I have a theory for easy business success:
Sketchy always leads the way, so all you have to do is take a sketchy product make it non-sketchy, and you tend to hit the late-now, near-future sweet spot right on the head.
Example? Take Napster (who always wanted to sell, not steal, songs) and turn it into iTunes. Take Classmates (who buy way, way too many banner ads to avoid sketchiness) and turn it into Facebook. Funny about Classmates, Ripl's founders came from there.
Ripl is a new social network bundled with a content - and advertisement - serving client app. This is not worlds away from Gator/Zango/180.
The client app. in a social network context is really cool because it allows for a much richer content sharing experience when compared to a web-only network - plus they can push ads to your desktop (hooray!).
I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, lots of ads are cool - bud.tv is at least as good as UGC videos.
The main reason why I am bullish on Ripl is Mike Crill. You won't find his name on the Ripl site, but Ripl is listed on his site - Atlas Accelerator.
Mike is nominally the CFO, but he generally fills a much larger, getting-things-done role. Mike radiates energy and acumen, and while I haven't yet
had the privilege of working with him, it's definitely something that is on my list.
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