1. Fill in the blank:
“Wow, [new product/service] is great! Can you imagine how hard it was for people to ____________ before it?”
2. Thought experiment:
The servers have crashed, and [new product/service] has been unavailable for the past day. How do you feel?
a. suicidal
b. annoyed
c. indifferent
d. elated
There was an article today about the end of Blippy. The only thing surprising about this is how long it took for them to realize it was going nowhere. Their copycat, Swipely, months ago had already realized the concept of publicly sharing credit card transactions was going nowhere. Their CEO was quoted, “We don’t think people want to share their purchases. Period.”
But I hope Blippy stays in the minds of entrepreneurs for a long time. There are lots of lessons to be learned from them. Back when they first launched, I remarked to friends that Blippy would be an awesome case study- a rare and perfect example of an awful idea perfectly executed. In the ongoing debate among entrepreneurs of the value of ideas vs. execution, Blippy is solid evidence that regardless of how awesome the team is, a startup idea has to not be totally useless. What, you’re not surprised by that?
