We’ve been working on Plum for a while now, and it’s paying off: we’ve been invited to show our stuff at Demo 2006. Being able to launch there is really cool, and we’re working even harder than usual to get everything ready to show on-stage, and to get ready for our limited beta release.
–hans peter
There are many reasons to start companies. Perhaps we observe inefficiencies and opportunities in the market and realize that we can build a better solution. Or we see how something could work so much better and try to make it happen. Or we want to work in an environment where we can have real influence or hope to make lots of money. All perfectly legitimate reasons.
I start companies for two reasons. First, because I want to change the world for the better—even just a little bit—and second, because it lets me work with dedicated, great people.
Plum was born because making it easier for people to capture their knowledge and share it with their communities could help make the world a better, more connected place.
For me, a personal story illustrates this. In 1999, my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and my siblings and I (at the time living in Anchorage, San Francisco, New York, and Oslo) sought information and insight. We used the web for research and email to share our findings with each other. Our research led us to become informed and armed with questions and even some suggestions as we discussed his condition and care with the doctors and our parents. I firmly believe that the information and knowledge we shared helped both extend my dad’s life and maximize the quality of his last days with us.
Two years later, a good friend emailed me. Her boyfriend’s dad had been diagnosed with the same cancer, and she remembered that we had done tons of research and wondered if I would share it with her. I pulled out my tweezers and went through my old email, but sadly was only able to recover a small amount of the information we had gathered. I would gladly have shared the collected information and resources we had pulled together with anyone who had an interest in the subject. But other than hand-crafting a personal web site to collect the links, the emails, and the additional notes we found and shared with each other, there was no simple way for me to do so. Our cumulative knowledge and information was lost.
The next time someone emails me to ask “do you still have the research you did on this topic?” I want to be able to simply point them to the collected information. One reason I jumped back into the startup world is because with Plum, such collected knowledge and information will be easy to make and keep accessible. We’re still evolving and refining the service, working to make it simpler than ever to collect and share all kinds of knowledge and information that we care about, stumble across, or need. I think this has the power to change the way we use the net, and I hope it will change the world, if even just a little bit.
-hans peter
