The most important thing, in my opinion, that goes into building a great product and a company is ‘passion‘. Not many people will differ with me. Atleast not Edwin Aoki a technology fellow at AOL. Speaking at the Future of Web Applications conference at London, he urged developers to create applications out of passion and for the community rather than doing it just for money.
Passion fuels the enthusiasm and optimism required to keep going during good times and bad. Ofcourse, business plans and revenue models do matter at the end of the day but starting a company with a pure business perspective would be akin to working backwards; which is not successful always. Even if it is, the impact it makes is feeble.
On the other hand, starting a company with a passion to create something useful, meaningful and that is of value to the end consumer will sooner or later lead to business plans and revenue models that were not apparent before. Apple is a classic example of a company built with passion as its lifeblood. Driven by passion, Apple made Ken Olsen, founder and CEO of Digital Equipment Corporation, eat his own words : “There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.“
- Imdad Ahmed (works at Careeb)
- David Meerman Scott (most impressive internet marketing concepts)
- Seth Godin (Marketing guru, but in my opinion Scott is better)
- Evan Williams (Creator of Blogger and Twitter
- Zaheer Ahmed (Internet enthusiast)