How many of these bad ideas are simply nerds looking at facebook saying "you're going down"? I doubt twitter was, and I doubt that whatever eventually topples

How many of these bad ideas are simply nerds looking at facebook saying "you're going down"? I doubt twitter was, and I doubt that whatever eventually topples facebook will be. My point is that this sort of philosophy helps nobody. People who are already successful already know this stuff. At least to me, this sort of list feels like it's being aimed at people who haven't "made it" yet and are still trying to figure "it" out. When I was in High School a friend of mine named Steve Fisher said something that I doubt he remembers, but has stuck with me. He was trying to teach me how to skateboard, something that was totally not the type of activity that a nerdy, awkward, 15 year old Ryan thought he could do. So we're sitting at the skatepark and there are lots of other people around doing what I thought were difficult tricks. I was sitting on a bench just watching and trying to think of a valid reason not to ride my skateboard around because I was 100% positive that I was going to fall flat on my face and that all of the other people were going to laugh at me. My friend comes over and says "What the hell are you doing?" "Oh, I was, err..just, uhh, tightening these bolts." "Bullshit, did you figure out how to ollie it yet?" "No, dude, I'm just going to practice at home in my room more until I can figure it out, I don't want to get in everybody's way." He told me that I had to just go ride the thing in circles until it felt natural, and that if he saw me sitting on the bench again, I wasn't invited to the skatepark anymore. I rode my skateboard around all afternoon, probably fell on my face a few times, but didn't get laughed at even once. A stupid story, probably. How does this apply to startups? Maybe it's just the communities I hang around in, but many coders are really really not like the skaters in my story. They really will laugh at the kid riding his skateboard in circles (writing twitter clones and craigslist mashups) like an idiot. How many designers have posted tirades to their blog talking about how everybody is stupid, and how they're sick of all these stuuupid people asking them to do designs? To me, lists like this are exactly like telling a kid that he's riding his skateboard in circles and to stop wasting his time doing that. If you can't show up and start doing backflips, then don't waste your time even coming. People have already figured out how to ride in circles. Anybody whose time would be wasted writing yet another dating website doesn't need a list like this to tell them that. They know.