Heck yeah it's a rocket boat.
The premise behind Jelli is to allow people to influence and control what they’re listening to on the radio — a great idea whose time has definitely come. Jateen is clearly passionate not only about the service he is building but his people and his team as well. If you’re an engineer interested in this space, my advice: go talk to him. Cool stuff.
What’s really great about Jateen’s company is that they are focused on taking something that, let’s face it, is terrible (radio) and they’re attempting to make it better. Or, in other words: Jelli is taking a thing that sucks, and they’re going to try to make it not suck.
Now, because this is a pseudo-professional blog in which I get to randomly interpret ideas I think about and break them down into parts, I’ll now randomly interpret this idea I’ve been thinking about and break it down into parts. Ready? Hoorah.
So, technically-speaking, what’s the best way to take a thing that sucks and make it not suck? Well, seems to me if you run a product design or engineering group, there are three things to keep in mind:
First, in order to make things not suck, you have to recognize one key fact. Everything sucks. Really. Everything. Our toothbrush bristles gets all ratty after, what, a few weeks? Our paper coffee cups from Starbucks leak sometimes. Our politicians occasionally think it’s a good idea to blow things up. This is not good. (And, by the way, yes, I love Mr. Jobs too, nobody can pull off the mock turtleneck like that guy. But my iPhone can’t make a phone call, and if I get a scratch on my iPad I have to buy a new one. So, yes, things that start with “i” also suck. Sorry.)
On the flipside, however, for those of us who work in the tech world, we’re lucky because our job is to play with these amazing, uber-powerful, kick-the-crap-out-of-everything toys that can actually change the world faster than bloggers can write dubious metaphors about how technology can change the world. Or, to put it another way, it’s almost like if you were stranded on a desert island, but in addition to the requisite palm tree with two coconuts, there was also a rocket speedboat factory on that island and you happened to be trained in building rocket speedboats.
So then, of course combining these two ideas will lead to some great results. In fact, if instead of having more of an software-oriented bent, this blog were more of a blue-shirt-and-khaki-pant-MBA-type site, we might even say this is a situation where “1+1=3,” although that of course is not actually math. But, hey, we’re talking e-powerment through synergistic solutions here, people. So we’ll put it together this way. If everything sucks, but you have essentially unlimited power, then the only thing left is to pick the biggest problem you can find and go solve that. Because nothing is off-limits. Not even a hundred-year-old technology with decades-old business models.
I’m a big music fan: seeing live shows is a thrill to me. Finding a great new band is a thrill. Hearing someone I’ve never heard before — even if they’re not quite great, yet — is a thrill. And radio is supposed to be a way to hear great music. Except, well, it sucks.
So kudos to Jateen and team for tackling a big problem. And to all the other great rocket speedboat-makers out there.
