WorldOs: A Product Nobody Cared About

WorldOS was a P2P infrastructure provider. Lucas tried to productize a buzzword, but was not solving the right problem.

United States

Technology

Not Practical

Lucas Gonze

March 16, 2018

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Hello Lucas! What's your background, and what are you currently working on?

I was a programmer for about ten years, then a manager for another ten. My niche is the intersection of tech and music, and I’m currently working on data services related to music.

What was WorldOS about?

WorldOS was a P2P infrastructure provider. The time was 2003 when there was a new wave of P2P apps like Napster, Gnutella, SETI@home, and BitTorrent.

How did you grow WorldOS?

I coded the first version on my own, then recruited partners to work with me. One was a business person whose job was fundraising and product marketing. The other was a designer whose job was making things look good.

The company was funded on my savings, which came from my previous business, which had made a nice profit on outsourced web development.

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Which was the problem with WorldOS? How did you realize?

I was in a good early position on a largish tech trend but misunderstood that could lead to customer demand. I was trying to productize a buzzword.

What were the mistakes you made?

I didn’t talk to customers nearly enough. My vision didn’t solve the right problem.

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What were your biggest disadvantages?

In retrospect, I was building tech for tech’s sake. I thought I was being a hard-nosed realist, but in reality, I was making something because I thought it was beautiful. My illusions and vanity got in my way.

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If you had to start over, what would you do differently?

There is an endless number of little things I did wrong, but few big ones. More school would have been useful - couple more years of computer science, accounting, sales training.