Serendipity Is A Trillion Dollar Idea

Jason Calacanis has a very inspiring interview of Brian Wong (founder of Kiip.me) that is a good watch - check it out if you haven't already.

When describing the exact 'moment' when he got the idea to capture 'moments' in smartphone games, Brian makes a reference to Dan Ariely's wonderful book Predictably Irrational - and the whole idea of how humans respond favorably to incentives with an element of serendipity built-in.

There are many examples already of how this specific behavioral pattern has been tapped into - Stumbleupon comes to mind. But that is just the tip of the iceberg - remember the spark created by ChatRoulette? That is another example. Kiip.me is an obvious example as well - there is a part of the human mind that responds very favorably to Serendipity. It is an idea that is centuries old - but is just getting killed in this age of big data.

In the early days of the Internet, people spent hours chatting with strangers in online chatrooms - they were exhibiting behavior that sounded unreasonable - it was essentially just a proof of this peculiar behavioral pattern. While there have been many attempts to tap into this, this is an area that has not been explored thoroughly yet.

Serendipity is a trillion dollar idea. And by definition, it will remain a huge opportunity forever.