What if you could expand your own thoughts by collecting everyone else’s and connecting them to your mind? IMINDI wants to help you do just that by creating a “mind map” that connects thoughts and ideas.
The startup presented today during the Collaboration session of TechCrunch50. You can watch the video of its presentation here.
IMINDI’s mind map is chart showing thoughts and those that branch off from them. Users can click on thoughts to see which thoughts on connected to them. IMINDI calls it the “journey of thought” that will help connect people and share their information.
The service, which launches today, can be used integrated into other sites like Facebook or Yahoo. However, it exists mainly as a standalone site.
Expert Panelists
Don Dodge:
“What’s the business model? IMINDI says it will create a database of thoughts without a search engine that will have commercial messages will be able to enter the company’s “goldmine program”. It’s an advertising model.”
Answer: If you think about Google’s business model, essentially they are selling us a search engine, but they are selling a database of thoughts to their advertisers. To sell this database of thoughts, they had to create a search engine. We are building a database of minds. We have built a system that will allow people who have commercial messages, they will be able to enter into the GoldMinds program. Advertising centered model.
Mark Cuban:
“Maybe I’m missing something, but that just sounded like the biggest bunch of bullshit I’ve ever heard in my life. You want millions of people to create a virtual decision tree, and create a virtual mind meld, and then get advertisers to mine the virtual mind meld. Why would you want to invest the time?”
Answer: There will be a percentage of people. There are certain people who like to do this sort of thing, and certain people who don’t. Hopefully we can get a critical mass.
Mark Cuban:
“Let me give you a suggestion, don’t make it a mass application, make it a corporate application,. Then all you have to do is find one kindred messed up soul in an organization and you can sell them anything.”
Don Dodge:
“This is rocket science applied to the wrong science. Apply this science to something that people care about and the enterprise is where people care about it. If you try to solve this problem by helping guys score with girls, but this generalized kind of thing isn’t going to work.”
Kevin Rose:
“Tags and tag combinations are useful when you’re tying data to it is useful. But this doesn’t pass my basic, will my mom and dad use this test. All I see is a bunch of my own personal map of what I’m thinking and there doesn’t look like there’s any data attached to it. I’m fairly geeky and I think that’s WAY out there and I wouldn’t want to do this. I think your best bet is to create something on top of delicious.”
Roelof:
“I’m investing a lot of time and I don’t know what’s at the end of the tunnel. You need to have something really really compelling because people are really lazy, which makes us efficient.”