Monday, March 13, 2006

Idiots really can make money

What I found striking about this article on tech entrepreneurs under 30 is that there are really only a few good ideas in there. Skype is brilliant. God bless any technology that undermines the business model of an intractably monopolistic industry (e.g., the telcos). Pharmix is also a cool idea assuming it works. Given that they've already developed a new statin, I'd say they've proved it can.

But things like Meebo, Yelp, and Tagged are just retarded. They're remnants of the dot-com hysteria and, I would say, are ultimately doomed. Meebo is doomed because it can be trivially copied by Microsoft, AOL, and Yahoo. Yelp is doomed because it's been done a thousand times before (epinions, citysearch, etc.). And Tagged is doomed because teens are fickle creatures and will quickly figure out the site is retarded. Teens really hate going to sites that are "teens only." Also, they need only take a look at the founders and will run screaming.

And yet these people have gotten millions of dollars in VC. Mindboggling. I am now determined to come up with something far more interesting and disruptive than "IM on the web." Just you wait! Stupid world...

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