[emmett]

If I had to guess, I'd say that they have a larger vision that what you see today is just the first step of.

Remember that Microsoft started with Basic on the Altair. Just because a startup seems unimpressive when they release their first product doesn't mean that they're not building in an important space.

[flyosity]

Every time someone says that I'm reminded of Color. Every article said they were going to do 50 new things that were coming after the iPhone app was a big success (they needed data to do the 50 other things) but when the iPhone app tanked so did the genesis of the other ideas.

[emmett]

Not every startup which seems to have a limited first product goes on to do great things.

But of the startups which have gone on to do great things, many have had limited first products.

Therefore, it's not much of a commentary on a new startup to say their first product is limited, because you don't know where they're headed. It's better to focus on whether the first product is good at what it does and makes people happy.

[wavephorm]

But if they are so busy building a movie notification system, how will they have time to create a programming language for a new computing platform?