The next big thing is sitting right in front of you

When I started grad school in 2001, every student was given an online “classcard”. Classcards were kind of a hybrid of modern-day LinkedIn and Facebook profiles. They were mostly static: no feed or status updates or any other advanced features that we are all accustomed to now. But they were wildly popular. Students spent countless hours browsing them. At one point there was a rumor that people could see who was viewing their classcard and everyone freaked out that their snooping would be revealed. When you met other students you no longer needed to ask for their contact info or background since it was easy to search for their classcard. It completely changed student interactions.

During that time, I was spending most of my personal time trying to develop new startup ideas. I ended up co-founding an online marketing company during school and then after school co-founding other companies (SiteAdvisor, Hunch, Founder Collective). Meanwhile, Facebook – the best internet business of the decade – was being hatched. Its first version looked a lot like classcards, and perhaps it wasn’t a coincidence that it was founded just down the street at the same university. The “toy” I was staring at every day was actually a much better business than all the “serious” ideas I spent so much time working on.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1379469119 Vignesh Rajagopalan

Good one Chris. Many people actually realize only after they missed it. This holds good for most.

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When you have the joke business that nobody takes seriously it hurts.
And when nobody takes you seriously either that hurts too.

But
that joke business may be filling a need that nobody understands yet. A
need’s a need. And if they take you as a joke they certainly aren’t
going to be willing to listen to you about anything. And so you become
the fat kid out, the benchwarmer. That man is truely wright!

http://twitter.com/lascenestr LAScenester

When you have the joke business that nobody takes seriously it hurts. And when nobody takes you seriously either that hurts too.

But that joke business may be filling a need that nobody understands yet. A need’s a need. And if they take you as a joke they certainly aren’t going to be willing to listen to you about anything. And so you become the fat kid out, the benchwarmer.

But as you bench it, you remember this. Once your joke of a business starts making stupid money, well, nobody can argue with that. A need’s a need.

Just look at what Joe Francis did. Not to say that girls gone wild was ethical. But he sure turned a joke into some money..

http://twitter.com/lascenestr LAScenester

plz delete..

http://twitter.com/Paula_Henning Paula Henning

So true. I’m founder of a startup pre-launch that serves an underserved market. I’m not taken very seriously because while educated, I’m neither tech nor ivy league. People understand my startup and get that ‘aha’, but every one of them has said it’s bland, small. Well, I continue. Stats no one’s looking at show clear validity. There’s nothing like it and it keeps surprising me. It’s simply not sexy and could be why everyone isn’t seeing it. I don’t mind. It may not even attract serious funding (I haven’t hit the bricks to pitch it yet) but in the end, the 20/20 vision will be interesting. If I fail, it will still be awesome learning, but I know the market is there.

http://filmicgames.com John Hable

Have to definitely agree with one of your points here. I think Ivy League is the greatest “false signal” in the tech world. When looking for technical people, those who graduated from the “top tier” schools seem to do about as well as everyone else. If you think about it, if you got a few B’s your freshman year in high school, there’s no way you’re getting into Harvard. So does it make sense to judge people by how motivated they were when they were 14?

Another one is judging people by the projects they were on. Every good project has some terrible people and every terrible project that actually ships must have at least one good person on it So when I hear “hey, here’s a Stanford guy who worked for google” I don’t really care. If you want to kick ass, you need to have Google hiring your rejects, not they other way around.

http://twitter.com/un_i_ diego

I don’t use Facebook. However, I heard something that they started long after Friendster, MySpace, and LiveJournal were popular. Why not compete against Facebook? Even if you become the #2 friend site, it would still be fun and profitable. People will be like, “Man you competing against Facebook? Dang, you must be one crazy m*th*f*ck*r!”

Maybe compete on the API level. If you can come up with something really fun and powerful for artists/illustrators to create web apps, they might develop on your platform despite it being new and with low member count. (Kinda like how HyperCard still has fans despite it being almost dead and forgotten.) Then people will have lots of stuff to do on your website/platform. I doubt Facebook or Google+ would copy you since they got gobs of money and come up with cheesy C syntax languages. They would never come up with something as simple as CoffeeScript or the Sinatra DSL.
http://twitter.com/fettemama fettemama

implying facebook was a good business

http://twitter.com/un_i_ diego

You reminded me of AOL, Yahoo, and Excite. They were very social in the 90s: personal web sites, chat rooms, IMs, searchable personal directory. They couldn’t get people to click on ads while talking with friends. So they focused on content (e.g. AOL/Time Warner). This would explain why FB’s revenue are a fraction of Google, despite having .5+ billion users. It seemed like web companies go back and forth:
content (push tech.),
social (blogs, IM),
content (news, syndication, RSS),
social (notifications, games).

http://www.adela.vn/dich-vu/thiet-ke-logo.html thiet ke logo

thanks for this great article

http://unystartups.com Julian Baldwin

Hey Chris,

Nice post. I think the message here is clear. Still, how should entrepreneurs go about identifying that what is right in front of them is the next big thing? At the time you describe, you probably were in front of a lot of other “toys” as well and ones that never came into fruition. So it begs the question – in the bundle of toys, how do you spot the one toy that is evolving towards something greater.

Julian

http://steveplunkett.com @steveplunkett

hire a professional.. or use google sparks to find them follow them, etc..

http://yakshaving.net ash bhoopathy

I had a similar experience recently when I was on a drive to Portland with a friend and we were listening to the stereo — It inspired me to write this post about Turntable.FM: http://yakshaving.net/how-to-translate-real-world-behaviors-into-awesome-online-experiences/
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http://www.toddandelin.com Todd_Andelin

Social networks are ridiculously invasive. That’s why they are so fun!
Everything takes some time.
Everything has a reaction rate to it. Basic chemistry/physics shows that. Time is a factor. Sometimes if you try to speed things up, too much heat is created and it has a negative effect on the system.

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Finally a mix with some sexy electro & house beats. I love this kind of music and this mix is just awesome
Anonymous

How about some nominations: toys you like to use, but that are overlooked by those searching for serious business ops.
http://twitter.com/statspotting StatSpotting.com

One can argue in exactly the opposite direction as well (focus on one idea). This is why, messages are often so confusing. Take this one example:

http://statspotting.com/2011/05/network-effect-avoid-or-embrace/
http://www.meratvforum.org T.v Serials

Little known fact about
Zuckerberg and Facebook; the idea and the name came from his high
school, Phillips Exeter Academy … I would know since I was in the same
dorm as Zuckerberg around that time (it was a boarding school).Exeter
was certainly neither the first nor the only place to have a paper
facebook. Harvard, MIT, and most summer camps all had the same thing at
that time and years prior.
http://www.meratvforum.org T.v Serials

Little known fact about
Zuckerberg and Facebook; the idea and the name came from his high
school, Phillips Exeter Academy … I would know since I was in the same
dorm as Zuckerberg around that time (it was a boarding school).Exeter
was certainly neither the first nor the only place to have a paper
facebook. Harvard, MIT, and most summer camps all had the same thing at
that time and years prior.
http://www.meratvforum.org T.v Serials

Little known fact about
Zuckerberg and Facebook; the idea and the name came from his high
school, Phillips Exeter Academy … I would know since I was in the same
dorm as Zuckerberg around that time (it was a boarding school).Exeter
was certainly neither the first nor the only place to have a paper
facebook. Harvard, MIT, and most summer camps all had the same thing at
that time and years prior.
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very interesting! thanks for the post!
http://twitter.com/lunk18 Jeff Lunsford

When I read this I had a cold beer and swimming pool sitting right in front of me!
http://GeekAtSea.com/?utm_source=disqus&utm_medium=display_name&utm_campaign=disqus_display Kirill Zubovsky

Interesting observation about the “toy” companies, Chris. For the last couple of months, while trying to get into TechStars, I spent hours on end trying to figure out what business would be worth their attention. At the end of the day, I failed to find any that would be good for them and fun for me, but I realized that if I spent time playing with “toys”, till one gained users, I would’ve probably had much better chances.
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Chris Dixon