Mocked And Misunderstood

I think we have some problems with causation here.<p>Being mocked and misunderstood seems neither necessary nor sufficient to making it big.<p>I think Fred is arguing that it's often necessary or quasi-necessary or something.<p>This really seems more like an emotional reaction to negative press than Fred's normal well-thought-out posts.<p>Also, is Twitter profitable yet? That gets asked way too much, but I still don't know the answer yet.

So many cognitive biases here that I had to write a blog post. <a href="http://dbasch.posterous.com/vcs-also-succumb-to-cognitive-biases" rel="nofollow">http://dbasch.posterous.com/vcs-also-succumb-to-cognitive-bi...</a>

At the end of the linked MSNBC video, the reporter (Kate Snow) is arguing that nobody is policing the pledged projects and that she could theoretically "go on there and say I'm gonna raise money to make a record album and then get all the money. And, if I never make a record album, nobody knows any different."<p>Is that really so with Kickstarter?

If your business is "mocked and misunderstood," it isn't guaranteed to fail. It's not anymore likely to succeed because of that though...

Twitter has established itself as the social PR tool on the web. Any brand on the web that wants to signal effort and understanding of the game must have a Twitter account with daily updates.<p>The value for marketers is clear. It's an inexpensive way to build organic traction.<p>The value for individual users, who are the product, is less clear. Twitter is immensely noisy, and is becoming more noisy as it's use as a PR tool increases. It's not clear to me why, overall, it's worth it for people to read their Twitter feeds. I certainly don't read mine, I just push out a tweet a day to signal I'm trendy.<p>For example, Fred Wilson's Twitter updates are links to his blog posts plus some (for me) out of context public messages to people I don't know, ie. junk (for me). I might as well unsubscribe and add his RSS to Google Reader and save myself the noise. Just did.

OK, but I suspect that is more of a superstition thing, like "on a full moon more babies are born" - people tend to remember the births on the full moon, but there are not really more babies. Likewise it might be more memorable if a mocked company becomes successful.

One thing Fred missed to say is, while getting mocked and misunderstood may be the pattern (pattern derived from twitter alone (I kid you not, twitter was the only example in the article)), it doesn't mean all mocked and misunderstood companies will be successful.

The economist Lant Pritchett notes big ideas follow this pattern:<p><pre><code> silly -&#62; controversial -&#62; progressive -&#62; obvious </code></pre> <a href="http://kottke.org/09/06/big-ideas-from-silly-to-obvious" rel="nofollow">http://kottke.org/09/06/big-ideas-from-silly-to-obvious</a><p>Fred's post touches on the silly part. I haven't been able to find much more of Lant's model other than the slide Kottke links to.

I've come to this conclusion.<p>When I was in graduate school I was timid. If I had an idea that people didn't get right away, I wouldn't stick with it.<p>Today if I'm working on something and people don't think I'm crazy, I think I'm wasting my time. If everybody understands the value of something, you're getting in too late.

Personally, the most mocked and misunderstood web service I can think of within the last couple years is Chatroullette. I guess this rule passed over them.

I'm currently mocking and misunderstanding Foursquare and Turntable.fm. Which startups are you mocking right now?

I'm surprised at how few here are understanding what Fred is saying. He's saying if it's so far out of people's context that they have a hard time understanding it, that you <i>might be</i> changing the context to something completely new. You might have a whole new ballpark.

KickStarter is gonna be big? I kinda thought is was already a success.

I have to say, I do get a certain kick out of seeing the success of things I use, which started out being ridiculed.<p>Twitter is an excellent example -- in its earlier days it really was something special, but people mocked it in the manner he describes. And of course now it's indispensable. Basically everything Apple made in the last 10 years or so would be another example.<p>I think it's because to ridicule this things is to imply that their users are essentially idiots, whereas the one doing the ridiculing is a free-thinking skeptic. Then, slowly, you watch them all get iPods and Macbooks and Twitter accounts...