Thoughts for startups (no. 1)

Thomas Paine, British-born philosopher, French revolutionary and US founding father wrote any number of useful sayings, but I think this one is particularly apt for anyone trying to start a business that's on the leading edge:

"Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not YET sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favour; a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason." 

Commonsense, 1776

So for our startup, TwoTen, getting people to see that "family protection" when it comes to Internet filtering makes no sense, because age-appropriate is utterly not the same as "not adult". Not so much a formidable outcry, but definitely some denial - though the same people would object to film certificates being changed to simply "adult" and or not.

Thanks to Alex Kablanian for prompting this post.