Slashdot Mirror
Startups: the Crazy Ones, the Misfits, the Rebels ... the Dumb
An anonymous reader writes Many companies emerged in 2014 offering new ways to help people connect, get stuff done, or find that special someone. Slack, for example, offers a chatty alternative to work email. Or Yonomi might actually make an Internet connected home feasible. But other new startups, looking for that new and original thing, peddled products that were gimmicky, legally unsound, or just not super useful.
On the other hand, sometimes things that seem gimmicky get revised down the road; Kozmo.com is my favorite example — the business model might not have been perfect, but the underlying idea wasn't so bad. Sometimes there's a large not-being-the-first-mover advantage.
Thank you anonymous kozmo PR person for your submission!
What happened to Slashdot, this is bullshit. Stop with these advertisements disguised as stories.
These guys seem to be building on the Kozmo model, but it looks like they're trying to make money this time :-) : Favor Delivery
It was founded by young investment bankers Joseph Park and Yong Kang in March 1998 in New York City, and was out of business by April 2001. The company is often referred to as an example of the dot-com bubble.[2]
I wonder if the author knows them.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
"Something is only worth as much as people will pay for it."
This is how diamonds sell for millions but people die from being unable to pay a few dollars (or local currency equivalent) for food/shelter - even if they would pay, they couldn't.
Similarly, successful businesses are ones which have convinced people with enough money to pay for stuff. That doesn't mean much at all about whether the idea is good or not.
...you're going to have a bad time.
People have been referring to Slackware as "slack" since it debuted. There should be plenty of prior art to prevent a trademark.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Trademark has to actively protected, though. If no one objects to their use of "Slack", they have full rights to continue doing so.
Captcha: imitated
Just because something you said on a TV show became popular online doesn’t mean we need an app built around it. It would be one thing if it were a clever word or phrase, but it’s not.
So my new "Up your nose with a rubber hose." app might not be the next big thing?
For those of you under 40...
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
...you're going to have a bad time.
FWIW, I use Slack for work, and I find it really useful. It's a pretty good way to connect normal email, github emails, and chat.
My only real beef with Slack is that its markdown language is a bit different than, and inferior to, Github's. Which is an annoyance when, for example, github markdown messages are rendered by Slack.
Is actually pimp. Stupid easy to do actual useful things, like route in push notifications from git; build notifications from your deployment system, et cetera.
All it really needs is video support, and I can banish the horrible why-the-hell-does-corporate-America-love-Skype daemon forever.
You speak like the hybrid cylon pilots in Galactica.
lucm, indeed.
The only way I can see these people getting their crazy plans funded is through the 100th idiot effect amidst venture capitalists.
From _Matter_ by Iain M. Banks: "100 idiots make idiotic plans, and carry them out. All but one justly fail. The hundredth idiot whose plans succeeded through pure luck, is immediately convinced he's a genius."
I like the idea of Yannect but it's still very new.
1) Prior art is irrelevant to trademarks, it is current usage that matters.
2) Slackware themselves do not conduct trade using the name "Slack" .
3) Trademarks apply to domains, and there's no one in a position to install either who could mistake one's domain for the other's.
Ok, the company as a whole tanked rapidly, as one might expect, but according to friends who lived in its territory at the time, one reason the service was so popular was that one of the things it delivered was weed. The company itself didn't sell it, but the drivers did that themselves, so they were happy and the customers were happy, and there were an awful lot of deliveries that had only one random item on the books (plus weed.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Credible people, products and services
http://www.nagaiah.com/