The Next Disruptors (10 game-changing startups) | Hacker News Reader

The Next Disruptors (10 game-changing startups)

money.cnn.com

15 pointsedu10 comments

I think there is an improper use of the term "disruptive" in this article. Case in point:

THE DISRUPTOR: Zink

THE DISRUPTION: Inkless printing

THE DISRUPTED: Desktop printers, ink cartridge resellers, and photo services

The reason why this is inapplicable is because there are perhaps more compelling reasons to use regular paper in an office setting instead of "special" paper. Furthermore, the headache of "toner low" messages are not as much of an annoyance as "oops I'm using the special paper to scratch some notes on! I better get the 'normal' paper before I get busted!". Also, it seems to me that having to retool for the sake of avoiding "toner low" messages to be replaced by "need more special paper - NOT THE PAPER YOU USED IN THE PAST!!!" is not much of a disruption.

I also fail to see how BlinkX, Expensr (any name with a consonant followed by 'r' fails to resonate with me anymore and I just think that the founders are riding the coat tails of a 4 year old phenomenon), and PatientsLikeMe qualify as "disruptive".

The others seem to be quite interesting.

ZipCar sounds really good to me. I don't want to own a car, but family might force me to have one. Perhaps ZipCar would be a way out.

ZipCar has been around for almost 10 years. They've had decent success, but I don't see them disrupting the whole car rental biz. If anything, they've carved out a little niche for themselves.

They are disrupting the whole car ownership market NOT the car rental market

That's true, I didn't think of that

Old Business 2 article. RIP Business 2.0, RIP.

Yeah, Schonfeld is now of course writing for Techcrunch.

Zink sounds cool, but 20 cents per a 2'' x 3'' wont make it past middle school kids.

I know the founders of Expensr, they've already given up on their webapp.

Really? A post-mortem report about that app would be very interesting.

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