Beyond social media

[Dilip]

Facebook was started by a student. People here are webmasters who are not short of ideas or funds. Were you able to think beyond social media and start the next big thing on the internet. If not, come close to it? Do yo have any projects that has the potential to do so?

 

[desbest]

Number 1 question asked by Venture Capitalist investors: What are you going to do when Google starts competing with you?

Number 1 feedback asked by Venture Capitalist investors: This idea isn't original. Someone's already done it. Try reading Techcrunch and Crunchbase.

Even more interesting, here's a good roundup of startups that got hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and they still failed.

 

[Ravenfreak]

Facebook was started by a student. People here are webmasters who are not short of ideas or funds. Were you able to think beyond social media and start the next big thing on the internet. If not, come close to it? Do yo have any projects that has the potential to do so?

I think it would be pretty dang impossible to do this nowadays. Now if you got a jump start in the 90's or even 00's then you would have had more of a chance. Most of these giant websites started during the early days of the internet. If you offered something unique you might get big, but big enough to take on the social media giants? I'm not so sure about that.

 

[Darth Cognus]

That's the thing about the next new thing, people generally don't know what it is until they've stumbled on it and it just manages to happen, and have had a vision that genuinely correlates with reality and not just what they want to get big. Ultra few people have the vision to target correctly and then make it big themselves. So someone like that is probably going to appear unexpectedly somewhere, and come up with something we probably couldn't spitball correctly if this thread was going for a year straight.

 

[joelr]

Facebook was started by a student

This is a tad misleading. This wasn't started by any student. This was started by a Harvard University undergrad and whose parents are highly-educated (psychiatrist and dentist), and he attended one of the most elite private high schools in America called Phillips Exeter. Once again, not a typical student in any way.

There's a lot of institutional and classist favoritism behind people like Zuckerberg and Bezos. These aren't typical American high school students who "rolled up their sleeves" and "worked out of their garage." These are from high educated and well off families.

My guess is if, if you look at the family profiles of the founders of XF and IPS like Matt Mecham or Kier Darby, they were probably born into above average families with stable, married, and highly educated / science-oriented parents.

At a broader level, I'm a big believer that how you comport yourself in the real world carries over into the success of your community management. If you're a stable, successful leader in the real world, there's a high chance your forum will be stable and successful.

 

[Dilip]

Being poor is not an advantage as many try to flaunt it. I agree that coming from an average background is challenging. But there are too many spoiled rich kids around that will tell you money is not everything

 

[Dilip]

What are you going to do when Google starts competing with you?

If Google can do this after starting from a garage, no need to worry about it, right?