The future is really, really bright! Today, I had the oppor­tu­nity to sit down with my com­pany for a meet­ing with Tickle Founder/CEO James Cur­rier. Tickle was for­merly eMode.com (if you don�t know), which was bought by Mon­ster World­wide last May. eMode.com, or should I now say Tickle, pretty much gave out tests for per­son­al­ity, IQ, favorite num­ber, your opposite-sex type, what kind of dog you are, etc. The list is pretty much end­less even back then.

Mean­while, even though the time allot­ted for the com­pany sit-down went over, way over, I really learned a lot. More than I was expect­ing. Rein­forc­ing what Mon­ster Founder Jeff Tay­lor quoted a few weeks back (in his own sit-down ses­sion with us), “Big ideas don’t cost no more than small ideas.” Bottom-line, GO BIG OR GO HOME.

But that�s were it�s some­what an argu­ment as well. Some great com­pa­nies now started with small ideas as well; so it can go both ways too. But what I’m get­ting from it is, don’t be restricted to think big in the beginning—or think and dream at all.

One thing that I found very inter­est­ing from James’ pre­sen­ta­tion was that the Inter­net is just barely get­ting started. New tech­nolo­gies are being thought of every­day. Some of these to note are: AJAX, CSS2, XML, RSS and Atom Feeds, etc. Yes, some­times we think that all great ideas (that can make us mil­lions) are thought of already. But that�s one thought process we shouldn’t bar us from extend­ing our cre­ativ­ity and imagination.

For exam­ple, look at the suc­cess story of Google. Before it, there was Yahoo, Lycos, AltaVista, etc. But how did it become suc­cess­ful? You may ask. It was through peo­ple; and small talk. Seri­ously, I didn’t find out about Google through ads or any­thing like that. It was through one of you. “You should try Google out. It’s really sim­ple to use.” Right? Right.

Virility—to say it in all in one word. It�s just funny to how this is true with Google’s recent prod­uct, Gmail. How did peo­ple find out about this? Well, it all started prob­a­bly when the Google peo­ple went to a party and met some peo­ple from Blog­ger and said,

Hey, we’d like to push our new email sys­tem out. How about if we invite your (Blog­ger) mem­bers to try it out?

So the idea sparked. Blog­ger mem­bers got the Gmail invites. Then they were sold on eBay for $100–200 the first few days. I think it�s those damn geeks that wanted to reserve their new email address. Pretty much get first pick from the creme of the crop.

Any­ways, I am learn­ing a lot from these com­pany sit-downs. It shows: how peo­ple react to busi­ness; how peo­ple react in busi­ness; how ideas are made, and how those ideas make other ideas; etc. The list of the things I’ve learned so far has exceeded my expec­ta­tions in the past three months I’ve been here; and the fact that there is more to come makes it even more excit­ing and a priv­i­lege to work for ‘em. That, and to serve those peo­ple who pro­tects our freedom—the troops.

From my mind to yours, keep think­ing. Keep explor­ing. Use your imag­i­na­tion. Net­work your­selves and don�t be scared to fail or fall from those small and/or big ideas. After all, we fall “so we can learn to pick our­selves back up.”