http://127.0.0.1:8080/blog/taxonomy/term/1018/0 en http://127.0.0.1:8080/blog/node/725 <p>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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p>Let's have a look at some TechCrunch 50 startups.</p> <p><a href="http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/32396" rel="nofollow">Michael</a> blogs about <a href="http://www.otherinbox.com/" rel="nofollow">OtherInbox</a>, when looking at their site my first reaction was: Hasn't google been doing that for ages ?<br /> The ivo.rentoren+spamfromblog@gmail.com or ivo.rentoren+cocacola@gmail.com or ivo.rentoren+chanel@gmail.com type of addresses ?</p> <p>On which you can base filters etc ? So what's new ? From reading their website I fail to see where they are differentiating.</p> <p>2 articles down the road I learn from <a href="http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/09/open-trace-and-yammer-shine.html" rel="nofollow">Brady</a> that a company called <a href="http://www.yammer.com/" rel="nofollow">Yammer</a> 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 <a href="http://laconi.ca/trac/" rel="nofollow">Laconi.ca</a> 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 :)</p> <p>Yammer seems to be a spinoff of a much more interresting tool that I'm actually using <a href="http://www.geni.com/" rel="nofollow">Geni</a> now that was/is a groundbreaking and interresting tool to use for which I haven't found an equally strong alternative.</p> <p>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.</p> <p>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.. <a href="http://geekandpoke.typepad.com/geekandpoke/2008/09/googles-latest.html" rel="nofollow">Reinventing the wheel seems to be a popular hobby of a lot of people these days</a></p> http://127.0.0.1:8080/blog/node/725#comments opensource reinventing the wheel startups techcrunch twitter Wed, 10 Sep 2008 18:26:52 +0000 Kris Buytaert 725 at http://127.0.0.1:8080/blog