I`m absolutely astonished when I see some of the ideas / concepts people are trying to build a busness around , call it a cool startup and expect VC capital.
But I`m even more suprised that a big part of the world and even the VC world is falling for these ideas, or thinks that the general public will pay for such a product or service.
Let's have a look at some TechCrunch 50 startups.
Michael blogs about OtherInbox, when looking at their site my first reaction was: Hasn't google been doing that for ages ?
The ivo.rentoren+spamfromblog@gmail.com or ivo.rentoren+cocacola@gmail.com or ivo.rentoren+chanel@gmail.com type of addresses ?
On which you can base filters etc ? So what's new ? From reading their website I fail to see where they are differentiating.
2 articles down the road I learn from Brady that a company called Yammer which provides a hosted version of Twitter is also launching at TechCrunch... Now the idea of an enterprise Twitter version isn't stupid, but with a tool like Laconi.ca already available in open source it is something everybody with a functional brain can implement in his own company. Question arises obviously if Twitter itselve shouldn't host this :)
Yammer seems to be a spinoff of a much more interresting tool that I'm actually using Geni now that was/is a groundbreaking and interresting tool to use for which I haven't found an equally strong alternative.
Having had a couple of ideas before where I usually killed the potential project after thinking about the business model I wonder if I just should have pursued the projects even though I myselve would never become a customer at such a company.
We belgian people tend to be to critical for ourselves it seems, we think a project can't succeed to fast, so maybe we should start more stupid ideas and see how the rest of the world react. Afterall.. Reinventing the wheel seems to be a popular hobby of a lot of people these days
