February 4th, 2010

Don’t Be the Next…Be the Original

As a freelance web designer, I get calls from people who have the next great Internet idea:

It’s life Facebook….for Dogs!!!

It’s like Facebook…for Christians!!!

Sadly, these folk lack the two key components of the next great idea: passion and capital. You can do without the latter, but nothing comes into being without the first one.

These would-be internet gazillionaires are under the false idea that all the billion-dollar ventures started as entrepreneurial ideas. In reality, they started as hobbies or by just a few geeks tinkering between Hot-Pocket binges. These inventors had a passion before they had a paycheck.

Google began as a Stanford computer science thesis. Both MySpace and Facebook were created for a small audience by a few dorm rats. Even Digg was created to see if Slashdot could be improved. Then someone thought, “Hey, maybe I could actually make money with this.”

It’s a weather beaten chiche, but it’s true: Do what you love first, then worry about getting paid for it later. Yet, I do believe its true.

Yet, as I pour through Craigslist, I see many web-entrepreneurs struggling to come up with the next great start-up or company concept. With the optimism of a tone-deaf American Idol contestant, they put countless hours into projects that are just a clone with a different color.

This Kids in the Hall sketch encapsulates many of them: