2 ms·

It's true Loopt has been something of a failure in the market. That doesn't mean Sam Altman won't become the world-changing entrepreneur PG sees in him. It's q

by staunch 15y ago

It's true Loopt has been something of a failure in the market. That doesn't mean Sam Altman won't become the world-changing entrepreneur PG sees in him. It's quite possible he's working on the "wrong" project. Many people have had this experience: Traf-O-Data (Bill Gates), Atari games (Steve Jobs), Tribe.net (Mark Pincus), and the list goes on endlessly. If you had seen Bill Gates working on Traf-O-Data you might have said "that guy is going places" even though Traf-O-Data was ultimately not an important part of where he was going.

Hisoka 15y ago
Didn't Tribes.net get acquired from Cisco for like a lot of money?
- staunch 15y ago
  Cisco bought some remnant "technology" for a pittance. It failed about as completely as possible.
  - jasonmcalacanis 15y ago
    It was a failure, but I remember having dinner with Mark around that time and it made him more and more motivated to have a win. He took the fire from that failure and the knowledge of social networks and went all in on social games. i was actually with him the night he was thinking of hooking up with the poker guys and i was like "who is going to play poker for fake chips... that's so dumb!" ... on top of that I didn't invest in Zynga and he invested in Mahalo! :-)
    - Hisoka 15y ago
      "In 1995, Pincus launched his first startup, Freeloader, Inc., a web-based push technology service that was acquired seven months later by Individual, Inc. for $38 million" - Wikipedia. If that wasn't a win, I don't know what is...
mtgentry 15y ago
Love this "wrong project" concept. Have any blog posts or articles about this? Most of us can see when other entrepreneurs are working on a project that doesn't reflect their core strengths. It's much more difficult to identify when we're the ones going down the wrong path.
- staunch 15y ago
  I didn't consciously realize it, but I suppose this is a lot of what PG talks about in "Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas" http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html
  - glimcat 15y ago
    Because smart people act on their ideas.
glimcat 15y ago
Steve Jobs was moderately disruptive at Atari, even if a lot of it was "I should get Woz to do this." Some of Steve's pet projects at Apple were miserable bombs. It's less a quest to find the right place than it is the fact that it's impossible to do more than guess at the reception that a product will have. You can boost the probabilities, but it's still a random process.

by staunch 15y ago

Hisoka 15y ago

Didn't Tribes.net get acquired from Cisco for like a lot of money?

staunch 15y ago
Cisco bought some remnant "technology" for a pittance. It failed about as completely as possible.
- jasonmcalacanis 15y ago
  It was a failure, but I remember having dinner with Mark around that time and it made him more and more motivated to have a win. He took the fire from that failure and the knowledge of social networks and went all in on social games. i was actually with him the night he was thinking of hooking up with the poker guys and i was like "who is going to play poker for fake chips... that's so dumb!" ... on top of that I didn't invest in Zynga and he invested in Mahalo! :-)
  - Hisoka 15y ago
    "In 1995, Pincus launched his first startup, Freeloader, Inc., a web-based push technology service that was acquired seven months later by Individual, Inc. for $38 million" - Wikipedia. If that wasn't a win, I don't know what is...

mtgentry 15y ago

Love this "wrong project" concept. Have any blog posts or articles about this? Most of us can see when other entrepreneurs are working on a project that doesn't reflect their core strengths. It's much more difficult to identify when we're the ones going down the wrong path.

staunch 15y ago
I didn't consciously realize it, but I suppose this is a lot of what PG talks about in "Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas" http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html
- glimcat 15y ago
  Because smart people act on their ideas.

glimcat 15y ago

Steve Jobs was moderately disruptive at Atari, even if a lot of it was "I should get Woz to do this." Some of Steve's pet projects at Apple were miserable bombs. It's less a quest to find the right place than it is the fact that it's impossible to do more than guess at the reception that a product will have. You can boost the probabilities, but it's still a random process.