>I don’t know who puts hippies in charge of these companies.
"These companies" being the ones the hippies start. The same ones guys like this don't know how to start either. Let's keep guys like this away from "these companies."
What does it matter? They're certainly not starving (yet).
These hippies started up something from scratch, are having an incredibly fun time doing it, getting funded, making waves and headlines and may yet make money. Ev already got loads of cash from selling Blogger before. And wasn't that the same question people asked of Amazon and Google before? How much were they making two years after launch?
It does matter. Venture capital is not infinite and it will eventually get tired of investing in things that just turn out to be popular ideas that can't generate revenue.
Then they won't invest in your real deal because they have been burned too many times.
His comments don't even make sense. He calls twitter hippies because they aren't starting a virtual currency business that his company can glom onto. If his company is so loaded, why doesn't he start his own virtual currency business? Oh right, because starting a virtual currency is hugely risky, full of regulatory hassle and not very interesting. If anyone should start a virtual currency, it is the game company that is going to use the virtual currency! (Like you know, MMORPGS already do...)
Wow. Yeah. Nobody "put" them in charge of this company.
Perhaps "hippies" have the vision to create something that will change the world (a bold claim about twitter... but at least somewhat true already) and "non-hippies" have the pragmatism to make a copycat mmorpg that will rake in a few million bucks but no one will remember next year.
When I think about what spurred the creation of a memorable technology that changed the course of human history, I see vision, not monetization. (Ford => a car for each family, Edison => light in every home, Apple => easy to use computers, Google => bigger, better search)
You see years of great PR, not reality. Most founding myths are the result of gross simplification and made-up mythology which the are designed to be interesting and consumable for mass media. (see Amazon, eBay, YouTube, PayPal etc).
That would be great because it would ensure the must-have mods like Rocket Arena get in, but not let every-mod-and-his-brother fragment the neat community they have going.
I lived in a building smack in the middle of San Francisco and didn't know my neighbors either. The only real difference in a city is that your neighbors are 10 feet instead of 100 feet from you.
Maybe it is the neighborhood you were in, or that you don't make an effort to aproach people?
I live in San Francisco, and I know at least two of my neighbors. We are not friends or anything, but a hi and a small talk once and a while doesn't hurt. Unfortunately, i live in a building where people stay for few years, and move somewhere else, so I guess that doesn't help.
I also sub-leased an apt. in North Beach, for my visiting parents. The girl I subleased from, had lived in that apt. for about 10 years, and she knew most of her neighbors. She gave me three numbers, of neighbors that could help me, if something happened, and my parents were talking to her downstairs neighbors everyday.
Very nice people.
I also picked the key from one of her neighbors, so she trusted them.
Living in a place where people are less transient helps a lot.
From now and on, I am going to try to be more friendly to people I don't know. I have seen the opposite, where people are unfriendly, and I don't like it.
"These companies" being the ones the hippies start. The same ones guys like this don't know how to start either. Let's keep guys like this away from "these companies."