On hitting out on your own

I wrote this post some time back, but got busy with our first public release of Zeta.

Recently I kept receiving references to a blog post about Top 10 idea choices, as picked by first time entrepreneurs. The post was honest and humble, but it stirred several people quite to the core, after all, their idea is about to be called as one of the most over-used idea. The comments to the blog post was about ten times the size of the post itself. Having chosen one of the most common idea, I am stirred. But before proceeding I would like to tell a story,

That was the time when we were growing out of DOS and BASIC systems, into the fabulous world of Graphics and Multi-media. And for most of our teeming minds at school, the choice of their summer project was a natural one, to do a paint-brush application.

When one of my buddy, a self educated programmer (actually he is more like scientific adventurer than a programmer) chose to do paint-brush application, I thought, another mind wasted on a me-too project. Soon, he called me to his study and showed me his creation. The paint-brush tool. It had more or less the same features that any regular pain-brush application had, but wait, there was something different in the look and feel ! My buddy had chosen to do the whole thing using SVGA graphics as opposed to doing it with standard VGA mode libraries shipped with the Turbo-C compiler. I should say that he literally created his own GUI library to do his application.

Now, he did not stop at that. We where talking about FAT16 file system (which was kind of related to a project I was doing) when I found a gleam in his eyes. Once again I landed in his study. This time he showed me how to manipulate large image files and sequence them together to create some sort of animation. Apparently he got over the 640K limitation in DOS using EMM386 driver and a custom made file allocator similar to FAT16's techniques (remember the gleam !). That was good, well, better than a pain-brush application.

Time went on, and got another invitation to take a glimpse into what he was doing, this time though, his demonstration was more interactive. That is, he called me closer, gave me a mike and told me to say 'aaah', and I religiously told 'aaah', and ta-da there comes 'aaah' on the screen ! Then showed me a video, a chasing cheetah. You guessed it, the video was running in his so called paint-brush program using some sort of temporal and spatial compression between image frames, rendered in his SVGA window, and using his memory allocator to get over the 640K limitation. Unfortunately, before he could solve "Goldbach conjecture", "Riemann hypothesis" and a host of other pressing problems using his paint-brush application, we all graduated. While most of us completed our last exams without a job on hand, he had one with a top software company, which previously requested him to do an intern at their campus, apparently seeing his "paint-brush" application winning prizes in symposiums conducted by top technology institutes.

So, here is my take on me-too projects. There can be countless possible application for technology products, but in terms of building technology, the number of segments are limited by economics of mind and matter. Innovation can happen within those segments and it can take decades to change the landscape. Again, please don't mistake these segments with markets.

Bottom line ? Here it is. If you think your idea is unique and central to a disruptive technology, get ready for a dis-appointment. Ideas have to evolve, and it evolves better across multiple minds. So, let your ideas out and follow them, hopefully you will get some company and reap the benefits.