That's a great writeup Justin, but it would lend you even more credibility if you mentioned the time you gave up - Kiko. The only reason I've seen cited in interviews is that Google jumped into the market and conquered it overnight. I don't believe that at all. I think if you stuck to your guns, you could kick Google calendar's ass and be successful despite the initial competitive setback, much like the great examples you give in your article.
Did you get bored of working on Kiko or were you looking for a bigger, crazier idea?
I think we could have made something happen with Kiko if we had stuck with it. However, I honestly don't think we were ready as a team to make it happen -- we didn't really understand the market (two kids right of college who never used calendars!). We spent a lot of time trying to come up with ideas for how to make Kiko work (one of those brainstorming sessions led to Justin.tv), but just couldn't think of anything we should was compelling.
And that's exactly the kind of thing Justin argues is just another excuse to give up. I have this heresy that one of the most common reasons for startup failure is founder boredom, but few founders ever admit it.
I can't find the meaning of heresay. Maybe my grammatical usage of heresy in the sentence is incorrect, but I do mean it in this way - http://www.thefreedictionary.com/heresy
(Sorry, my initial Google search automatically replaced "heresay" with "hearsay" in my search. I hate that Google has started doing this, instead of the old "did you mean x?")
Did you get bored of working on Kiko or were you looking for a bigger, crazier idea?