Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
39 lines (27 loc) · 3.62 KB

28-02-2023-long-haul.md

File metadata and controls

39 lines (27 loc) · 3.62 KB
Raw

For the Long Haul

Date: 28-02-2023
Author: Dave Mackey

Join the Conversation

I'd welcome your feedback, criticisms, suggestions, random thoughts, etc. at: https://hachyderm.io/@davidshq/109942934013138459

A Long History

I've been thinking about search and how it could be improved using human augmentation for quite some time (~2005). For a number of years I didn't build a search engine because I was convinced that Google or some other upstart would build it.

At times it looked like it might happen:

  • Google took a few steps in that direction with SearchWiki but it was deprecated after a few years and was never collaborative.
  • I loved and used Zakta (also created SearchTeam) for several years but Zakta was unable to gain the traction it needed to survive.
  • Wikia Search looked promising, especially with it's connection to Jimmy Wales (founder of that somewhat successful collaborative project known as Wikipedia) but died practically before it began.
  • Blekko, which had some of the right features but didn't appeal to the masses (imho) with it's slashtags implementation (and then was acquired by IBM) killing off further innovations.
  • I even pondered if something like StumbleUpon might become a search engine, but that was in it's heyday before it became spammy and abandoned.

It's 18 years later and the world still lacks human augmented search.

The Short Haul Opportunity

I think I could build a basic prototype of this engine1 that would be impressive enough to garner users and funding. My guesstimate is that it would take 1 year of me working full-time on the project and $100k (salary, hosting, third-party contributors, etc.). That said, I don't have an extra $100k lying around. If someone wants to throw that sort of cash my way, I'll start working on it tomorrow.

That said, the more likely path is the long haul...

The Long Haul

I'm 39. HBR published an encouraging article several years ago (2018) about the average age at which successful founders started their company and reported that it is 45.2 That seems like a reasonable long-haul goal (~5 years) - it's certainly a lot less than the 18 years I've been thinking about human augmented search.

Testing the Waters

I'm also considering testing the waters occasionally over the next few years to see if I could crowdfund the short haul. I think the possibility of raising $100k via crowdfunding is fairly decent. To raise $100k I'd need 1000 backers at $100/each (one-time).

If you've run a successful crowdfunding campaign, I'd love to hear about it!

Join the Conversation

I'd welcome your feedback, criticisms, suggestions, random thoughts, etc. at: https://hachyderm.io/@davidshq/109942934013138459

Footnotes

Footnotes

  1. I'm not planning on building from scratch, there are existing open source search engines that would provide a great foundation to build on, thus the relatively short period of time. ↩

  2. Technology moves fast - sometimes. Sometimes it languishes. Right now all the buzz is around AI in search. IMHO, this continues to take search in the wrong direction. But if someone else does build human augmented sdearch, I'll celebrate it and use it...and if it isn't committed to the principels I've outlined elsewhere (e.g. open source, open data, open algorithm, profit sharing, etc.) I'll still build my own. ↩