How can the Web truly be “open” when only young white male geeks get to decide what the Web is?

How many times have we heard from the tech world that ideas are worthless, that only the application of ideas has value?  This commonly held Silicon Valley belief – that ideas are insignificant compared to execution – is, pardon my language, Scoble slobber.  Yet, this mistaken belief drives the Web.  Moreover, it self-servingly puts all the power in very few, non-diverse hands. 

Wall Street: old white males. 

Silicon Valley: young white males. 

You can’t be offended by one and happy with the other.

Yes, application is vital.  More than vital.  But you can’t apply something that doesn’t first exist: the idea.  Poor ideas remain poor even when executed well.  The most stellar engineers can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

The opposite is also true.  Good ideas are hard to keep down, no matter what.  Twitter wasn’t executed particularly well, to which the Fail Whale testifies, yet Twitter is flourishing because at its core was a good idea.

Good ideas are just as essential as good execution.  And as “execution” moves closer and closer to becoming a commodity thanks to the Open Source movement that has made “patent” and “proprietary” dirty words and developers interchangeable and expendable, someday soon, the only wealth creation advantage for any Internet product will be the idea itself. 

 Problem #1 – Silicon Valley’s inability to judge if an idea is truly good or not

How many times have we heard venture capitalists say that in order for them to consider your project, you need to get something launched and prove traction?  What is this demand if not an admission that they don’t have a clue if your idea is solid or not?  Yes, you can choose to believe that they are testing your execution abilities, but your programming skills could be confirmed by simply pointing to other projects you’ve already completed.  What they really want to know is whether or not people will desire what you develop. 

That’s what traction is, of course: confirmation of the idea. 

Silicon Valley’s “let’s throw ideas against the wall to see what sticks” approach is extremely wasteful of time, talent and money.  It also limits executed ideas to those of mostly young (limited life experience), mostly left-brained (limited creativity) mostly males (limited accommodation).

Solution

VC firms have technical expertise to judge the technology, but as everything becomes open source and non-patentable, this analysis is less critical.  The Social Web has taken over and social science can no longer be ignored.   VC firms should hire or contract with people who can judge ideas from a human adoption standpoint.   This means people with expertise in anthropology, sociology and trend forecasting.

Problem #2 – Silicon Valley’s sexism

 “Sexism” is a word I very seldom use and certainly do not brandish carelessly.  Neither do I mean it on an individual basis.  These days most men aren’t ignorant-based bigots against women.  But Silicon Valley and the Web itself are extremely “institutionally sexist” given the fact that the vast majority of VCs, technologists, and tech reporters/bloggers are male.  Even as women are now online in greater numbers than men, female ideas and wants and desires largely go unexecuted. 

Elevating anthropology and sociology to the same plane as technology as suggested above will naturally bring in more women, but more needs to be done. 

Solution

Investors should actively seek out ideas not just from women, but also from other groups that aren’t now being included in VC’s ponder piles, like older folks and racial minorities. 

“If you could build the world’s best Internet experience, what would it be like?”  Ask that question, sift through the business plans, verify that the result would be desirable to large numbers and THEN go get the technical talent that it takes to execute.

Why is that so hard to fathom? 

Ideas may be a dime a dozen but GOOD ideas can be worth millions.  Even billions.  Open up who can offer business plans, get diverse experts to help review them from a people-perspective as well as tech-perspective – so you can stop the absurdity of “build this first and then maybe we’ll give you the money to build this” – and you’re bound to find some great ideas that can be executed.  And I’ll bet most will include monetization plans, too!

Either that or we can just stay stuck in the poverty of Web 2.0 until Scoble runs out of slobber for yet another social network by yet another young white geek male.  SIGH

PS: Before anybody accuses me of geek bashing, I love geeks.  My late husband was a geek who worked for Intel.  How could we live without you guys?  I wouldn’t want to try.  But it takes all kinds to make the world go round, and it is the Worldwide Web, after all. 

The Internet should reflect everybody.  And until it does “open” is closed.  That’s all I’m saying.

What the Web Needs is More Women VCs

Tech is male dominated.  Venture Capital is male dominated.  Small wonder the Web doesn’t serve women and all humankind as well as it could.  And should.

This is the most recent detailed article I can find about women VCs, from Forbes dated January 2007.  Here are some quotes from it:

• The Midas List reflects the glaring underrepresentation of women in the venture capital industry at large.  In 2000, the last year for which data is available, women made up only 9% of venture capitalists.

• Indeed, in the first half of 2006, only 4% of VC-backed companies had women chief executives, and those companies with women at the top received just 3% of the total dollar amount raised, according to VC research firm VentureOne, in San Francisco.

• Anecdotal evidence suggests that women investors are providing invaluable insight to entrepreneurs and fledgling companies–the kind of perspective that often eludes men.

• “It’s definitely a boys’ club, and they don’t expect a lot of female entrepreneurs to be coming through….Women haven’t really had advocates in VC to help push against the glass ceiling.”

• Another barrier: Many tech investors have advanced degrees in engineering, but few women do.

• But the industry looks poised for remarkable change, according to VCs like LaPorte. She theorizes that since women entered the business ranks just within the last few decades, sizeable numbers have risen to the top only recently. As a result, more women will go into venture in the coming years.

Okay, the above article was written two years ago.  I don’t see any sign that “the coming years” have started coming.   In fact, this article from just three months ago claims that the percentage of female VCs is now 7%, down 2% if these statistics are indeed accurate.

Note that none of this takes into account the practical consequences this female dearth has on the Web.  I say the loss of “the kind of perspective that often eludes men” has been a huge drag on the Web’s ability to monetize.  As I keep saying, and as techies and VCs keep ignoring, it takes understanding human motivation to be able to monetize human activity. 

Imagine if even 25% of VCs were women.  How would the Web be different?  It’s interesting, and sad, to speculate.

2009’s Big Startup Opportunity: The End of Yertle-the-Turtle Social Networking

Remember Dr. Seuss’s book Yertle the Turtle?  It was one of my favorite stories when I was young.  I still have a copy. 

“On the far-away Island of Sala-ma-Sond, Yertle the Turtle was king of the pond.”  From the perch of his rock, he ruled all that he could see: “But I don’t see enough.  That’s the trouble with me.”  So one day he decided to build a tall throne out of his fellow turtles so that he could see more.  

And it worked.  “I’m Yertle the Turtle!  Oh, marvelous me!  For I am the ruler of all that I see!”

Never satisfied with his growing empire, King Yertle kept demanding more and more turtles so he could get higher and higher.  “Turtles!  More turtles!  He bellowed and brayed.”  And one after another, they came.  “They obeyed.”

Until finally the small turtle on the bottom named Mack had enough.  “Your Majesty, please…I don’t like to complain, But down here below, we are feeling great pain.  I know, up on top you are seeing great sights, But down at the bottom we, too, should have rights.” 

“You hush up your mouth!” howled the mighty King Yertle.  “You’ve no right to talk to the world’s highest turtle.”

Then, Yertle the Turtle King started to give the command for more turtles, but this time: “That plain little turtle below in the stack, That plain little turtle whose name was just Mack, Decided he’d taken enough.  And he had.  And that plain little lad got a little bit mad.  And that plain little Mack did a plain little thing.  He burped!  And his burp shook the throne of the king!”

Then “Yertle, the King of all Sala-ma-Sond, Fell off his high throne and fell Plunk! in the pond!” J

Ha!  I still love this story.  Maybe that’s why I can’t help thinking of it whenever I read somebody once again crowing about how many friends they have on Twitter or MySpace or Facebook or FriendFeed.   “I have almost 2,000 friends!”…”I have over 13,000 friends!”  It’s as if they are building thrones for themselves out of fellow human beings.

I believe Yertle-the-Turtle-type social networking, and the social networks themselves that rely on it, will start falling from grace in 2009.  Here’s why:

1) Time and usage are naturally maturing social networking and this kind of “I have more friends than you!” status climbing smacks too much like “My dad is bigger than your dad!”  People (and networks themselves) who cling to old standards of prestige are going to look increasingly pathetic.

2) Most of these connections are totally meaningless, often brought about because somebody befriended you and you felt compelled to do the same in return (or it was done automatically for you), without so much as even looking at his or her profile. 

Face it, if you are but one of thousands of “friends” what’s the likelihood that this person will ever respond to you?  Now that the economy is in decline and people’s stress level is correspondingly rising, real friendships with consistent interaction will increase in value.  Fake friendships will be discarded as noisy distractions that only waste time and feed irritability.  Our increased sensitivity to betrayal and intolerance for things we can’t count on will demand that we shed false friendships and house-of-cards networks. “Scaling back” will happen psychologically as it happens economically.

The good news is that a growing appreciation for true connection will have the benefit of increasing our social fabric’s thread count.  Today’s Web mesh is largely held together by widely separated Yertle Kings who gather eyeballs but don’t generate much genuine discussion, and thereby little bottom-up connection.  Tomorrow’s social fabric will have a much tighter weave, and hence be softer, more satisfying and stronger.  Luxury brought forth from hardship.  Ahhhhh.

 3) The number of Macks who are brave enough to burp will begin exploding soon because of the increasingly bad economy that will make them ever more cognizant of (and desperate for) this truth: authentic and lasting social networks are simultaneously economic networks serving the material good of all members – as it’s been for 200,000 years.

Lane Hartwell was the first “Mack” that caught my attention.  It was exactly a year ago this week that we had the blow up regarding the Richter Scales video about the tech bubble.  (Awww, the good ol’ days!! J )  It’s a fabulous video, and we need to foster more mashups like this, not fewer.  But all creators in the value chain must be paid.

Why should Michael Arrington, who is making millions of dollars from TechCrunch, be able to run such a video for free?  Newspapers and magazines pay creators for content.  As blogging moves closer to “real” media, bloggers will inevitably start having to pay their fair share, too.  The technology is now available to make it all workable as a win-win for all concerned.  (See my video on Saving Digital Artists if you want to learn my own approach.)

So far, social networks have been designed to enrich nobody but the owners, too often, off the backs of others.  For example, how much of the $1.65 billion that YouTube fetched was shared with the creators of all those videos that made the site successful?  Answer: Not one dime. 

4)  Belching Macks won’t be limited to artists.  Network members themselves, who are feeling the collapsing economy’s weight on their own backs, are going to increasingly become resentful of business models that drown pages they create in ads that earn other people money but nothing for themselves.  King Yertle can link to your brilliant web post, just as he can feed his own readers with your comments and reactions, but unless you’re a Yertle yourself who is big enough to have your own revenue model in place, you’ll get nothing out of it except maybe a few comments in return. 

In social networking, monetization models, if they exist at all, are not distributive.  How much ad revenue does billionaire Mark Zuckerberg share with the users of Facebook who create all that advertising inventory in the first place?  Answer: $0.00.  Resentment already exists and will build in 2009.

Please don’t misunderstand me.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with having thousands, even tens of thousands of followers.  More power to you!  But don’t call them “friends” and don’t gather people like baseball cards just to feed your ego.  Being at the top of your social network shouldn’t demand treating it as a throne.  You should be mindful to serve your network as much as it serves you, and you should be provided the tools to do so.

The bottom line is, 2009 is going to prove that social networking is far from being a won space.  If you want to build a different kind of social network, don’t be intimidated by naysayers who think it’s too late.  No, the window won’t be open forever, but it is still open now. 

Remember, kingmakers like FriendFeed and even that “oh, marvelous” Facebook – which acts as oblivious to the risks of their own fevered climb as Yertle was to his – are all vulnerable to falling Plunk! in the mud.  Design something better.  I am.  You can, too.   Nobody is the Google of Social Networking.  Not yet. (See my post on “The Next Calvin and Hobbes vs. the Next Google: 5 Tips” )

Sharp VCs will listen to us and take advantage of the new opportunities that this recession brings, mindful that nobody is chained to any existing social network.  As Dr. Seuss says:

And the turtles, of course…all the turtles are free

As turtles and, maybe, all creatures should be.