It’s funny, the story really doesn’t address the question with a well defined answer but it doesn’t really matter. The beauty of the story is the amount of hustle by the Korean-Americans & internationally minded Korean nationals trying to reconquer the old-school Chaebol powered Korea.
If it means sleeping on a futon next to your desk for a year to win then so be it. I’d do it in a heartbeat.
It occurs to me at the beginning of 2012 that the most obvious business decisions in 2011 are the decisions that needed the most scrutiny and thoughtful analysis. Coming up with a disruptive web product or a business idea can’t be obvious nor can it be simple; they should be both brutally ridiculed and as Fred Wilson notes, mocked and misunderstood.
My lesson from 2011 is the obvious products and ideas that are praised for their simplicity are stripped of their disruptive quality that only the unknown can offer. And when building a disruptive product or idea, the unknown is far more limitless than what is known.
Going forward, this framework sounds like an excellent litmus test to make the most disruptive and challenging ideas come to life. There is something that should be uncomfortable about building the obvious to everyone idea because it truly indicates that the upside is nil.
Total gems. All of them.
In my opinion, with Jobs now gone, Bezos is the best CEO in the world. How he’s built the company into an e-commerce juggernaut over the last 15 years is utterly amazing — especially when you consider he was in his early 30s and an ex-quant from D.E. Shaw when he moved out to Seattle and started the company.
Couldn’t agree more.
Some elegant answers but this part nails it:
1. People’s lives are improved by fun apps and games, in the same way they are by movies, music, food, and books. We don’t usually ask why people waste time in those fields. Kirsten Dunst is never asked why she makes movies instead of working on gene therapy. Nor do we suggest that we stop making movies because we already have plenty of those.
2. And, what starts out as trivial often ends up being the most impactful of all, asYishan Wong pointed out in one of the comments. Examples:
- “Trade Pez dispensers online” -> a marketplace larger than many national economies (eBay)
- “Tell your friends what you are doing” -> a global communications network (Twitter)
- “Hook up at Harvard” -> a billion person network, disrupting governments (Facebook)
- “Send money to your friends” -> disruptive payment network (Paypal)
And what it comes down to, from the mouth of Fred Wilson no less:
“We have not been able to quantify it. We haven’t even tried. Although I am sure someone could do it and they might be very successful with it.
To us, the ideal founding team is one supremely talented product oriented founder and one, two, or three strong developers, and nothing else. The supremely talented product oriented founder should have been obsessed about a product area/idea for a long period of time and just has to build something to satisfy their passion/curiosity. That’s about it. Joshua Schachter/Delicious, Jack Dorsey/Twitter, Dennis Crowley/Foursquare are the iconic examples of this kind of person in our portfolio.”
Fantastic talk.
![Amazing way to rally the startup team in the event of a rapture. Obviously every startup team should have a rapture plan, right?
(via Secret Internal Buzzfeed Rapture Memo Leaked [PIC])](http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lliesk1V5Y1qztss5o1_500.jpg)
Amazing way to rally the startup team in the event of a rapture. Obviously every startup team should have a rapture plan, right?
From TechCrunch.
Lately, TechCrunch seems to read like Wired from the early 2000s.
