Motivation for startups

Quite a few of my mates have been talking about trying to start something. I've offered my services.. but I'm fairly sure nothing will come of it.

I think a lot of people love the idea of doing their own thing, being their own boss, taking over the world. The reality is that it's a LOT of hard work and there's an 85% rate of failure.

Me? I'm working for my second startup. (I'm not the founder of either of them). I fully intend to start something, but just can't find any ideas to do.

They say that you should fix something that you find broken. Others would probably have the same problem and you start getting users.

The truth is, I don't I have any problems or irratations. I'm fairly resourceful and if I need to do something, I can usually find some app on the net.

I'm fed up talking to people who want to create another niche social network targeted at people who have turtles as pets (for example). The idea is stale.

The other train of thought which I'm starting to subscribe to, is that you should just build something and target an area with some coverage. The idea is that it will morph into something useful. Well.. I can only hope.. ;-)

Anyway.. what more motivation do you need to go do something?

Evolution of Apple

Saw this interesting picture of Apple's evolution of products.

Google and Facebook

Although I'm on the facebook platform, I'm starting to like it less and less.

I just read on forbes how Zuckerberg was in NY pimping his advertising platforms. I'm not entirely clear, but it doesn't look good for independent developers that create applications on facebook.

It sounds like a "Facebook Advertiser" is going to have their branded applications all over the place, while indie developers are left in the cold.

If a small application developer is under the illusion that he can win a fight with a big-brand widget, that’s a bad plan, says Gerd Leonhard, chief executive of Sonific, which recently launched a music widget on Facebook.

“Facebook is the place where you cut your teeth and see if you have value on lots of networks and platforms,” he says. “If you want to be number one you’ll be hurt by this development. Facebook is cool and everything, but don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

Yikes!

I've started to look at OpenSocial, the timebomb Google hopes will knock Facebook of their pedestal.

My initial impression wasn't that great. Mostly.. meh. It wasn't the whizz-bang, socket-to-me punch I have come to expect from MountainView. It may grow on me, but I'll reserve my excitement till it bears fruit.

Tim O'Reilly wrote a nice piece called 'It's the data, stupid'.

He has a great example:

Imagine what would have happened to Google maps if instead of supporting mashups, they had built a framework that allowed developers to create mapping applications across Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google as a way of competing with MapQuest. Boring! That's the equivalent of what they've announced here.

I have to agree with him that data mobility is key. It's great for developers that their applications can now run on platform-x and platform-y, but it doesn't look like they will have access to the same data. Not that great for users.

It's made me contemplate creating a microformat based social network, that goes against the trend of creating closely guarded silo's of data. Hmmm..