
What a stupid idea - nate
http://dcurt.is/what-a-stupid-idea
======
jdietrich
Success is not validation of an idea and we should be ashamed to think so.

Cigarettes are one of the most successful consumer products on earth. Inhaling
a lungful of carcinogenic smoke several hundred times a day is undoubtedly a
stupid idea. Tobacco has made a small number of people incomprehensibly rich,
to the great detriment of humanity.

Personally, I think nearly all of these 'social' startups are bad news. Not as
bad news as a lung cancer epidemic, but bad news nonetheless. I think they
feed a culture of passivity and attention deficit. I think they fragment human
interaction into the smallest possible dopamine-inducing units. I think
they're essentially Skinner boxes in disguise - apps that dress up an
intermittent schedule of reward as meaningful activity.

The startup culture talks the talk about "changing the world", but in truth
most of us couldn't care less so long as we get our next funding round. For
every Watsi, we have a hundred bullshit companies with bullshit products,
providing yet another means of idle distraction for indolent westerners. We
can hardly distinguish between what is worthwhile and what is popular or
profitable. It has hardly occurred to Curtis or anyone in these comments that
an idea could be both successful _and_ stupid.

Is Pinterest really an innovative sharing tool, or is it merely a
collaborative exercise in commodity fetishism? Is Vine really a radical new
way to communicate, or is it merely the nadir of audiovisual culture,
fragmenting the world into six-second shards of nothingness? Do we even care?

~~~
wtvanhest
I'm going to say it first, I'm sure others will be thinking it. This is the
WORST type of comment on HN.

Tobacco was invented in 5000 BC according to wikipedia. At that point in time
it had basically none of the bad side effects you mention due to shorter life
spans. It probably had numerous positive side effects.

Now you don't like facebook??? Well, honestly, I do. I like it to keep in
touch with people and it had real value to me when I moved to a city where I
didn't know a single person as it made me feel less alone. I'm sure many
others have benefited.

Judging a startup, company, etc. because you don't see the value shows you are
overly judgmental and immature.

The product market has been very good at delivering value over the last 7,000+
years. Let it do its job and try to get off your high horse.

The companies mentioned are highly successful. If you think you can do it,
feel free to do it, donate the cash you make to Watsi and sit in your recliner
while enjoying how good of a person you are. Otherwise, make a comment that
adds value like the OP did.

Full disclaimer: I couldn't care less about any of the companies mentioned,
I'm just sick of reading comments like this.

[edit] added an n't to could

~~~
setrofim_
> _Tobacco was invented in 5000 BC according to wikipedia. At that point in
> time it had basically none of the bad side effects you mention due to
> shorter life spans. It probably had numerous positive side effects._

Another reason that tobacco historically had "basically none of the bad side
effects" is that people didn't smoke it nearly in the quantities they do
today. Then a few startups (well, they weren't called that back then) came
along and it "has made a small number of people incomprehensibly rich, to the
great detriment of humanity".

> _Now you don't like facebook??? Well, honestly, I do. I like it to keep in
> touch with people and it had real value to me when I moved to a city where I
> didn't know a single person as it made me feel less alone. I'm sure many
> others have benefited._

Strawman. Nowhere in his post jdietrich mentions Facebook.

> _The companies mentioned are highly successful._

No one argues that these companies aren't successful. The argument is that the
fact that they are highly successful does not mean that they are a good for
society as a whole.

> _I could care less about any of the companies mentioned_

You mean, you _couldn't_ care less, right? :P (Sorry, that particular
Americanism is a pet peeve of mine.)

~~~
justinhj
> You mean, you couldn't care less, right? :P (Sorry, that particular
> Americanism is a pet peeve of mine.)

"I could care less" is an American idiom, and this is a US site. Ad hominem.

~~~
nollidge
There's plenty of Americans that are annoyed by it, too.

Also please go learn what "ad hominem" actually means. It does not simply mean
"insult".

~~~
justinhj
I know what it means. Why add it to the end of an argument out of the blue if
it's not intended that way? Still it was late at night and I should have added
my own smiley. ;)

------
rexreed
A few points, some already cited here:

* Survivor bias (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_bias>) is yielding a self-selection in the positive results. I'm sure there are plenty of stupid ideas that went nowhere. Probably as much as "Great" ideas that went nowhere. So, I think saying that his opinion that something was stupid is a counter-indicator of its degree of success doesn't have much merit.

* Second, an idea or early prototype has little correlation to its inevitable success or failure. As is often said, execution is everything. The idea is necessary, but not sufficient to guarantee a market success, as defined differently by different markets.

* Third, while he decries his stance as calling something "stupid" as an arrogant position, this article itself comes across as arrogant -- in effect he's positioning himself near the beginning of these companies' inception and being in the position of being asked his opinion in a taste-maker fashion. I suspect in reality, he was one of many people that were exposed to this idea and his opinion was mostly irrelevant in their efforts to pursue the idea. It can be interpreted as very Forrest Gump to position ones self at the crux of so many eventual market successes when in reality that is not the case. I'd like to understand the context of these meetings. I've certainly been at the early-stages of many ideas, but no one asked for, or cared about, my opinions. In which case, saying that they were stupid ideas was an opinion offered only to myself. And I probably did indeed think they were stupid at the time. Was I arrogant? No. But then I don't claim that anyone cared about my opinion.

* Finally, I call your attention to Pinterest's actual success path (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinterest> and <http://www.famousbloggers.net/history-pinterest.html>). They iterated and "failed" for 2 years before becoming an "overnight success". I dare say that perhaps at the time of the meeting, Pinterest's idea and execution were probably stupid, and it took time and relentless iteration to make it a success. In fact, "Silbermann said he personally wrote to the site's first 5,000 users offering his personal phone number and even meeting with some of its users." Which goes to show just how many people's opinions he solicited in the process of building to its current level of success.

~~~
nostromo
It's a bit uncharitable to call "I thought Pinterest and Vine were dumb"
arrogance.

~~~
hobs
Yeah, I still think pintrest and vine are dumb, its just they have a lot of
users.

Just because you think something is dumb doesn't mean it isnt a viable
business model.

People sell virtual rubies to people building ruby houses all day every day,
and that is dumb.

~~~
ekianjo
I had the same comment below. Does popularity make up for it being stupid in
the first place? So, because someone can get rich, does it mean his idea was
right?

Well, maybe in a business sense, the idea was not wrong if you could gather
enough fools to back you up, but that does not make it less of a stupid idea.

~~~
nemothekid
How does one define a stupid or smart idea? Do I have to chip away at world
hunger for my idea to be smart? Or do I have make a billion dollars for my
idea to smart? The production of the iPhone has contributed to the suicide of
a lot of people. Is the iPhone a stupid idea? On what scale of success does an
idea have to achieve? If Groupon only made a select few rich at the expense of
others, was a smart idea on the founders part, or not? Does the founder really
care, or does he regret it?

Given all these factors, its clear you can't have an objectively stupid or
smart idea. I think the only right questions you can ask are "How are you
going to execute on it?" and decide whether or not the founder is stupid or
not. I'm not sure there are many people on the planet who can, given the idea
for Instagram, sell it for a billion dollars.

At the end of the day all you really have is your confidence in an idea, and
confidence in the founder's ability to execute on it. Knowing whether or not
an idea is stupid really requires a sort of omnipotence on your part. Was it
the right time? Instagram would be a stupid idea in 1995. Did the founder
execute well enough? Was the market too small? There are too many variables
that go into deciding whether an idea is "stupid" or not.

------
ChuckMcM
In 1978 I thought Bill Gates trying to sell BASIC interpreters for what was
90% of the cost of the computer to run them was a pretty stupid idea :-)

That said, one of my VC friends defines an Entrepreneur as someone who can
take a stupid idea and make it successful. Sort of an homage to the whole idea
that they can see something you cannot.

These days when I'm confronted by this sort of proposal I ask the person
making the proposal to describe the world where their idea has succeeded. What
is different about that world from today, and what is the same. What do people
do in that world that they do differently now or can't do at all. And perhaps
more importantly what do they do today which they no longer have to do.

If you can paint that picture in enough detail you can figure out who is going
to be working against this person and who is going to be cheering this person
on, you might get a sense of how much work is between here and there and the
kinds of people needed to do that work. And if you know this person well you
might be able to guess whether or not they are up for that, or perhaps more
importantly, committed enough.

~~~
CapitalistCartr
I thought bottled water was idiotic "Who's gonna pay that for water ? ! ? Gone
in six months." And phone sex lines. "1.99$ first minute, $.99 each additional
minute? Please!" In six months their rates doubled. Business models can be
hard to judge.

~~~
derefr
Both of those are very well-studied business models, though:

1\. sell to the lonely and impulsive who are willing to trade money for
attention (Also see: therapists, people who run cons on the elderly,
everything else involving real interaction with a woman in the sex industry);
additionally, take advantage of the sunk-cost bias to keep people after they
would have otherwise "passed their limit" (Also see: casinos)

2\. run advertising campaigns that separate the world into
"good/beautiful/healthy/upper-class people" and "bad/ugly/disgusting/lower-
class people" by which kind of products they use, then position yourself as
the most convenient/eminently-consumable product in the "good people" product
class. (Also see: deodorant, diamonds, hybrid cars)

~~~
joering2
can you give any example for deodorant? I mean I know diamonds are bullshit
and hybrid gas cost equally much to produce as to use oil, but deodorant? If
you don't use it, you stink, right?

~~~
olivier1664
If you take shower once a day (and after sport), you do not stink so much
compared to a smoker.

~~~
snogglethorpe
Er, well throwing in "compared to a smoker" is a bit of a cheat... but body
odor depends a lot on the person. I've known some people that could go ages
without showering and still seem (and smell, even in close proximity) as fresh
as a daisy, but others that _always_ seemed to have an obvious, er, presence,
daily shower or no.

------
tikhonj
Amusingly, I've had the opposite problem: I see some things, think they are
the best ideas ever and then watch them fizzle away.

Perhaps the largest example of this would be Wave. When I first heard about
Google Wave, I was incredibly impressed and immediately signed up for the
beta. I really did think it would replace email and IM--it was an elegant
solution that did both, at the same time. I then played around with it, rather
liked it and even got some friends to use it. I was still trying to use it
well after almost everyone gave up on it.

I was rather disappointed in its ignominious decline and eventual death.

I also really liked webOS. All your apps would just be web apps! It would be
great. It wasn't.

I really loved the Zune HD. It had one of the best interfaces I had ever seen
and was incredibly capable for its price. I still have mine, and I still like
it, mostly. I've had people on the subway ask me about it simply because they
didn't know what it was :P.

I thought Gnome 3 was awesome and a gigantic step forward from Gnome 2. You
could customize your entire environment, all in JavaScript. And yet almost
nobody I know uses it. Unity may have gotten panned by internet critics, but
at least plenty of people I know use it. Gnome 3? Maybe one person.

A disproportionate number of the things that I get _really_ excited about--
rather than just interested in--seem to fizzle out. Maybe it's just selection
bias, of course. I imagine the contrast between my expectations and reality
make things stand out more. But it does seem that the more enthusiastic I am
about something the more likely it is to flop.

Right now, the technology that I'm really excited about in a very similar way
is Rust. I hope it breaks this rather annoying trend! It's basically the only
new programming language that I genuinely like and don't view as a waste of
time and space. I honestly think it will take off, but that's what I thought
about all the other examples too.

I guess this doesn't have much to do with the actual article. It's just a
lament about my own misplaced enthusiasm. But it does feel better to have
written about it :P.

~~~
coldtea
Man, you have a veritable talent for liking half-baked ho-hum stuff!

I mean:

1) Google Wave -- a confused mess of a mail/im/web/social offering that didn't
exactly knew what it was and solved non problems.

2) Gnome 3 -- Gnome 2 had languished for years. Why would 3 change that,
especially since most of the changes planned were incremental ho-hum stuff
combined with arbitrary rewrites of core technologies sure to take them years
to complete?

3) Zune. Nuff said.

~~~
dangrossman
What a mean-spirited and off-base comment. "Nuff said"? The Zune guys were 6
years ahead of the rest of the business -- their UI & UX design work became
the basis for Windows Phone, Windows 8/RT and Xbox today. Zune failed because
it was an expensive MP3 player launched when MP3 players as a category were
being consumed by more capable general purpose devices, not because it was
half-baked.

~~~
coldtea
> _"Nuff said"? The Zune guys were 6 years ahead of the rest of the business
> -- their UI & UX design work became the basis for Windows Phone, Windows
> 8/RT and Xbox today._

Notice how you say that "The Zune guys were 6 years ahead of the rest of the
business" and "it was an expensive MP3 player launched when MP3 players as a
category were being consumed by more capable general purpose devices" (so,
behind the rest of the business). It can't be both.

The whole product/ease of use/market/ecosystem etc (which is what matters) was
subpar. And the market had much better products already.

Also, I'm not sure why you tout the Zune UI/UX work either. The only thing it
had going for it was the visual look, not the feel or the interaction. So it
was mostly a pretty graphic design, not a great UX. Same for Metro/Windows 8.
It's not like that got any good reviews. Mostly a mismatch of traditional
Windows and an out of place, and quite restricting and ill-thought touch UI.
Oh, and it's not like Windows Phone got anywhere either. Nice looks, as a
concept, but they forgot that design is how it works -- not how it looks.

~~~
dangrossman
/strong disagree

Zune & Zune HD had extremely favorable reviews, both from critics and
customers. It was a solid product with a solid ecosystem. Engadget's review
recommended it primarily on the Zune Pass and Zune Marketplace components.
CNET called it "the best portable music and video experiences money can buy",
while highlighting the subscription music integration. PC Mag's review called
it "the best PMP you can buy outside the iTunes universe". This sentiment was
industry-wide. There was nothing half-baked about it; that's not why it failed
in the marketplace.

~~~
rmrfrmrf
The only thing I remember about Zune's reviews were everyone talking about how
much the brown one looked like dog shit. Oh and how Zune is some kind of anti-
Semitic slur. Oh, and how hilariously bad the tagline "Welcome to the [...ice
cream...?] social" was. Hah, and I almost forgot that sharing content with
other Zune owners was called 'squirting'. Classic.

It also didn't really help Microsoft that the only enthusiastic adopters of
Zune were Apple haters that didn't have iPods but desperately wanted some
piece of technology to develop an emotional attachment to.

I distinctly remember my friend's boyfriend (now ex-) making snarky comments
about my iPod, then picking up a Zune and making remarks like "it's already
more popular than the iPod," and other quips that were laughable even THEN.

Funny, I also _knew_ I hadn't read a single good review from a reputable
source, and I read Engadget a lot back then. They said the Zune sucked:

<http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/15/zune-review/>

"We've got things we like, and things we don't; rough edges to go right along
with the well thought-out niceties. We came away underwhelmed and not at all
surprised -- and why? The expectations were for Microsoft to deliver a
"Microsoft" player and system; maybe not too shabby looking, but not very
usable, and definitely bug-ridden."

Also this hilarious play-by-play where Ryan couldn't even get the damned
software to install:

[http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/13/installing-the-zune-
sucke...](http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/13/installing-the-zune-sucked/)

Oh, and that glowing PCMag review you've generated from your nether-regions?

<http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2054204,00.asp>

"When we tested the Zune market place the day of the launch, the store refused
to let us log in, but the company seems to have worked out the bugs now."

"So to buy one song you need to pony up at least $5. This is irritating."

"The Zune software works pretty well, but the content offerings are nowhere
near as robust as iTunes."

"We also found the battery life also a bit disappointing."

"If Microsoft can boost its battery life, broaden the video support, and make
it easier to download podcasts, the Zune could provide some healthy
competition to the iPod. Until then, the iPod will continue to reign supreme."

Zune failed because it failed to even be a _good_ ripoff the iPod.

~~~
dangrossman
Some civility, please?

> Oh, and that glowing PCMag review you've generated from your nether-regions?

The quotes were quotes, you can search them to see where they came from.

<http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2351538,00.asp>

------
michael_nielsen
The moral of this isn't that stupid ideas are good. It's that unfamiliar
insights can be hard to understand and recognize, even for smart people. The
right question to ask when confronted with something new isn't "What's wrong
with this?" It's "What's the most interesting new insight(s) here?" A lot of
smart people like to ask the first question at the expense of the second, and
that's a mistake.

------
redshirtrob
There are so many things that seemed like a stupid idea to me:

\- Seinfeld: Who is this guy, really?

\- Frasier: Come on, a spinoff? (So, I didn't realize spinoffs were a thing)

\- Twitter: Haiku and vanity plates for the Internet.

\- Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream: Salty Caramel, you've got to be kidding me. I
don't want salty ice cream.

\- Arrested Development: Wait, Jason Bateman. He was so bland on The Hogan
Family.

\- There's Something About Mary: Their promo seemed ripped off the Zelda
commercials, or that's how I felt.

\- Blogging (Well, Live Journal): Do I really care what other people are
doing?

\- Scrubs: I don't know, I just didn't like the idea.

\- Freaks and Geeks: How dare they try to explain what it was like to be
adolescent me?

\- McGriddles: Sausage, syrup and pancakes?

\- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Slow animals doing karate makes no sense.

The only common thread I can find in these things is me. I have no idea why I
had negative, visceral reactions to these things. It's gotten to the point
where I try to pay special attention when an idea causes me to have this
reaction.

~~~
phaus
Salted caramel has always been and will always be awesome.

Another deceptively awesome dessert is chocolate with pepper in it. Sounds
weird, but its actually one of the original ways that cocoa was enjoyed.

What kills me about ice cream is the immense popularity of all of the stupid
"Ben and Jerry's" style knock-offs that use a 10:1 candy:ice cream ratio. When
I want to eat ice cream, it doesn't mean that I really want a candy bar.

~~~
redshirtrob
It sure is. Jeni's Ice Cream also does some crazy stuff with pepper (Queen
City Cayenne). I know she didn't invent the concept, but she does a heckuva
job in the execution.

Totally agree on the "Ben and Jerry's" comment. I want _really_ good ice cream
first and foremost. If you can add a touch of something delightful to enhance
the flavor, perfect. I feel the same way about cheese cake.

------
greghinch
Ha, I still think Vine and Pinterest are stupid ideas. But, Pinterest at least
has done a good job at making lazy, vapid, narcissism easy, and there's
certainly demand for that. Not sure how you monetize it (is Pinterest?), but
they have a lot of users.

I'm not sure Vine is yet a "success". I don't see a lot of activity there yet.
My (completely biased and limited) litmus test for social apps is to see how
many of my non-techie friends get on board and how quickly. With Facebook,
Instagram, and even Pinterest, that was pretty quick. Vine seems to still be
lagging. It's too much work for the payoff for most people, is my gut feeling.

~~~
jeffgreco
_lazy, vapid, narcissism_

Care to elaborate? My interpretation of Pinterest is really "visual social
bookmarking."

~~~
greghinch
Sure.

The main use of Pinterest is to show your friends and everyone else what good
taste you have. "Look at this collection of bridal dresses I like!" "Check out
all these vacation spots I want to go to!"

If you just wanted to collect photos of these things to give yourself ideas,
you wouldn't need to share it with everyone. So you have an easy way to show
everyone how cool all the stuff you like is, and by extension you are, with
very little effort on your own part to actually create or realize (i.e.
actually do work) those things into being. Sure there are elements of this
across all social networks, but Pinterest has really distilled it down to the
lowest common denominator point and click.

More of an indictment of society than of Pinterest itself I suppose. Pinterest
or something like it was bound to show up sooner or later.

~~~
chc
I can't help but feel this is just an uncharitable way to describe sharing
ideas in general. My fiancee and I have gotten a lot of good use out of other
people's good taste on Pinterest — we've found outfits to steal for the
wedding, decorating ideas and lots of tasty recipes. How is this any more
vulgar than sharing ideas in any other context?

------
timr
I first met the AirBnB guys in 2007, at their _"unofficial Startup School
after party"_. It was my first ever San Francisco startup party.

At the time, they were in the depths of their existential struggle. The
"party" consisted of a few guys, a couple of liters of soda, and a few half-
empty bottles of booze.

I remember talking to Joe and Brian, and hearing their pitch, and thinking:
_"oh, so it's like couchsurfing, but for pay....good luck with that, guys"_.

Oops.

~~~
joering2
The only reason why people are willing to pay AirBnB is because of their
audience (classic chicken&egg dilemma). But that audience was initially
captured/harvested mostly through illegal or semi-legal ways (at least the
ways that a decent human being wouldn't do that).

Lookup my previous posts I rant enough about AirBnB owners and their criminal
past.

------
cs702
This blog post reminds me of the Bessemer Venture Partners "Anti-Portfolio" --
a list of companies they passed on that subsequently became massively
successful, including Apple, Google, and Intel.

They explain on their website: _"Our reasons for passing on these investments
varied. In some cases, we were making a conscious act of generosity to
another, younger venture firm, down on their luck, who we felt could really
use a billion dollars in gains. In other cases, our partners had already run
out of spaces on the year's Schedule D and feared that another entry would
require them to attach a separate sheet."_

The whole web page is filled with similar, painfully funny explanations:
<http://www.bvp.com/portfolio/antiportfolio>

------
sramsay
I more often experience the facepalm of watching an uncomplicated idea turn
into a global sensation.

It's 2005 (hardly the distant technological past), and someone gets the idea
for a site where you can store and watch videos. This is not some kind of
radical technological innovation. This is not something beyond the ambit of
current capabilities. This is not some brazen insight into the future. This is
a site. Where you store videos. And watch them.

This, of course, is YouTube -- a site that was eventually sold to Google for
$1.6 _billion_ dollars.

 _facepalm_

~~~
pfitzsimmons
Well, to be sure the magic ingredient in Youtube's success was not the idea of
uploading and watching videos. Many people were working on video sharing at
that time (myself included). Youtube's secret was that the founders were
already successful entrepreneurs who were well connected to VC's. Thus they
had access to the capital that allowed them to lose ungodly amounts of money
in the quest for growth.

~~~
wpietri
Well, they also had an impressively cavalier attitude to copyright. Which was
a major advantage.

But they also had excellent design sense. YouTube made uploading, viewing, and
sharing content very, very easy. I did some consulting for a semi-competitor,
so I paid a lot of attention to the market then. YouTube did a great job,
which helped them get users, which surely didn't hurt with VCs.

Also, Crunchbase says they took $3.5m from Sequoia to start, and then $8m a
few months later, and my recollection was that later tranche was really just
to spend on bandwidth and servers. Google bought them a few months later. So
they didn't lose what I'd call ungodly amounts of VC money; that's less than
1% of what Facebook received before IPOing.

~~~
pfitzsimmons
Yes, I should have mentioned the copyright issue. The Napster lawsuits were
still fresh in people's memory, and I'm sure a lot of entrepreneurs and and
VC's were frightened of starting a video sharing site that was so openly being
used to share copyrighted clips.

Youtube was acquired very quickly (within a year of public launch), so total
losses were of course much lower than Facebook. But due to the bandwidth
costs, YouTube had to burn a half-million+ a month very quickly after launch.
Not many entrepreneurs are connected enough to get that kind of cash so
quickly. Facebook could grow the site while spending only in the low five
digits, without needing to quickly raise a large venture round.

------
dave_sullivan
Of course, the flipside is maybe more dangerous. "Hey, this sounds like a
really stupid idea... then again, I thought pinterest sounded stupid too, and
look how that turned out. Ok dubious business opportunity, here's my
time/money!"

I'm being facetious of course, but the best deals are often the ones you don't
make. The real question is how much of an impact an anomalous success story
should have on the way you evaluate business opportunities.

~~~
RyJones
Got animal house made.

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077975/trivia?item=tr0781514>

------
sgdesign
Those _were_ stupid ideas. Nobody said stupid ideas couldn't be successful. In
fact, I suspect an idea's stupidity has very little impact on its success one
way or another.

Ideas I'd consider _not_ stupid include self-driving cars, Google Glass, and
Bitcoin. Whether or not those are _good_ ideas is yet another discussion…

~~~
ibudiallo
Smart ideas are very hard to implement. I always go for the stupid ideas
because they also fail faster

------
imechura
I am glad that these two guys truly believed in their ideas and where not
discouraged by your lack buy-in to their vision.

I am often reminded of the 2001 me. When I was new developer building java web
applications and full of vigor with no real responsibilities or expenses.

I was dead set on this idea to build a site where people could post links,
pictures, text or whatever and it would be voted and categorically managed by
the user community.

I shopped the idea and prototype around to people in my limited network and it
was unanimous that no one would ever want to invest time into this concept.
Discouraged, I scrapped the idea and accepted a position as the first non-
partner employee at a consulting start-up that quickly imploded.

Years later reddit moves to the forefront of the internet with striking
resemblance to my original plan.

My fault because I did not stick to my guns. The idea that my application
could have been half as popular as reddit is unlikely but it taught me a
lesson, sometimes you've got to trust your gut, even if the people you trust
cannot see your vision.

------
stmchn
If you had told me 5-6 years ago that Twitter would be one of the top social
media platforms and have 500 million registered users, I would have been
completely flabbergasted.

~~~
kleiba
Exactly.

I always picture myself in the following situation: A guy comes into my office
in 2005, and says: "Uhm, excuse me, we're looking for investors in our new
great product. It's for sending messages!" - "You mean, like email?" - "Yes.
Except, you only have 140 characters." - "Err?" - "Oh, and you can't determine
who will receive the message." - "Excuse me?" - "Yes, that's right. Would you
like to invest?"

I would have laughed that guy out of my office back then...

...and now he'd be laughing at me.

Thus I'm very glad, no-one ever comes to my office in real life.

The End.

------
codeulike
Survivor bias? How many ideas has he thought were stupid, and then they went
nowhere?

------
hcarvalhoalves
In all fairness, Pinterest still looks like a stupid idea. Like Twitter. Like
Instagram.

Stupid is popular, though. You don't need to build more than the most mundane
of the things to have a popular product.

------
markdown
A well-written humblebrag.

~~~
artursapek
Ain't nobody humblebrag like Dustin Curtis humblebrags.

~~~
rmrfrmrf
\- 309 points and 108 comments \- comments about the "vapid" and "useless"
nature of Pinterest and Vine \- absolutely no discussion about how there's no
takeaway from the post aside from "I'm so important that I blew off two of
these successful guys."

I was really expecting some kind of goal that he'd set for himself or way to
improve his pessimistic attitude. Oh well.

------
brianwillis
I felt the same way about Wikipedia at first. An encyclopedia that _anyone_
can edit? What could possibly go wrong?

I thought Twitter was a solution looking for a problem too. Interestingly,
Twitter's usefulness (at least for me) stems from it's popularity rather than
its content. Pretty much everyone I care about listening to is there, but most
of the tweets that I'm interested in link me to some place that isn't Twitter.

------
danenania
I think a big issue with social network ideas is just that there's so much
chance involved.

Maybe 1 in 100 that have a solid idea and strong execution are going to
achieve the critical mass they need for success. It really just comes down to
achieving trendiness, which though it can be engineered to some extent and
depends to some extent on quality and uniqueness, is still fraught with chance
and ultimately depends whether a product happens to appeal to the particular
whims of enough people with above average influence simultaneously enough to
create momentum and buzz. A few missing links in that chain can sink the ship,
while catching the right eye in the right way can ensure global adoption.

So having a negative attitude toward them all is safe in the sense that you'll
almost always be right, and you'll be constantly reinforced in your beliefs.
But since startup investment is a game of long shots, like most +EV gambling
games, an investor shouldn't be focused on the absolute probability of success
but on the chance of success * the potential value.

------
S201
The key to success is not in the idea itself, but rather the execution of the
idea. The idea is only a multiplier to the level of success.

------
rdl
I feel this way about almost all consumer web services.

Nothing is better than irc, usenet, MUDs, and email/lists, with the exception
of making things mobile, detachable/multi device, more secure, and I guess
supporting non Latin alphabets. There are still a few products missing from
the perfect Internet (a great usenet/forum replacement, a way to run
individual agents in the background, a way to great all communications as
filter ably as email, and a great payment system), but I'm fine without
another catalog sharing site, etc.

I accept that consumer services could become popular, but I have no way to
predict it, and once they have traction, they are expensive investments. I am
kind of at a loss as to how one could be a high value add investor in the seed
consumer space without just focusing on founders nearly exclusively.

------
brucehart
I had a similar experience when I was 14 years old. At the time I was running
a very popular trivia web site that had been featured on Yahoo and in a few
magazines. A guy e-mailed me and said he liked my site. He asked if he could
pay me a small fee to run a banner ad for his new business. I told him I
appreciated the offer, but I didn't think it was allowed under the Geocities
terms of service.

I was really into discovering new web sites at the time and had not heard of
this company. I looked at the guy's site to see what it was about. I remember
thinking it was ugly design and a stupid idea. Not much longer after that, the
company began to take off. The guy that had e-mailed me was Pierre Omidyar and
the site was EBay. I've tried to look at new businesses with an open mind
since then.

------
seeingfurther
We built an app that 'listens' to social media and closely correlates with the
S&P 500 <http://elite.kredstreet.com/all> (zoom in to see the correlation) You
have no idea how many people have ignored us along the way and yet our signal
will be used by high frequency traders to trade the stock market. Talking to
investors often reminds me of this gem...
<http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7203877/fundraising>

EDIT: someone just emailed me and said this was stupid. LOL

------
bluedino
Reminds me of 'How my brain kept me from co-founding Youtube'
(<http://prog21.dadgum.com/39.html>)

The idea that people were going to push around 500k images (Flickr) or even
more insane, videos was crazy when it first started happening. Remember how
long it took to download QuickTime or RealPlayer videos, and how bad the
quality was? Now people are streaming HD music videos on our PHONES just to
listen to it while they drive to work. They don't even watch the video.

------
larrykubin
Ideas I thought were stupid when I first heard them:

1) eBay - people are going to buy from random people they don't know? and bid
against other people they don't know? Auctions will be rigged and I won't get
my stuff. Stupid.

2) Netflix - they are going to send DVD's in the mail and I am going to mail
them back? And then I have to wait for it to get to me? Aren't people going to
steal the DVD's and damage them? Won't it cost too much for them to make a
profit? Why don't I just go to Blockbuster? Stupid.

------
mikeleeorg
I wonder how honest Dustin was to Ben and Dom. It's entirely possible that his
negative feelings about each product helped drive it further. Sometimes
criticism is more important than praise. I would rather someone call my
product stupid - and point out why - than to just say, "Yea, it's okay I
guess."

To Ben and Dom's credit, I have a feeling both saw Dustin's apathy, read it
correctly as apathy, and used that to either strengthen their products, or
their story, or both.

------
ArikBe
In 2008/2009 I was browsing Brian Gossett's website
<http://since78.briangossett.com/> . Back then he had a digital mood board,
which was simply a giant collection of JPG files on a white background with
appropriate spacing. I saw these same mood boards on other websites - usually
belong to designers. Some things hit me while browsing that website.

Wouldn't it be awesome if there was a service that let you...

    
    
      - easily bookmark content from the web onto your personal "mood board", 
        probably using a booklet.
      - organize that content into collections
      - share it with a social network built around the original idea.
    

I shit you not, even my original design (which was mainly white on white)
looked like Pinterest. I quit on it because I couldn't program at all.

I've had multiple experiences since where I thought of something and then
something similar either already exists or it shows up soon after. The
Pinterest example was the most extreme though, because I really had a copy of
Pinterest (minus the identity ofc) in my mind and on paper. What this taught
me is that I have a brain that is capable of thinking up stuff that is
apparently wanted [1] and as such it has boosted my confidence. At the end of
the day, the person who wins is the person who executes. Execution is key.

[1] Allow me to be very careful here. I may suffer from cognitive bias causing
me to discount the amount of ideas that I've had that are probably absolutely
shit, but in my own defence I'm the first person to shoot down my ideas. Also,
knowing what the market wants requires you to test your assumptions. I'm well
aware of this.

~~~
msutherl
Even if you could have coded Pinterest, that's just the beginning.

------
saddino
Every killer idea is stupid until success betrays its obviousness. Most
inspired ideas are probably stupid. And finally, many ideas are just plain
stupid. The trick is to ignore your gut reaction and ask yourself, "If this
amazingly stupid idea is executed perfectly, is there a real market for this?"
Women "pinning" their desires? Check. People sharing incredibly easy-to-
compose video? Check.

Don't confuse the dancer with the dance.

------
jere
>I want to make an app for browsing catalogs. It's like a fashion catalog, but
you can organize and share outfits

Is this really a fair description of Pinterest today though? Maybe as
originally described it _is_ a dumb idea.

Vine, on the other hand, is really awesome and Curtis saw it right then, but
was more worried about how it would find popularity rather than whether it was
a "good" idea.

~~~
pseut
That seems to be pretty much how my wife uses pinterest. Outfits and
gardening.

------
cybernoodles
"I'm not sure if there's any lesson here other than a warning against
arrogance, but I have two stories to share."

Of course there is. You mentioned it yourself!:

"The future is extremely hard to see through the lens of the present, and it's
very easy to unconsciously dismiss the first versions of it as frivolous or
useless. Or as stupid ideas."

------
zobzu
What I generally dislike with these articles is that someone quickly draw the
conclusion "never criticize, always believe in the idea, even if it seems
stupid at first sight"

And of course, I find that terribly wrong. The author did not hint that at all
(which I appreciate), however, but I still believe many will think this.

The point is that you must carefully examine each idea before jumping to a
judgement. Do not dismiss the bad points. Just think it through. It wont work
every time, because you're not perfect, and because you don't have all
elements/cards in your hands (unless you can see the future and read people's
mind, of course). All you can do is a best guess. Obviously, the author is
either very unlucky, either bad at doing the best possible guess.

------
d_runs_far
After about two decades in 'new media' I've seen and been part of some rather
stupid ideas too. Off the top of my head: \- business card cd-roms: I was
working on rights for Canada at one point \- Flash vs. Director: I was a
Director guy and thought Flash was stupid; but it sure had it's day vs.
Director \- Digital Signage: I had worked out a couple prototypes using CRT
monitors and Mac LC pizza boxes installed in integrated cases with a modem for
both control and new content. All controlled with a slick little Director
application \- A chat program that used proximity and interest matching to
bring people together. Prototype was pretty cool for 1998 :-)

There are probably some others, but I love stupid ideas, they make things
interesting.

------
krapp
I thought Twitter was stupid when it came out. "Why would any one choose to
limit themselves to 140 characters? Also the name is dumb and childish.
'tweet'? Who wants to 'tweet'? I'm a grown man, I don't want to 'tweet...'
etc."

I still don't know why Instagram is a thing.

~~~
jonathanjaeger
I could never take a good picture. I used Instagram for the first time and it
was fast, so easy, and I was actually proud of the interesting pictures I
could take (not necessarily to share widely, but at least for myself).
Instagram got someone like me, who never carried a camera in his life except
for when I was kid holding a camera for my parents on vacation, to actually
use their phone as a camera.

~~~
krapp
Ok, that makes sense.

------
knowtheory
But really. Did these entrepreneurs really understand what they were building
at the time?

Is it the case that these people articulated the best case for their products
and businesses when Dustin saw introduced to these projects in their infancy?

Developing a product, and the right pitch is an evolutionary process, and it
may just very well be the case that Dustin encountered them too early.

He may very well be at fault for thinking these ideas were stupid at the time,
but then again he might very well not be.

Being introduced to a work in progress is always a negotiation. Asking the
right questions is part of it, and on the flip side, having an interlocutor
who has some sense of how to answer your questions.

Also, some ideas are just stupid.

------
bulatb
> The future is extremely hard to see through the lens of the present

And the past is hard to see without the lens of hindsight warping things. A
decision might look silly in the face of information from the future, but that
doesn't mean it was the wrong decision at the time. It wasn't. You made the
rational play and you happened to lose. Your information was just incomplete.
And unlike the founders who ended up winning, you had no incentive to assume
the gaps would be filled in with magic traction and a bag of money.

------
joshuaheard
Several years ago, I was reading a blog by a well known tech entrepreneur. He
was describing his new project, a way for people to post their everyday life
actions in 140 characters or less, so they could tell their friends they were
going to the store, or what they had for lunch. I thought, what a stupid idea,
only the vainest self-absorbed people would share such minute details of their
life. His project was called Twitter.

------
duopixel
I think this happens because we're poor judges of character. Yes, there's many
bozos out there, but if you ask enough questions you will be able to
differentiate them.

I'm still working on this, but I've seen that if you put aside your
preconceptions and try to understand the product that is being showed to you,
using it, asking a lot of questions and really giving yourself some time for
big picture conversation, you are able to tell them apart.

------
ekianjo
However. Its not because its popular that its not stupid.

------
molsongolden
At first I expected this to be a post about svbtle and all of the resistance
and pushback Dustin received when he first showed us his new "blog" design and
tried to explain his vision. Things seem to be picking up on that front and
the content is fairly good.

Can we get an iPad or web app with an easier way to explore and stumble
through "magazine articles" without knowing who or what we are looking for?

------
outworlder
It may not be that the ideas are 'stupid' per-se. It's just that we tend to
underestimate how complex some tasks are for ordinary people.

I mean, I could take thousands of pictures and automate the process of
applying photoshop filters and uploading them as they arrive - and I bet most
of you could do it too, perhaps in some even cooler way. That'd be just black
magic for most people.

------
iwritecode
I still do this - it's something I'm actively trying to fix. I'm worse still
when products never materialize into a full-fledged success, still seem
mvp/alpha but provide enough interest and income to spin up a proper shop here
and there.

I think the root of it, for me at least, is just a bit of envy staring down at
me from my shelf of half-completed and less interesting ideas.

------
Myrmornis
This is simply a vehicle for the author to show off about how he was consulted
by well-known startups before they were big. These articles by dcurtis are a
very ugly portrait of San Francisco tech culture. For example it beggars
belief that this one was not written as a parody: <http://dcurt.is/the-best>

------
ryguytilidie
As people have already said, this is a ridiculous case of survivor bias and to
be fair, they are kind of stupid ideas. One is basically bookmarks, but with a
nice UI and sharing, and the other is a kind of poorly made way to share short
video clips. I met a kid making a video sharing app that was miles better just
last week.

------
monkeyspaw
I'll confess something similar, but a bigger whiff on my part.

Wifi was becoming common when I entered college. Around that time, laptops
were underpowered, especially compared to desktops.

I thought wifi was a fad. After all, you generally had to plug your laptop in
after 2 hours. What was the big deal about a cable for network too?

------
mehrzad
Curtis was right about Pinterest though.

~~~
TezzellEnt
I guess I'm missing what you mean, could you elaborate? What I got was that "a
20-something guy" reached a target market that he was not a part of, and did
very well at it too.

------
richardg
I like the first line on the last paragraph - "The future is extremely hard to
see through the lens of the present."

What we do in the present can affect the future but we can not predict what
will actually happen. There's too much variables involved.

------
jperezsea
Arrogant? Yes, if you thought you could figure out that they would succeed or
not based on one conversation.

The point of this entry is really: as an entrepreneur, push forward
independent of what people who are not you target customer say/think.

------
nsxwolf
I've had this happen to me a few times. These days I don't even get the stupid
ideas in the first place anymore. So I guess I don't have to feel so bad about
missing the opportunities now. There aren't any!

------
joeblau
Dustin, let's meet at The Creamery. I gotta stupid idea to show you :)

------
gnuvince
Stupid idea doesn't mean it's not gonna make money. Great idea doesn't mean
it's gonna make money. It's damn near impossible to predict what the public is
gonna like.

------
tudorconstantin
I'd have dismissed the facebook idea if zuckerberg would've came to me in the
beginning. There were myspace, hi5, orkut and a few other already on the
market.

------
mikecane
In the early 1980s, CompuServe's marketeers thought the CB Simulator was dumb.
It brought in most of the money. Here we are in 2013 and there's Twitter.

------
Detrus
It's a mistake to relate the stupidity of an idea to its potential for
success. And yet even with success they can remain stupid and you can remain
right.

------
rickdale
This article highlights the few times he was wrong. But what about all the
lunches where he left thinking 'what a stupid idea' and was right.

------
artumi-richard
And lo! pg did spake! "Only the good ideas that look like bad ideas are left.
All the good ideas that look like good ideas have been done."

------
andrewhillman
"Everything is obvious once its successful. Big wins come when you can spot
something before its obvious to everyone else." -ev williams.

------
paul_f
There are no stupid ideas.

Except the really stupid ones, of course.

------
human_error
I think the key point isn't if an idea stupid or smart. It seems to me the key
point is more like how you execute the idea.

------
gesman
Well, between Pinterest and Vine demos - how many times you were actually
right about other, really stupid ideas? :)

------
segmondy
Ha! I've heard a lot of stupid ideas and none of them have made a dollar!

------
gersonaya
Very well argued indeed. I'm glad someone shares the same thoughts as me.

------
shloime
I just Kudos'd all your articles just because the button is so awesome :)

------
anigbrowl
I felt the same way about twitter. I also still think I was right :-)

------
artas_bartas
So what are the other two ideas?

------
dustingetz
if someone i respect says something stupid, its probably not.

this is why signaling is so important.

------
yoster
I know the feeling. For me it was in the stock market. I had a chance to
invest a substantial amount in gold about 13 years ago with someone who wanted
to dump his gold stocks at a discounted price. I scoffed at the idea and
thought it was stupid. Well, we all know how that turned out....

