No, I'm Not Interested In Your Startup

Colonel Quaritch vs. Your App

You've got a great new app that uses the iPhone 4 hi-res camera to check the state of my cooking pasta and tell me exactly how much longer to cook it for optimum flavor. Your new Web 2.0 collaborative messaging app will enable an unprecedented level of office productivity in a cloud-hosted distributed web-scale architecture. You are thrilled to tell me about the next leap forward in social dynamics and how your app is an enabler for the next level of financial integration with social media which will future-proof antiquated institutions from disruptive technologies. Guess what? I don't give a fuck!

We used to send men to the moon. We once figured out how to split the atom and release vast quantities of energy in the process. We invented a novel device called the transistor. We discovered penicillin. We developed vaccines that have saved the lives of about half of all children born in the last century. We've mapped the human genome. We gave everyone in democratic countries the right to vote regardless of skin color and ended apartheid. The Soviet Union is no more.

But you want me to get excited about your little piece-of-shit app like it's the next greatest thing since the Magna Carta. Well sorry to bust your bubble ego boy, but it's not. In fact, more likely than not its useless and annoying. Even if you're successful, what have you done? Created the next facebook? Another colossal fucking waste of human energy whose main purpose seems to be to get people to spend their hard earned money on virtual farm buildings?

If you wanna be excited about your work, fine. If you wanna get rich from some dumbass VCs, herd-following customers or credit-card funded users, go ahead. Nothing wrong with that. But don't pretend it's anything more than this. Don't pretend that your shitty app is going to change the world, because it's not. You already are going after the money and fame, don't also take the dignity away from people making an actual difference in the world. Leave them with that.