Uncov is a bad idea

Uncov.com is an unfortunate thing. The editors, Kyle Shank, Ted Dziuba, and Matt Kent, are recent graduates of my alma mater, RIT.

RIT has a great co-op program and a strong regional reputation, but it has never gained much traction as a start-up mill like the big guns: Stanford, MIT, and Berkeley. Kyle and Matt are two of the developers of RadRails, and I was happy to see the press they generated for the school.

Fairly recently RadRails was transfered to Aptana (I incorrectly thought the rights were sold) and they moved to California and started a new company called Persai. They've bitten off the complex domain of personal recommendation engines, and I hope they can pull it off.

And this is the problem with Uncov. Realistically the chance of success of any startup is pretty low, and by spewing bile on top of bile on Uncov, they have set the bar sky high for themselves. If they miss it, they will be fodder for the readers of their own blog.

I'll admit I don't know much about starting companies, but it seems few start by setting unattainable goals. They reach a modest goal, set the bar slightly higher, meet that goal, etc., until they gain a level of self sustainability.

Because of their outlandish attacks on Uncov, every misstep will be scrutinized with the eyes of Uncov. I just can't imagine how this could be a good thing.

If they are serious about Persai, I think they should find some way to gracefully exit the bile spewing market. In fact I think I'll take my own advice on that one.