Thoughts on Innovation and What’s Really Cool in Tech Start-ups

A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? Tyrannosaurs flying F-14s.

Dedicated readers may have noticed that I was away for a few days last week. I was in Hong Kong, dealing with the tail end of a visa nightmare that has consumed the past several weeks of my life. It wasn’t the most pleasant trip I’ve ever taken, but it did give me some time to reflect on the the tech industry from a broader perspective than I usually have time for.

We talk a lot about innovation and what companies are really shaking things up, yet all too often “innovation” looks the same as a mix-and-match of whatever tech concepts are sexy at the moment, solving “problems” that have already been solved a hundred times in but using a slightly different approach in the hopes of cashing in.

For example, imagine it’s early 2010. You want to create an innovative start-up? Nothing simpler! Just pick 3-5 of the “sexy” concepts in the list below and combine them:

• Social media
• Group buying platform
• Location-based services
• Mobile
• E-commerce
• App sales platform
• Cloud technology

OK, so let’s say you chose at random. Congrats, you’re now the founder of a new tech company that leverages cloud technology to offer a location based e-commerce platform to mobile users. Innovative! Except, of course, that it’s not. And it’s not solving a problem that hasn’t been solved before; trust me, mobile phone users have plenty of ways to buy stuff using their phones already. But still…”leverages cloud technology to offer a location based e-commerce platform to mobile users”…it is sexy though, isn’t it? Put that on your business cards and watch the interview requests and investments rolling in!

Those sexy concepts change with the times, so we do see progression, and there are companies out there that really are innovating. But of the start-ups we look at in Asia, how many of them could be easily and accurately defined using just the terms listed above? More than a few, that’s for sure.

The ever-present constant, of course, is money. As Dave McClure put it in his answer to a question at a mobiTalk event at the Great Wall Club last weekend, “money is sexy. Money will always be sexy.” Beyond that, there’s also the vain desire to be seen as doing something hip or cutting edge.

Money and social status are unstoppable forces, it’s true. And yet some of the coolest startups we see are the ones who aren’t going for the money or the glory and are instead focusing on real problems and trying to solve them.

Solving a Real Problem

Let’s take, for example, the guys at XY Mobile. Now, I’ve never met them or seen their operation firsthand, but on the surface of it, what they’re doing isn’t sexy. Developing a phone that uses the Lao language might earn them a profit someday, but it’s bound to be a small one. Plus, Laos is a small country, and they’re aiming their device squarely at its poorest demographic.

Making a phone that uses the Lao language is never going to get them on the cover of a magazine. It’s not going to get them a big feature on TechCrunch, and it’s not going to make them the next Steve Jobs or Lee Kai-fu in international tech circles. What it might do, though, is help make some people’s lives easier.

It’s a real shame that we don’t consider that “sexy,” because Asia doesn’t need another location-based group buy site. Not even if it’s mobile and it’s based on cloud technology and integrates with social media (seriously, please stop with the group buy sites). What it does need is more innovation of the sort being practiced by XY, the kind of innovation that fixes a real problem, instead of just giving middle-class smartphone users yet another way to buy slightly cheaper crap.