maps.google.com/
and SwarmSketch:
http://www.swarmsketch.com/

If you could post a music player on Boston and hear it everywhere on the canves within a radius of 1000pixels it would be quit fun. If Nike posted an add at 400:400, then the value around it would appreciate due to traffic. And little by little, according to the content around, cities, villages of virtual information would emerge. A new market for spatial website management emerges. Instead of domains that are virtually attached by links, everything would be like in real world marked by dependency of distance.

This is how we tried to explain it at YC: “A spatial application in the form of an unlimited interactive whiteboard, that is divided in X and Y coordinates. People will not only be able to freely roam and draw, but also upload music, images, videos as well as Flash applications anywhere on the surface. This way, users will be able to upload media, and also tools to modify it. As they create new content they will want to keep it by purchasing physical space on the X:Y plane. In time, popularity of owners, physical positioning, and content of the ‘land’ will create dependencies among the citizens of the now populated ‘cities’. Hopefully, we will be able at a later point to introduce Z dimension for 3D.”

I think its a cool idea, but its difficult to be done and its almost impossible to be explained. If you can get the idea, or if it sparks something similar of yours, and you think you can do it - please feel free - make it. I’d love to see it alive. Tons of money there!

Moral: Sometimes simple things may turn out to be a better choice…

THE TRIGGER:
I just finished reading Blog! By David Kline and Dan Burstein which I reviewed last post. A bunch of interesting points appeared but one paragraph really drew my attention. It appeared in an interview with David Teten and Scott Allen(from Virtual Hanshake):

“The major difference between blogs and social networking sites is that, while still social in nature, blogs are far more individualistic. You don’t need to join a particular online site to participate in a discussion around, say, new technology trends. And in terms of the discussion itself, the communication is centered around the personal voice or views of the blogger rather than on the group, as it is in discussion forums on networking sites.”

What bothers me in this paragraph is the word ‘individualistic’. Just like the interviewee, we make one big assumption – that blogs are individualistic. For many years we have seen the blog as something personal, private, and almost sacred. These are the characteristics of a (online) diary, which is quite natural given that blogs are descendants of the personal diaries. However, as we dig deeper in the social networking models we realize that our true nature is social and not individualistic. People write blogs because they want to be heard and recognized, because they want to communicate, get advice, and make new friends. True, blogs do have a personal and distinguishable voice, but this is exactly what they should use to socialize. Yet, they don’t. Blogging these days is more like sitting on the top of the hill and screaming your lungs out to the crowd. Linking is more like pointing with fingers left and right, rather than shaking hands, hugging people and making new introductions. We are screaming so loud though, that we forget to identify who our listeners are.

THE IDEA:
We should stop thinking of the blog as an online journal. Blog is actually the closest thing that comes to a profile of a person. No Facebook, Myspace, or any other proprietary site can squeeze such detailed, impassioned stream of consciousness. With pictures, video and text, the blog has it all. There are plenty of apps that can be used – look at Fred Wilson’s blog. It’s got it all- Twitter, profile picture, voki avatar, music, name it -he’s got it. What we still don’t realize is that blog is the unit of the most organic, largest, universal social network. The best part? It’s not a proprietary site, it’s a network pushed by a multitude of users, open source software, and private web2.0 applications.

HOW WE DO THAT:
We are actually closer to that vision than it seems. We have all the components in place, all we have to do is rewire them – RSS, blogs, enthusiastic useful information swap, critical mass, a plethora of apps.
Small changes (such as few new tags in the RSS) can define the difference between blog1.0 and blog2.0. From then on blog2.0 will develop in a totally different direction with two main characteristics:

1) Blog2.0 parts will be unified under the single profile they represent. Anything people use to identify themselves in social networking sites will also be integrated in blogs – status updates, profile picture, ‘About me’, interests, albums, friends, topics for discussion - anything.
2) Blog2.0 will become a platform for applications, just like Facebook did. Gmail blended email with chat very successfully and blogging will do the same - friends lists, VoIP, chat, email, etc.

THE RESULT:
-You either install an open source package on your server or you take advantage of an already existing company like Typepad to create.
-You upload an avatar, fill in details, write your first post. You also change your status to “John has a new blog2.0”
-After lunch you have 4 invitations to become friends with your buddies’ blog2.0s. You accept them.
-You look at the activity on your post. Commenting resembles a Facebook wall but also has threading/voting like reddit.com
-You then check your inbox, send out a couple of messages, upload pictures. Just like people get notified by RSS for the new posts, they get notified for the uploaded pictures.
-A photographer happens to stumble upon one of your pictures of the gorgeous Costarican jungles and starts chatting with you on Blog2.0. You become friends and you add her to the friends list. Potential date.
-The followin day you decide to change your avatar. All the comments you’ve ever made in the blogworld have now your new picture.

NAYSAYERS:
“But I am happy with what I have. My blog is private, individualistic and I want it to stay like that!”
No one will force anybody to make that transition, so whoever is happy with what they have, they are welcome to keep it (say hello to ‘backward compatibility’). However as our imaginary blog2.0 picks up, it will increasingly look (for naysayers) like they are left out of the big party. They will simply be missing out, just like it happened with blogs, with social networking sites, with emails, and pretty much any technological improvement, and the blog2.0 as a profile unit in an organic social networking, may be one of those improvements.

What do you say?

Trigger: We had iPods, but we wanted immediate access to any song at any point, we didn’t want to look for downloads, put them on computer and only then transfer to iPod. We wanted a piece that streams music to a cellphone, caching only the recent songs and the most probable to be listened next.

How: Flextronics would build our music phone by our specifications and design, music.net would provide us with huge content of songs for which we would pay per stream, and then we would partner with one of the cell phone carriers to provide the wireless service for a flat fee of $5 or $10.

Mistakes: We wrote too much that in the end no one would want to read, and at the same time did nothing. We also overestimated ourselves and were overly optimistic about “killing the iPod”.

The story: We knew what we wanted, so we set off to make it. As we have studied in Junior Achievement class, every business starts with a well written business plan. Ah, yes, Business Plan! We had just won the national competition for business plan so now we were confident and wanted to create a real business. Oh boy was it writing. We ended up writing a plan close to 50 pages describing everything you could imagine - market, future competition, financial information, technical details… Anything you can possibly brainstorm.

It looked great (to us). As a matter of fact, we were high on our own project. We valued the company to 100million and were planning to quit college. It was all set up, we didn’t need crappy classes anymore, we were rich. But were we far from truth! Long time we kept thinking, rethinking, and tweaking it. Every so often we would decide to send it to an investor and worked for another week of improvements before that. But there was another problem that we didn’t realize at the time: no one that had money to invest had time to read anything more than 2,3 page executive summary. We had close to 50(with financials and other stuff)! It was an endless writing of a story, that would never become true.

We also didn’t really quite get the scale of our venture. There was just no way we could get such big players in our game. We were just two college (freshmen) students that wanted to create something better than iPod. I laugh now at myself and my foolishness.

Also, a major issue was that we ourselves didn’t do anything really. Everybody on the line of ‘killing the iPod’ had a practical purpose- Verizon provides the wireless midium, Flextronics builds the phones, Music.net dumps terabytes of music on our server and what are we doing? We are connecting them. Making phone calls. That mean that even after incredible and impossible amount of work to make this happen, we were easily cutable out of the deal. We didn’t put any real value in providing the service.

One more problem that didn’t really become very clear from that project alone, but you can definitely mark it out: its not always about creating the best and newest. Sometimes the technology is not ready. We wanted to use 3G back in 2005, but there was barely any implementation. We thought of WiMax, which is still not out for consumer products even today! And what’s more subtle: sometimes just the market is not ready. You can introduce a brilliant product, but if its not the right time for the right price, you will lose because people will not be able to understand how good the product is. Its also not about efficiency but about money. Why would Apple provide flat fee for all their music, if they are milking you $.99 per single song! Of course this will be the model until people are ready to stop paying for it.

The Moral:
- Don’t write huge business plans, 2 pages is more than enough for investor. Actually don’t write business plan at all. Thinking is easy but it probably has 2% significance, the rest is DOING IT. Also, things change as you go along, so wasting 2 months of brainstorming, for an idea that will change later is pointless.
- Make sure you pick up a REALISTIC idea. Don’t fly in the sky, because you will fall sooner or later.
- Don’t talk too much before you do anything. People can mock you for a long time how instead of being a millionaire that took over Apple you are still a college student, writing some anthropology homeworks or some crap..

PS. Alek wrote about his KillPod experience on his Bulgarian blog.

[UPDATE]
Here is a link to our bplan…if anyone is interested.
Financials.

I constantly come up with random ideas. Most of them are web related, but some are simply practical things in life. I think that I will start sharing them. For most I haven’t taken any steps on implementation and for the ones i did - I haven’t done much (whether because I didn’t like it, didn’t have time or something else). But maybe you can do it. Or maybe you can find the missing piece of the puzzle and then we can do it together. This new category is dedicated to such ideas.