Hey asshole investors, look familiar?

brian

Well, it was only a matter of time, but Google basically built the product we had been thinking about and working on for the past few months, which we called Signal and they call Google Wave. We know from the get go that it was a big idea, and had the potential for being a game changer. And quite frankly we knew that our biggest competition would come from Google. I just thought we had more time and could produce faster than Google.

It doesn’t piss me off that Google beat us to it, I always kind of figured that would happen. The user experience we defined for Signal I think is still loads better than what I’ve seen so far. And I still think there are some big problems that I’m not quite sure if Google Wave addresses or not, something that I think we had sorted out with Signal.

No what pisses me off is investors, again. I’ve been talking to investors, more like jumping through hoops for investors, knowing full well that this type of idea would need some backing to get it to market. Here we are months later, with a ton of great work invested, and the people to make something unique and wonderful, and investors that lacked the vision needed see the potential of a product like this.

If we had been able to lock down a relatively small amount of capital nearly a year ago when we started talking to people about this, we would have already had Signal to market. It doesn’t prevent your business from being put into jeopardy by a big competitor, but there is a big difference between defining ideas and following ideas. And I’m afraid that anything we might do with Signal now would be obscured by Google’s really big shadow.

No investor will invest in a product that Google is actively working on and where Google is your primary competitor. It doesn’t matter if you think you can do it better and compete, the risk is just too high and once again. I fear investors have very little capacity for visionary thinking, it is more of a dollars and cents game.

Great things don’t come from putting money first, only asking the question “how much money can a make from this” isn’t enough. Great things come from having the faith that you can make things better, from believing you can make a difference.

So to the investors that passed on Signal, or wasted our time, all I can say is, “Hey, if you listened to us you’d be richer now.”