trendpreneur

There’s a gentle sense of impending despair in the air when veterans such as Tim O’Reilly and Ben Hammersley take to the stage. The message is clear and strong — basically, we’re all super-intelligent hyper-nerds but we’re spending all our development time and resources either obsessed with money or writing applications that let us throw sheep at our friends.

This has got to stop. Both the current economic downturn (which, as has been repeatedly said, is the death of the ‘me-too’ startup) and a general overarching awareness of ultimate economic and ecological collapse if we do nothing add up to one thing: stuff needs to start mattering.

Put all that awesome talent to work. Build with quality, build what you care about and love, and make the world a better place — don’t focus on getting rich, or being featured on TechCrunch with billion-dollar buyouts. Just do what you do well, and stand out from the increasing stream of shallow startups attempting to make a quick buck with poor-quality products. Thus lies survival, and strength.