Here are the results from RND1 of the Reid Hoffman folks:

* the numbers in brackets = percentage of votes

Best of luck to all of you advancing to RND2! This is where the gloves come off and things get interesting.

Ever made money on the futures market? Me neither. But if your keen you try and make some Inkles by trading stock on these ideas over at the Inkling market setup around this tournament. Thanks to Gods_Light (and johnandpeter before him) for setting this up. It’s a tonne of fun and yet another way to use the Wisdom of Crowds to see which ideas standout.

Don’t wait till next Wednesday noon to get your votes in. VOTE NOW and help decide which idea is worthy of wearing the Reid Hoffman crown.

Special thanks again to the good people at 42squared.com for their financial support of the Reid Hoffman Tournament. These guys really are ninjas.

May the best idea win!

Once in a while, I will go to a conference and meet someone who won’t tell me what their startup does because they’re afraid I’ll steal their idea.

This is the wrong attitude when starting a company. Having someone copy your idea is the least of your worries. Instead, you should engage as many people as possible to get feedback on your idea.

At Startup 2006, Reid Hoffman recommended entrepreneurs ‘value speed and intelligent feedback over secrecy‘. Here are four reasons why idea secrecy hurts startups more than it helps:

1. Someone else has probably already thought of your idea.

We would all love to think that our ideas are truly unique. But in reality very few ideas are one of a kind.

If you don’t share your idea, you won’t have a chance to find out if anyone is thinking alone the same lines (i.e. competitors or potential partners).

It’s too easy for programmers to put their head phones on, disappear into the tree house, and emerge 2 years later with the end all be all product. That’s why the first release of your product should be embarrassing.

Get it out there. Promote your idea like hell. And see if ANYONE is interested.

2. You lose a golden opportunity for feedback.

Overly optimistic entrepreneurs tend to shun critical feedback on their ideas. This is dangerous because one of the best things an entrepreneur can do with a new idea is share it with as many people as possible. Think of it as a free market test and invite harsh feedback on why it couldn’t possibly work.

This isn’t intended as an exercise in discouragement. Rather, it is a form of critical thinking that many starry eyed entrepreneurs pass on because they are so convinced their idea is the next YouTube. By being overly secret with your idea, you pass on opportunities to engage smart people in meaningful discussion around it.

Besides the lost critical thinking, you also lose out on karma. By sharing your idea with as many people as possible, you don’t give the universe an opportunity to conspire for you and drop you hints on how to get what you want. Who knows, that guy eating lunch by himself might be your next tech lead or investor.

Share your idea - the universe wants to conspire for you.

3. Your idea isn’t what you think it is.

While you certainly need an idea to kick things off, most startups end up looking vastly different then when they started. Your job is to figure out as quickly as possible where the real opportunity lies.

The more people you talk to about your idea and the sooner your release your product, the faster you can zero in on the true value it holds. As quickly as possible, you need to find that tipping point or break through that turns your idea from a vitamin into a pain killer.

4. Ideas are cheap. Execution is everything.

There’s a reason why VC’s look so hard at who they are funding as much as what they are funding. They know it’s the founder and team that are going to make or break the venture.

An idea without a strong executing team is like a rocket without jet fuel. It may look nice on the launch pad, but chances are it’s not going very far. The world is full of great ideas. What the world lacks people who can execute them.

Secrecy in today’s flat world is largely dead. Openness and transparency is where it’s at. You’re much better off getting feedback from as many people as possible and pushing your product out the door quickly.

Hi Ho Everyone,

The Calgary blogger community is gettin’ together. Austin Hill and Kempton are hosting a Blogger Dinner with an initial discussion about the possibility of BarCamp Calgary. It’s close to our hearts cause it’s in our hometown.

Event: Calgary Blogger Dinner
Date: Thursday, March 15th, 2007
Time: 7:00pm
Place: East Side Mario’s in Chinook Centre, Ba-da-boom, Ba-da-Bing!

If you’re around and interested in blogging or staring up BarCamp Calgary - Let Kempton know.

Hiya all,

After working out some last minute wrinkles, I am proud to see our latest batch of killer, innovative, mind altering ideas have made it out the door and are battlin’ it out in the Reid Hoffman Tournament.

Why the Reid Hoffman?

For those of you who don’t know Reid, he is founder of LinkedIn, and board member of PayPal (which was bought be Ebay). Reid gave an amazing quote at Startup 2006 that we wanted to share:

‘If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.’

At Cambrian House we are super passionate about all things startup and entrepreneurial. So when we see a quote, topic, or something interesting to do with startups we are going to share that with the community. Reid’s quote is super interesting because it drives to the heart of something every entrepreneur must answer - when to release the first version of their product. We do have more to say on the topic, so if you are interested join us here.

Else wish our new contestants well, and help decide whose ideas are worthy of being turned into reality.

All the best to our contestants.

May the best idea win.

Special thanks are also in order - 42squared.com

Special thanks also goes out to the good people at: 42squared.com for whom without their financial support Reid Hoffman tournaments and screaming vikings would not be possible. If you are in need of Web development, Ruby on Rails skillz, or cutting edge Agile Software Development techniques these guys are ninjas. Check out their opensource project http://rubini.us (an a opensource implementation of Ruby based on the SmallTalk-80 virtual machine - way cool).

* Got something to say about Reid’s quote? We would love to hear from ya. Add your voice to the discussion here.

Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn) was speaking at a Churchill event and said something that really resonated with me:

‘If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.’

Every entrepreneur and startup faces this question when launching a new product or service - when do we go live. And it’s not always an easy answer when one balances:

• time to market
• quality
• first impressions
• member experience
• status anxiety
• and a host of other factors.

Being embarrassed is good for a startup however, because in the beginning you don’t even know if you have anything worth starting.

Fire … then aim, aim, aim

When you release the first version of your product, you are really shooting in the dark. Often you can’t even see that target, much less know where it is. All you’ve got is a hunch. And until you pull that trigger, and light up the room with that muzzle flash, you don’t know where to adjust your aim.

Don’t view this as a bad thing. It just is.

• Flickr started off as a massive multiplayer online game (Game Never Ending) before realizing people really just wanted to share and tag their photos.
• Head started off building tennis racquets before realizing they could really dominate skis.
• Viagra was originally made to help people with hypertension - not erectile dysfunction.

Rest assured, your idea is going to morph and change which is why being embarrassed about your first release isn’t a bad thing.

Be embarrassed

So does being embarrassed give us an excuse to write buggy software, skip testing, and release shoddy work? No.

But being embarrassed is a good litmus test when you have a set of features you think could be valuable, and you’re tempted to add one more feature, fix one more bug, and delay the release one more week.

Be embarrassed, and get your product out there in the market place. Time is everything.

What do you think?

The Start Up Success 2006 video with Reid’s quote at 35:55.

* The whole video is worth watching if you are into entrepreneurship and startups.

Can the wisdom of crowds pick the next “Killer Startup”?

Predictive markets have often proven to be more reliable than the wisdom of experts. KillerStarups.com uses Digg-style to harness community opinion on the viability of new web ventures.

Top 5 startups that the Digg community didn’t see coming

An interesting contrast to the premise behind KillerStarups.com, this list demonstrates that sometimes the “next big thing” can sneak in the back door. Don’t worry if you can’t get the Digg traffic you think you deserve, you’re in good company, along with YouTube and del.icio.us.

Social networking goes mobile in a big way

Jambo means “hello” in Swahili, and Jambo.net aims to help anybody with a WiFi device say hello to people around them with common interests or backgrounds. Maybe the person at the table next to you went to your old school, or is a friend of your sister. With Jambo and WiFi you’ll know right away.

Say Everything: The “Net Generation” and privacy

A very well-written article from New York Magazine examining the psychology and sociology behind the success of MySpace, YouTube and other social networks. If you’ve ever wondered why the Net Generation seems so much more comfortable sharing and revealing themselves online, or how the blending of technology and social interaction is affecting our culture, you will love this piece.

The 6 month late inaugural blog post

Entrepreneur and blogger Austin Hill has waited through 6 months of blogging to post his inaugural post, which details a decade of his history, arriving at the beginning of his blog. Interesting story of an entrepreneur’s journey.

Want to chat with Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales?

Waxxi.us will be recording a podcast with Wales on Thursday, April 5 at 1:30pm Eastern Standard Time. A toll-free number is available for callers within the United States, other locations may direct dial or communicate by instant messenger. Register now if you’re interested, this is going to be huge.

Hi all,

We are experiencing some technical difficulties getting the next tournament up and running. Everything is ready, we have just had a lot of changes in the database this last week and we still have a few wrinkles to work out.

Hope to have the tournament up and running tomorrow. Stay tuned. Many apologies to our contestants.

JR

It is with great pride that we announce the winner of the Broken Hearts IdeaWarz Tournament to be:

childoftv and his idea Speed Dating by Webcam

As a creative developer specializing in interactivity, childoftv thought of this idea while fostering a long distance relationship with his girl friend over instant messaging.

The Idea:

“Utilises modern multicamera interface to take people from dating sites on a virtual speed date. You sit in front of each person on webcam and chat for 5 minutes then rate them before moving on to the next. You can choose to stay in touch with people you best like. Standard Admin and User based vetting (ie report misuse) stuff applies as well as age verification.
Would be well placed in a community like Facebook where some crude vetting (university membership) has been applied first. It would be made available to a number of clients however.
Additional Features may include “Stumble dating” where you can click a button to move on to the next available person who is waiting for a connection and matches your criteria at any point. This means you only have to spend time with someone if you like them, otherwise “NEXT!”

childoftv’s idea is amazing because it could be the missing link in what is a very hot market - web dating. People are hooking up over cyber space like never before and anything that helps grease the wheels in forging of relationship can’t be bad.

We also want to congratulate to our other finalist PsychSplash. His idea The moment you were born was another favorite that made it to the finals. PsychSplash (who has over 40 ideas) is an ideas man. We look forward to seeing more of his ideas in upcoming tournaments. Good battlin’ PsychSplash.

As tournament champion, childoftv receives the usually heaping of fame, glory, that comes with winning something as prestigious an IdeaWarz tournament. He also receives $1000 in booty, and $9000 in investment towards the further development of his idea within the Cambrian House community. He also gets a pretty flash authentic one of a kind Jessye Cook t-shirt. So there you have it folks. Congrats again childoftv and all the best to our future contestants, and may the BEST idea win.

On Monday, February 26 Cambrian House hosted our first Cambrian Lounge event. Check out the video below!!

We hope to use it as a launching pad for further networking events that will bring together people from the business, tech and investment communities to support entrepreneurial spirit, network, talk shop, and pitch and grow ideas.

The first event was held in our home town of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. We invited Don Tapscott, best selling author of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, to speak to members of Calgary’s tech and business community.

It gave us a chance to tell Calgarians about Cambrian House, and get them excited about crowdsourcing. Moving forward, our goal is to host Cambrian Lounge events all over the place and invite our community members to drive the topic, speakers, etc. But, one step at a time, as they say! We’ll keep you in the know, I promise.

Don provided loads of information about Web 2.0 and why traditional businesses need to accept the reality that consumers are taking on a more active role; and that opening up to the crowd beyond your building’s four walls can result in major successes.

As he believes in the freedom of information in our collaborative world, we’ve made the entire presentation available. Check it out (it’s 83 minutes, but we’ve provided a breakdown below for ease). Be sure to pick up the book too.

PLAY IN PAGE or PLAY IN POPUP

If you have difficulties playing the video, please try playing a copy hosted on Google Video, or contact us.

 Don Tapscott Presentation - Audio Only: Download
 Don Tapscott Presentation - iPod Large: Download
 Don Tapscott Presentation - iPod Small: Download

Cambrian House Forges towards Vision “2.0”

Steve Jobs says Apple set out to make a dent in the universe. Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information. 3M’s mission is to solve unsolved problems.

So when you’re trying to change the world with your business, what’s the right balance of vision and humility? At Cambrian House, we have to ask ourselves this question while we work with you to build a crowdsourcing community that will attempt to reshape the business landscape as we know it by harnessing the Wisdom and Participation of Crowds.

It’s a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal), but we’re willing to swallow the hairball for it. And we’re prepared to get a little red in the face once in a while along the way… Reid Hoffman, chairman and president of products for LinkedIn once said “if you’re not embarrassed about your first release, then you launched too late.”

As Cambrian House releases the first in a long list of new features to our community, we know we’re going to feel the growing pains. The pain of assumptions, the pain of bruised egos when you point out bugs we accidentally overlooked at 2am when the Red Bull stock was low… But we’d rather release fast and release often to give the community what YOU need to work together on your own world-changing ideas. We can spit polish as we go along with your feedback.

Many of our updates are “under the hood” changes that will make the process of submitting ideas, networking with other members, working on ventures and hosting projects simpler and smoother. Other changes are more noticeable, like pages that reflect our vision and crowdsource model. We invite you to look through the changes and give us your feedback!

What’s new?

Coming Soon:

…We believe that these are steps in the right direction to becoming the Home of Crowdsourcing.
Check out the changes, then stand on your soap box and tell us what you think: The good, the bad, the ugly, and the brilliant.