Great start-up tip from an unlikely source

Recently I decided to read What Would Google Do by Jeff Jarvis just as a fun read, I figured it would be similar to CNBC’s original Inside the Mind of Google where I’d learn a few fun facts, hear about the culture and how great the food is, etc. What I didn’t expect was to find some decent insight on Internet Start-ups, specifically the mindset you should be in to create a successful one.

Jarvis recalls a story Mark Zuckerberg had told while speaking at Divas. While at Harvard, Zuckerberg had an Art course that he didn’t attend once and didn’t have time to study for. With the final exam a week away, Zuckerberg had the idea to create a webpage that displayed all the art pieces that would be covered on the final, and below each piece he had an empty textbox. Zuckerberg sent this out to his classmates saying that he had just put up a study guide. The class came along and began filling in the textboxes with the essential information, editing each other’s posts, and discussing the material, all to make the guide perfect.

Jarvis goes on to say how this framework is the nature of the Internet, and is the structure behind all successful companies. For example: Google helps us organize search, maps, and news. Amazon organizes products and reviews, Facebook organizes our friends and relationships, and Wikipedia organizes knowledge.

While these are macro examples of utilizing said structure, new start-ups can do the same thing on a much more micro scale; all you must do is locate inefficiencies, find communities that already exist, then try and help them organize.

This is by no means a groundbreaking strategy – as in concept, it seems fairly obvious, however after being made conscious of it, I found that coming up with new start-up ideas, or even tweaking features on existing ones came that much easier.

Hi, My Name is Nick and I develop software.

Ah welcome, nothing exciting here yet, just getting my blog up and running, figured I would avoid posting any Lorem Ipsum right from the get go.