One of the best times for seeds to grow is after a forest fire. There’s plenty of nutrient-rich ash and daylight.
The same principle applies to startups. Many times, you can find great opportunities in the wake of spectacular flameouts. Palm revolutionized handheld computing after the spectacular failure of Go. Zappos built a billion-dollar business after other dot bombs like eToys flames out.
What space do you think represents fertile ash today? Solar? Twitter clients?
Clearly the music industry is one area that's still ripe.
Solar is a failed technology and will always be – just a complete waste of time, energy, and MONEY. Better to just flush money down the toilet.
A Myspace LIKE service (going back to myspace 1.0) is definitely needed. It was horrid looking and the code was a mess apparently – but people loved it and used it, and had the 32 new teams involved not mettled so heavily in the design and steering the ship, it would still be a very viable service that many would still use. Wasted on trying to be all things to all people – when all anyone wanted was just a "Myspace".
Twitter clients … so stupid to build your whole business around or off of another business. These people are just idiots in my view. But then, I've always subscribed to the idea that YOU could do what THEY do … meaning, why build off of someone else — BE that someone. Especially when millions are being thrown your way?! Some of those stupid clients were funded with MORE money than I think Twitter ever hoped to be funded with in the beginning. But what do they do? Put all their eggs in the one basket they have no control over. Idiots.
/rant – sorry.