You Are Not a Ninja

Children, the happy heyday of cute, irreverent titles is over. Your startup failed, your VC dried up, your dreams of being bought by Google vanished. Even the speaking circuit you carved out in tiny ad clubs in rural areas is coming to an end. Update that resume and hit the bricks, dicks.

Kids! Accept a Ride from a Creepy Old Man in a Van

Have you heard of this weirdness called Omegle?. They have the very catchy slogan, "Talk to Strangers!" According to Wikipedia, "The site was created by 18-year old Leif K-Brooks of Brattleboro, Vermont and was launched on March 25th, 2009.

I expect this young adventurer who calls himself Leif is looking to place banners all over the site and then sell his peculiar invention to Google. He's got the stupid name thing down, all he needs now is some venture capital.

I tried it. Here's what a stranger and I had to chat about:


I think this was known as a CompuServe chat room back in the 90s.

Want a High-Stress Job with a Cocky Bay Area Start-Up?

Some excerpts:

• Let's face it. You probably aren't up to this job. Don't feel bad. Most people aren't.
• This is a critical job function and something that we can't hand over to just anybody who fancies themselves a product manager.
• In order to have any possibility of success here, you'll need to have a strong mix of technology, product management, and marketing.
• You'll need to have those two elusive properties that most people don't: passion for building great products and the taste to know what that means in the first place.
• If you have an MBA from a top-10 business school and think that working at Cisco or Juniper is impressive, you're probably not right for this.
• The average product manager from a multi-billion dollar behemoth would wilt under the pressure of our environment in less than two weeks.
• We're a small company with not a lot of support staff.

Still interested? See here.

I Don't Usually Jump Onboard With New Apps

But Kwooky looks pretty promising. It's got everything a Web 2.0 app needs. Nonsensical, made-up name, silly, quirky font, dumb tagline and the all-important "beta" designation. What Kwooky does no one is certain, since I just made it up after searching to make sure the URL Kwooky.com was available. But that's all it takes. Now I just need some developers and some venture capital and I can sell this idea to Google in about a year.

Stupid ideas keep getting funding, and I won't single out the ones I find stupid, but here's a clue: if the "About Us" page contains super-hip, irreverent bios of a bunch of guys with titles like "ninja" who all reside in diverse locations, then I would keep my venture capital away from those dudes.

Then ask yourself, "Would I use this app? Does it do something that another app doesn't? Is it maybe just some reverse-engineered ripoff? Can I live without it? Will it change the way I do business?"

Also, do a little research into the principals of the start-up. If they can't seem to hold down a job for more than a year, it's a good bet they're probably just ne'er-do-well punks looking for a fast buck.