unawz

We should even better than that and create an artificial intelligence for us that can eliminate aging and that eliminate any need to do work, and also upload our minds to it see we can live until the heat death of the universe with every luxury.

So it's really an automation problem. It should be easy for males to broadcast a crafted message to everyone. It should be easy for females to filter messages using complicated criteria. However, this requires a lot of computation and dating sites form monopolies at which point they stop innovating.

The solution to that is open-data peer-to-peer. Sematntic web technologies solved that problem. Use an ontology editor like Protege to create your profile and publish the data as rdf. Other people would download the data and queries on it.

It is different to regular dating site. It isn't a couple of guys. The software would be open source, I suggested starting with Protege. Since there is no single authority, a whoie bunch of entrepreneurs could pursue this, potentially in the thousands, seeding it with all their friends. Also, the functionality you get over traditional dating sites (and this also applies to business networking/sourcing such as linkedin/ebay) can be immense. You can run multiple queries over the profile data, whereas a site such as plentyoffish can't afford to. That alone should convince many people to contribute to this. I recall similar projects about a decade ago, such as rdf foaf, music brainz, but they didn't take off because their wasn't enough bandwith and computational power at the time (downloading millions of rdf pages wasn't possible then - now users routinely download gigabytes of video).

Same as how people are convinced to find dating sites, create a profile, and spend hours/months/years finding the right person. Downloading a program and having it automatically do complicated filters to find the right person is a cake-walk in comparison. People are motivated by money and sex, they'll climb any hurdle to get to it. Installing desktop software is not a big one.

My other comment about peer-to-peer solves the chicken and egg problem.

There's a solution to that problem - peer to peer - as in file-sharing. Create software that sits on each persons computer. This is freely downloadable. Users input as much information as they want into it, and it reaches out and grabs other users' data like file-sharing, and filters it to any sort of criteria.

This solves the chicken and egg problem.

People can make money on this by offering hosting services. It can be a hassle for the average user to run and update the software on their computer so many might opt to pay for a cloud service.

This model can also be used for business discovery. Google and ebay can only do so much, you might want complex querying and reporting.

edit: The software solution can be as simple as publishing rdf data. The Protege ontology editor (open source) is already available. Users could simply start publishing their data profile right away, and conventions would form around what you should be putting in it. Protege also has querying facilities built in already. This was actually the semantic web vision.

There isn't a network effect in kickstarter. Whether you get funded is basically up to your social media campaign. Unlike ebay, you cannot be anonymously selling your wares with your seller score being your reputation. In crowdfunding you have to go all out - you already need a solid track record that is publicly visible. Funders are basically doing a due diligence check on you. You need a profile on many different sites and email newsletters etc. Crowdfunding sites are basically an reverse bounty system - a kind of api for gathering and dispensing money. The only differentiation between indiegogo and kickstarter at this point is the percentage they keep.

As regards ebay, their network effect hasn't worked out - amazon has taken their business. In the future Amazon or Google might come in take out all the crowdfunding sites by offering a reverse bounty api. At that point, the crowdfunding sites should move in to the function of providing marketing services for creators seeking funding.

How about rethinking investment entirely. Why not just fund projects as open source that will be released to the world. This includes physical objects, designs, and software.

If you were creating a startup, and it would have cost you 1 million dollars of software development cost, 1 million dollars of hosting costs for 10 years, and you expected to earn 1 million dollars profit over 10 years, why not do this instead - ask for 1.5 million dollars on kickstarter - 1 million cost and 500,000 dollar profit. Say that you will be releasing as open source - this is the value you provide to funders. Then sysadmins come in and compete on hosting the software and divide up the other 500,000 dollar profit among themselves. You can move on to other software development projects instead of supporting your startup for 10 years.

There are over 300 sites similar to kickstarter now. Competition will drive down the 5% fee kickstarter gets, and sites will start competing by providing api's for managing multiple campaigns, as well as differentiating on providing marketing support.

This is a great opporunity for startups - both getting funded on crowdfunded sites and launching crowdfunded sites, because unlike the usual ad-supported business model or saas offering, serious money changes hands and every sector of the economy can be flowing through this.

You would launch a campaign asking that you would write this many articles with these titles and publish them in your magazine. You can launch parallel campaigns, with lists of articles, for example 10 different campaigns with different themes. Also show your previous work. Also say that you'll give the articles away as creative commons. If the public actually wants what you're giving, you'll get funded and have readers as well. If they don't, you'll know that what you're doing isn't worthwhile to customers and you can think of seeking funding for something else.

Crowdfunding is a solution to high quality software development, open source development, science funding, and sopa/pipa. It's really quite amazing and people haven't caught on yet. It's also a solution to the startup problem of building what people want.

Eric Ries talks about "pre-testing" - put up a landing page and seeing if you get signups. However, this sounds scammy. A better way is to simply launch a kickstarter/indiegogo campaign. You release the software as open source, which is better for the world as well. But you also get paid as well. You want to launch as startup that does project management as a saas. Instead put a kickstarter campaign up for 1 million dollars, or however much you were expecting to earn from the lifetime of your startup. If enough people want it, it will get funded. The next step you build and release as open source. Afterwards you can host it, or a bunch of other people who are expert at sysadmin host it and get customers paying for saas. You move on to the next project you want to build. The point is, you can have many crowdfunding campaigns going. Think of 20 apps, list them for 60 days. The ones that get funded, you build.

It also solves sopa/pipa. Someone has ideas for movies, launches campaigns in parallel. The ones that get funded, he creates releases for free on youtube.

Same for science. Scientists would no longer need to be attached to a university or do the politics that is involved in getting funding in science. They go directly to the public.

In the above scenarios everyone wins. Customers and creators. The only people who lose are people who were good at politicking their way up the coroorate ladder. Although, they don't really lose. They can switch to being marketers who launch campaigns, however they'll now need to have competence in marketing and brainstorming ideas.

Firms only exist to solve the communication problem. Now that we have the internet, there really is no need for organizations to exist. As more database-based information systems are created for crowdsourcing (kickstarter, fiverr, mechanical turk) , the more efficient this process becomes - which is good news for startups because this is what they are creating.