Many people in startups these days trying to be “the next” Instagram, Pinterest, Path, Foursquare or whatever.

The main point many people (including me) miss is that making products for masses is not for three-kids-with-zero-money job. You literally need strong connections with online press and a team to gain a traction and growth –and of course several millions of dollars.

Think about Foursquare, before it came out, people did not need to publish their locations. But now it feels that you “need” to publish your location. Getting on the daily habit zone of a user is pretty challenging – your competitors are Facebook, Twitter etc. This is usually the case with social startups where there is not any real problem solved and the challenge is to attract users and made them love your product.

As Adii Pienaar said, startups shouldn’t follow trends, instead, they should get what is good for the product out of trends. If your startup can’t grow by itself without a Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest integration, then clearly something is wrong.

Build your service/app on top of the real problem and customer needs – not for some online media traction. Do something real, wash cars, summon cabs, arrange flights, whatever. Now, find a problem, keep iterating, find the real problem and sell something. The world just needs more products like these.