Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson sees a high correlation between companies that are ‘mocked and misunderstood’ and those that go on to become breakout successes.
Fred Wilson is one of the most well-respected and vocal VentureCapitalst’s I know. He helps people start and build technology companies. He has a wife, Gotham Gal, who does the same. He is the father of two daughters who blog also.
So in a week when most people would agree that The Good Men Project has been “mocked and misunderstood”, I was glad to see that Fred’s instincts mirror my own. “So when your company and services gets mocked and is misunderstood by most everyone, just smile and keep doing what you are doing. You are on to something big.”
In fact, Fred writes, in his experience as a Venture Capitalist, companies that are mocked and misunderstood are those that correlate highly with the biggest breakout successes.
He explains on his blog:
When people ask me, “how do you know which companies and services are going to be the biggest successes?”, I usually tell them to look for the companies and services that are mocked and misunderstood. For some reason, that correlates highly with the biggest breakout successes.
Twitter is a great example of this. For years, every post, column, or article written about Twitter would have comment after comment making fun of a service where people “told the world what they had for lunch.” Of course, people were doing that on Twitter and people still do that on Twitter. But what those mocking Twitter were missing is that in between the tweets about pizza and pita were posts about politics and poetry. There was substance in the midst of nonsense.
Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad freeAnd all the while that those mocking Twitter were obsessing about the nonsense, the substance was increasing and the usage was growing. Comscore has Twitter’s monthly users at ~170mm people worldwide, up >60% in the past year. That makes Twitter one of the top twenty websites in the world and it is growing faster than most of those twenty websites. That is what I call “breakout success.”
Fred goes on to explain how one of his portfolio companies, Kickstarter, was described as such: “so this is like the guy on the street asking for a handout?”.
Kickstarter couldn’t be farther from the “guy on the street asking for a handout” and yet that was [the] takeaway…he mocked Kickstarter and misunderstands it. And that is fine with me. Because its a signal that Kickstarter is on to something big.
I knew that already, but situations like this are reinforcing for me. They are the “tell”. So when your company and services gets mocked and is misunderstood by most everyone, particularly the mainstream press and media, just smile and keep doing what you are doing. You are on to something big.
When we launched The Good Men Project, we specifically set out to disrupt the status quo. We are doing something different here. We are doing something important. We are changing the way that community and media collides to talk about important issues. We are changing the conversation around men and masculinity. We had no doubt when we started that we would create a few waves. That’s what we set out to do.
Mocked and misunderstood is one thing. Understood and mocked is something else. They can be grandiosely confused.
I would put Ron Paul in the cateogory of someone mocked and misunderstood, who’s onto something big.
He’s got major momentum now, in addition to misunderstanding mockingbirds.
@freebird
My ad is for whiskey perhaps google knows your undersized and I like to drink. Mulder was right they are out there…
You’ve got me there MK.
Ever since I had 3 months in court on false DV charges combined with the associated criminal contempt of court charges:
When I see a woman I see prison time and my dick shrinks just a little bit more.
It’s now just about disappeared into my abdomen.
Thank God for porn,at least I can get a nut off now and then.
Porn can’t make false charges!
Appliances don’t turn about their owners.
Thanks VAWA
This PTSD’s for you!
With all due respect though – we don’t know how many “mocked and misunderstood” ideas landed on the trash heap. The success correlation is not with being “mocked and misunderstood”, but rather, that the idea is actually a good idea.
True–being mocked is not by itself evidence that you have a brilliant idea.
“They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” –Carl Sagan–
Indeed – assumption of symmetry is a classic fallacy of logic. Most brilliant ideas may be “mocked and misunderstood”, but that does in no way imply that most ideas that are “mocked and misunderstood” are brilliant. That said, I definitely agree with Fred – you shouldn’t give up what you believe in, just because others laugh or tell you it’s a bad idea. You should probably listen, and reflect, you may even change your opinion – but ultimately your opinion is what matters. If you believe in and idea, go for it. If you don’t, you risk throwing out a… Read more »
Absolutely,just the sales of the penis pumps advertised at the bottom of the page should skyrocket.
Perhaps an ad for fleshlights?
Just trying to be helpful :0
http://xkcd.com/450/
“Onwards” P^)
I love this article. People are often uncomfortable with change. When something hasn’t been done before, people can’t understand it. When we don’t understand something, we don’t like to admit it, so we act like the thing we don’t understand is silly. We forget that just because something doesn’t make sense to us doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense in the grand scheme of things.