I feel so fortunate to be surrounded by so many brilliant people — even more so now than ever before. New York is in an interesting place, where there are tons of companies building products catering to the critical mass. The intersection of business minded teaming up with the technically savvy are more prevalent here, than in the Silicon Valley, and the problems they are solving aren’t ones created by the SV tech circle.
Which is a problem on its own.
A lot of successful companies solved a problem they created. Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, even Amazon are almost all products and / or services we could’ve lived without, but now inevitables. Frankly, I am torn, as innovation comes from the technically brilliant, offering things we never knew we wanted, needed and now cannot live without, but where is the limit? How do we get over the Silicon Valley myopia?
The other day, I met with a company working on a product that blew me away (I’ll eventually share who and what) and we discussed in depth consumer behaviors, needs and desires. We talked about flash mob buying and agreed how we don’t see them having sustainable business models. I’ve repeated how Groupon, Living Social, et al.’s legacies are going to be economic dissertations or a Wharton case study.
We moved on to the topic of location based services and how we believe if done right -whatever right may be- mass adoption is highly likely.
But the question still remains: is there a way to elegantly introduce the habit of checking in? Or even initiating action via QR codes?
I’m excited to see who will solve that problem and how.
Just some quick thoughts on a rainy April Tuesday afternoon.
Bonus: Morgan Stanley’s Mobile Internet Report (summary) — pretty neat deck.
