I don't like startups. No, too harsh. It should be "I don't like most startups," or "I don't like a lot of startups," or "I don't like startups that are unoriginal and use technology, but are not advancing technology or applying it in new and interesting ways." but those seem to be a lot less attention grabbing. I pulled up my favorite startup editorial website this morning and found, to my great surprise, startups that don't do anything interesting. Photo-sharing apps, mobile social networks, utility-social combinations, and everything else involving combinations of those words. Hugely talented, intelligent, educated people working eighty hours a week to build a variation on a mobile social network, when both the functionality (network with people on the go) and technology (mobile phone, OS, app) have already been invented. We are working off of platform technologies, and for the most part, the functionality of these startups has been accomplished by the Giants of Tech.
It seems to me like Silicon Valley is full of copycats. Potential entrepreneurs see billion-dollar exits and think "I could have made that!" They then proceed to make it, even though it's already been done. Not only is the idea unoriginal (many of the best companies don't have original ideas,) but the execution has already been done too. With a large share of the market, it's highly unlikely that a new product with no new technology, with a slight spin on the theme, can capture any significant portion of the market. The premises of these companies are as false as the mortgage-backed securities of '07. The tiny marginal benefits of these startups don't qualify as "better" in my opinion. But there is hope.
The good startups are out there, pushing the edge of technology. People living out of garages building internet-connected robots, companies building SaaS that cuts marketing and IT costs of companies everywhere, companies that are figuring out how to make computers learn- building intelligent software that understands the past and predicts the future, these are the Tech Giants of tomorrow. Good startups have vision: they don't want to continue the status quo: they seem a problem, and they try to fix it, or they see a technology, and they understand how it can make life better. For me, the rule of thumb for a good startup is: Tomorrow should be better than today.
