trendpreneur

Disclaimer: This post is personal opinion, the views expressed here are not those of Google, and not influenced by any relationships the poster may have with the Big G.

There have been arguments raging on and offline about paywalls, the commons, old media versus new media, and ‘information should be free’ for — well, it feels like forever now. One of the (many) components of new media under fire is the army of filthy idea-stealin’ bloggers, people who merrily subscribe to paid content and then go and paraphrase it on their free-to-view blogs (or in some cases, just copy it). Paul Carr makes an excellent point about the commoditisation of facts, the human need for information and thus the Internet hivemind’s tendency to trend towards free.

Information being free is good, for obvious reasons, unless you’re someone who wants to get paid to create it. There are plenty of arguments for well-crafted columns, investigative journalism, paid political pundits and so forth. But here’s a thought about the oft-maligned practice of reblogging, rephrasing, and retweeting.

Language is variable.

The more ways an idea or piece of information is expressed linguistically, the easier it is to find — it’ll match far more search queries, as a simple starting point. Although, in an echo of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, perhaps expressing an idea in multiple languages, or with different phrasings and words, could change the way people think about the idea. Even if this happens, the idea reaches far more people than it would have if it were confined to one site, in one language, by one author.

From Google’s point of view, if someone takes a New York Times article, paraphrases it, and links back to it, the data miners jump for joy. Beautiful, delicious data. We learn new things about the relationships between words and concepts — maybe one article said climate change but another global warming. The link-back gives us contextual data that can help too. (Linking to a climate change article with the text “This article on global warming”, for example).

Of course, paraphrasing and rewriting has been going on for years, a staple of the essay or lit review. But as with voice recognition, having the power to implement and use a feedback loop at world-scale is a mind-blowing thing. Google has the power to build an entire semantic web out of paraphrased blog posts, and that’s before we even look at contextual links in Wikipedia or Twitter link summaries. If that’s scary, just think of the magic that happens when you search for something and get a result that isn’t the exact terms you entered, but is the exact concept. With a bit of data, intelligence and an army of semantic web PhDs, it just could happen.

I found this post by Matt Mireles thought-provoking, although people appear to be disagreeing with a laundry-list of the flaws of Silicon Valley and the very idea that you need VC in the first place.

You don’t, of course. But you do need mentors, advisers, encouragement, and dreams.

Here’s the key:

One of the dangers that first time founders living outside of the Valley (like me) face is that our minds get poisoned and our ambitions shrunk by the parochial leaders. And it’s not even that all the locals are small-minded or small timers, but that the ones who really push you to think big––the Chris Dixons & the Fred Wilsons––are so far removed from and inaccessible to the little guys that by the time you get a meeting with them, your thinking and your pitch has already been influenced and shaped by the more numerous and accessible VCs that push you to think smaller and safer.

I can’t even begin to think of the iterations my pitch and concept has gone through that exactly follow this pattern. My initial thinking was big – huge. Vague, but huge. After over a year of work and pitch training, during which I settled on a specific v1 product and market, got advice and feedback from local experts, etc, I went to London.

My idea/pitch got good feedback for its specificity and level of well-thought-out-ness, but the questions were all about the bigger idea behind it. Why hadn’t I started with that? Why did I dive into a product that hadn’t been built yet, and enumerate its opportunity, not the way I was going to change the world? Because that’s the advice I’d been given, in Scotland.

And a while later, after more refinement, etc, I went to Silicon Valley. Wow. To even get near the big guys, you have to have something big. You have to be changing the world. I didn’t want to be one of those hugely inflationary “I’m doing a startup! Look at me! Isn’t running a startup with millions of other’s people’s dollars” venture-backed businesses, but there’s the rub; if you don’t think on that level, you just don’t get the attention — or advice — you came here for.

[Via Hacker News]

I loved watching this talk by Tom Scott from London’s recent Ignite 2 event. (The other talks are also online – cheers, Daniel).

On Tom’s website, he bemusedly answers the FAQ “Is this fictional?” — well, it’s utterly believable, and certainly threw today’s technology, from social media to flashmobs via 4chan, starkly into perspective for me. Excellent job, brilliantly delivered.

27 is my lucky number. Today I turn 28, and the last year has been the most exciting one yet. I have a slight feeling of having passed the top of the rollercoaster, but then I look ahead and realise how unrealistic that is.

In the last year: I ‘graduated’ from EPIS, launched FestBuzz, visited Silicon Valley twice and then moved here, learnt to pitch and spent a lot of time doing it, spoke at TechCrunch, hammered out my business idea and execution in the forges of Astia, Cambridge University, Informatics Ventures/Ken Morse workshops, NESTA, UKTI and countless other events, and had some eye-opening and enlightening moments at various conferences, especially concerning the marketplace and competition.

The high points of the last year encompass all of the above, and more; small achievements (quitting World of Warcraft cold-turkey due to having absolutely no spare time; learning to run and completing two 5Ks) and improvements in my personal life all add up to an amazing year. I couldn’t have asked for more.

Moving to Silicon Valley has been a hectic and interesting experience so far, and it’s set to make my 28th year very interesting indeed. (Or is that 29th? One’s first year is when one is age zero…)

Having so much on the proverbial doorstep is at once overwhelming and inducive of complacency. The echo chamber is intimidating and shallow. And yet there’s something in the air; some ‘zeal’ carried in the water supply. When people ask you at events “What does your startup do?”, not “What do you do?”, it’s strangely liberating.

There’s also a difference in attitude. Everyone here thinks their startup is the next Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc. When asked, I have a tendency to hedge and mumble; “Oh, it’s a Scottish social media AI startup, you probably won’t have heard of it”. When I’m truly attuned to the Silicon Valley frequency, I’ll be answering “We’re reinventing information, and if you read TechCrunch you’ve probably read about us”.

I’m hard-pressed to keep a straight face with some of the startups I run into; although Europe is characterised as having a lot of “me-too-in-Deutsch” type companies, me-toos definitely exist in the Bay Area! “We’re Facebook for dog-lovers”, etc. Despite the melting-pot nature of the area, there are also quite a few startups working on very inward-focused areas, jumping on technology bandwagons (though there are plenty of tech-for-techies startups, many funded by YC, that will probably do quite well in their niches).

Plenty of people design for themselves, for their Silicon Valley lifestyle/friends/needs/itches, and don’t look outwards. I haven’t met enough startups to really put a finger on how prevalent this is, but every so often I’ll run into someone and my first thought will be: “This wouldn’t work in Edinburgh”. (This even applies to some of Google’s ideas, it’s not just the small guys). I’m hoping that my experience of living in a country without free wi-fi, prevalent plug outlets, geographic population density/early-adopter critical mass, reliable 3G/GPS, a good public transport and healthcare system, and Topshop (I miss Topshop) will help some people here.

My mind has been buzzing with ideas since I landed, and there’s nothing quite as inspirational as your own personal itches/problems/difficulties as a newbie in a strange land armed with a Linode server and terminal. Being out of my comfort zone and living in a strange country has been an interesting start to the year, and I actually recommend it. It definitely broadens the mind.

Much as I miss Edinburgh and all the wonderful people there, and even the opportunities I’ve given up or walked away from, I believe the connections and knowledge to be had over here are invaluable. Hopefully I can bring a piece of Silicon Valley back!