Digging In

So I'm starting to build my team and raise capital.  More on that later. I've had a technical setback with Focus, and decided to take a break from that and whip out something else I've wanted to build for a long time. It should have taken a week, but I, being me, had to try a wide variety of methods and land on the best one. I think I've nailed it, finally. I'm just wrapping it up over the next few days--literally cleaning up some of the code, fixing a few known issues, adding accounts, save, undo, etc. Buckets is a simple way to do a braindump and organize that which you've dumped(there's got to be better semantics than that). It is not a mindmap. Mindmaps are full of stuff--too much stuff, too much information, too many lines.  It's not a task manager; Focus will have one, both products will integrate with online task managers and Outlook. It's just a very simple, quick, fluid way to dump and collect your thoughts or tasks. Things. Whatever. That&#

Fred posted about contrarian investing today, and it prompted a thought. When someone says "we don't have to reinvent the wheel", I say "why not". Reinvention of the wheel has brought incredible improvements to transportation. The electric motor is combining a wheel with electricity. Tiny wheels move parts along a production line. A giant wheel creates a cheesy gameshow. I'm wondering what company will launch a desktop, web-integrated CRM system through the retail sector. Huge opportunity given the layoffs and endless reinvention the unemployed and retiring are experiencing.  I tried and failed with CircleDog--never hit the shelves. I'm working on two things right now that are complementary. One deals with digital distractions/productivity, and people react to it like "I totally need that", and the other is something that has many different "competitors" in a relatively mature market, and people say "I get it" but don't

Over the past 20 months I've been considering what to do next. For over 2 years I've been considering what my life's work is; that navel-gazing was triggered by an article on Chongo in the New York Times sports section. I finished the article and said out loud "man, that's his life's work". And I couldn't stop talking about it. And only a few people seemed to get what I meant. At the time I was frustrated with software. Burned out, blocked by internal politics that I had failed to manage, racing toward a brick wall instead of finding a way around it, I wondered what my life's work was. Software? Really? Software is just a tool--a means to an end. I think my life's work is about helping other people. When I'm not doing that, I'm a lot less happy. The farther removed I am from the delivery of the help, the less happy I am. But it also seems that the closer I am to the delivery of the help, the more diluted my efforts are. So I ran for sc