I don't know, he doesn't sound like he would've given a damn about PageRank if Sergey and Larry had gone to talk to him back then. He might have dismissed the first version of Google because they didn't index as many pages as the leading search engines. Look at his own example:
> Another company tonight that I met showed me a similar app, when I started it up (I do that while you talk to me) it gave me an error. Gone.
For all we know that company might have created some revolutionary technology but, who knows, their build system is still crappy and they forgot to change a symlink somewhere?
he doesn't sound like he would given a damn about PageRank
He wouldn't have. If probably wouldn't have -- if they pitched the idea but the site wasn't working. But the first time I used Google I said, "Wow! This is vastly superior to anything else."
If I understand him correctly, he's not saying, "Don't launch until it's perfect." He's saying, "Differentiate yourself." He can't see that if your site doesn't work or it's just Existing Site X with a couple more features. An MVP works. An MVP shows how it is Significantly Different. In fact, that's exactly the purpose of an MVP -- not to show that you could build and publish.
But the first time I used Google I said, "Wow! This is vastly superior to anything else."
That was exactly my experience. I first became curious about Google because it was spidering my personal website, well before when Google became the name of the project. By tracing back where the Web spider came from, I tried out searches, and by the time Google was Google, I was recommending it to all my friends as much superior to AltaVista (the king of the hill in search in those days), and all the more superior to the also-rans in search. Being substantially better at something is what every startup needs to achieve.
re your point: "For all we know that company might have created some revolutionary technology but, who knows, their build system is still crappy and they forgot to change a symlink somewhere?"
if you're prepping for a meeting with such an influential person (regardless of your thoughts about him, his opinion carries weight in tech circles) wouldn't you triple check everything and make sure it's ready to go so you don't blow your one big shot? in that situation people should be prepared and have a backup device ready with the app loaded to shove in his face instead so he could still mes around with it
Well, I'm basically agreeing with drusenko. Scoble's advice applies to people who want to pitch him, not necessarily to startups in general, and especially not early stage startups.
> Another company tonight that I met showed me a similar app, when I started it up (I do that while you talk to me) it gave me an error. Gone.
For all we know that company might have created some revolutionary technology but, who knows, their build system is still crappy and they forgot to change a symlink somewhere?