[ryanwaggoner]

How many examples of successful startups can you name that fit that description? I think there are very, very few successful tech companies that had no analogue and couldn't have been explained in 1 or 2 sentences. Apple, Google, Dell, Facebook, Twitter, Github, Reddit, Zynga, etc, etc. They were all either a twist or improvement on an existing idea, or a combination of several ideas.

If you can't explain your idea in 10 seconds now, you probably won't be able to later. If people have to really play with it to understand what it is and how it'll be useful, you're doomed. See Google Wave.

[sprout]

Letting people play with it to find out what it is and how it'll be useful is exactly how Google, Facebook, Twitter, Github, Reddit, and Zynga got their start. Nobody was willing to pay for it out of the gate, and most people still aren't.

[ryanwaggoner]

That's a far cry from what you said. They all had analogues, and you could have explained them to someone before they existed. Perhaps it wouldn't have been clear just how much better they were, but they weren't completely original ideas that had never been done before and were impossible to explain.

[alexrodygin]

Can you quote how many hours Google founders spent talking to customers?

How many Twitter founders spent and why they still don't know the business model that will work?

Facebook started as somewhat of a ripp-off but actually people weren't willing to 'buy' it, hence these stories over IP that Facebook got into over the initial days