Buy a Jeep, Fund a Startup

One time I had the idea of integrating my social network into my desktop file system through a universal address, capability, and messaging network. My friends would update their address and status in one place, and the directory would keep track of how I could contact them at any minute, what their status was, and what capabilities their current communication gear had. So all my friends would appear as little icons, and by right-clicking on them I could chat, send a file, play a game, or email. This was super-Facebook/LinkeId/Live/MySpace using your computer's OS capabilities instead of a web browser. And it was years before all that other stuff. I had a working prototype, and a 40-page(!) business plan. But I ran out of funding.

Then I had the idea of customizing web pages from a site other than the site they were hosted in. So a blogger could drop one line of JavaScript on his blog and then go to our site where he could add all sorts of things to his blog without having to know html. Stuff like voting, ranking, cross-blog chat, best-of-the-web articles, etc. It was a one-stop blogging toolkit. I had working code and was able to stay live for a couple of months, and had grown to 500 users before I had to choose between working full-time on it or going back to consulting. Out of money again.

There were a couple others, but the point is to show that I actually can spot and work on trends ahead of time -- and I have the technical chops to make stuff happen. No whining or complaining intended. Each one of these were great ways to learn things: things that you could read in a book but wouldn't really sink in until you do them yourself.

Most startups that could succeed fail because the founders don't devote their whole efforts to them. That certainly accords with what I see out in the world. Most startups fail because they don't make something people want, and the reason most don't is that they don't try hard enough. - Paul Graham

So now I'm looking at Facebook and Twitter and the rest, and I'm asking myself: what are people using these things for? What parts of social messaging are underserved?

And the answer is: quoting. Quoting, where you take a paragraph or two from a larger work and send it to your friends, is something everybody has done ever since email. Heck, long before that editors would take a line or two from a magazine article and make the font larger and stick it in a box. It was a quote -- a short piece of a longer work intended to draw the user into engaging.

I've been quoting stuff for decades. Looking at Twitter, something like 10% of tweets (rough guess, it's probably higher) involve people quoting other people -- only they are restricted to 140 characters and there's no easy way to have a conversation around them. Even Facebook friends are quoting news articles as a way to start a conversation -- but that conversation is usually lost in the noise that is FB.

What if you had a one-stop-shopping for quotes? While you're reading the web (or your Kindle), you find something provocative that you would like to share. So you "capture" the quote, tag it, and pick which social networks you would like to share it on. When people reply, their response goes to a threaded comment stream where everybody can come by and offer feedback to your quote. Your quotes stay in one spot forever, and you're keeping a library of stuff you found interesting -- and what your friends thought of it.

That's the plan, and I'm about 10 weeks in on development on the basic product, which is late-alpha/early-beta. We're starting to get real users and looking for our pivot -- the place where we realize gee, quotes won't work here, but a job search could use the same machine learning code and be leaps ahead of what else is out there. Or gee, quotes from the web aren't working because organic search is killing the market, but video quotes could be awesome.

But like Marty says at the beginning, the kicker is being able to stay around long enough to make it happen, and that means funding. So I've got a great deal for you guys out there who love Jeeps: buy my Jeep and you can help fund my startup. You get a terrific Jeep for a good price and the great feeling that you could help change the world. I get a few months of running money, and it's good for everybody. Heck, maybe there's a way to structure the deal so it's partly a tax write-off: I don't know. It's definitely going to be a great feeling enjoying the Jeep and also knowing that you've given somebody else a chance.

Business is all about friends helping each other out, each getting something and each giving something. I really love my Jeep. Aside from health and family, I can't imagine something that has more sentimental value to me. There are only so many of them left in the world -- this model had a very limited run. But this is cool for everybody. It is a great chance for me to share the Jeep with somebody else who can enjoy it, and at the same time gain some more runway for my startup.

If you're not interested but know somebody who might be, please pass this article along to them. Also there's a purposeful typo in the email address. You should be able to figure it out. Thanks!