Andrew Hyde lives in Boulder, Colorado and travels frequently.

And the Problem Is (a Startup Pitch)

Dave McClure hung out at Startup Weekend SF last weekend.  After listening to a few pitches, Dave grabbed the mic and reminded the audience that you don’t pitch a solution, you pitch the problem.  Sometimes the perfect pitch is a) sell the problem b) buzzword and c) a small idea of a solution.

I’ve taken this to heart and put up a ‘problems’ page at Startup Weekend where you can log problems you have and encourage people to build solutions.

So…

a) Problem: the web lacks quality or positive user interaction in a mainstream usecase. Most bloggers don’t get a single comment, even on quality posts while quite a few commenters are greated by flame wars and annonomus attacks.  Many startups fail to get off the ground because they can’t attract a first group of users.

Ex:

  • Rants and Raves is 95% Flames or Negitive Rants
  • There is little reward for positive interaction
  • Commenting systems like Discus or Intense Debate are looking to build reputation, but I have not come accross groups looking to gain these points
  • Few sites have really build communities that don’t get annihilated by a culture they didn’t set out to see
  • Most comments on YouTube (one of the largest commented sites out there) are flamewars and hatemail, with no reward for positive engadgement
  • Most bloggers stop blogging because they feel nobody is listening.

b) Git, rails, gradient, open source, viral user lead campaign.

c) Build a community that encourages positive and quality engagement and bounces around the net.

I think it would do a world of good for startups, bloggers, and the people that use and read them.

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Andrew Hyde

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Comments

4 responses to “And the Problem Is (a Startup Pitch)”

  1. Ryan Wanger Avatar
    Ryan Wanger

    This is definitely a huge problem centered around the fact that the web is anonymous. Imagine how different it would be if it weren't. You can build reputation in the real world, why shouldn't you be able to online?

  2. heizusan Avatar
    heizusan

    I had written a much longer comment, but lost it when I logged in. Whoops. 🙂

    The gist of it:

    No matter what the community or tool is, there will always be trolls. You can even find them in real life – it's not just an internet phenomenon. Any software that attempts to over-regulate a community in order to prevent such behavior is just going to achieve backlash from its community, in the long run.

    There's a very fine line between “regulation for the community's good” and “gestapo rule”. Very fine. I see the goal, and think it's admirable. But trolls, flame-wars, and spam are a result of human nature, rather than any inherent break in the world of blogging. The only thing I could see to improve it would be to remove anonymity completely – but even that won't eliminate the problems.

  3. Colin Winter Avatar
    Colin Winter

    I agree, selling the problem is something many often forget. I'm continuing to find ways to explain the problem for my startup, LinkLarry- your post actually led me to add the problem to our homepage.

    Coincidentally, LinkLarry is also doing something related to what you called for in your example: we encourage quality link suggestions from website visitors by centralizing them in our widget, and we track feedback to calculate a type of reputation.

  4. Colin Winter Avatar
    Colin Winter

    I agree, selling the problem is something many often forget. I'm continuing to find ways to explain the problem for my startup, LinkLarry- your post actually led me to add the problem to our homepage: http://www.linklarry.com

    Coincidentally, LinkLarry is also doing something related to what you called for in your example: we encourage quality link suggestions from website visitors by centralizing them in our widget, and we track feedback to calculate a type of reputation.

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