Ted Talk Monologue – Disrupting, American Style

“I know for a lot of young people out there the idea of graduating college and having to start at the bottom is daunting at best. I know it used to cause me a lot of anxiety until it dawned on me: this is America, the land of innovation. Americans don’t just sit around waiting for fate to smile on them, they make their own luck which is why I’m here today.

It was my third year at Stanford and I was stoned with my friends playing Halo IV when I said: “You know what sucks? Transportation.” Sounds silly, right? But think about it: having to Uber to the airport and then waiting in line and having to sit next to people and wait some more. What if I don’t want to spend a day getting to Europe or New York even? And that’s flying. Now if you drive, forget about it. It was taking me like eight hours jut to get from Palo to Newport, which is why I would usually just fly. There had to be an easier way.

And that’s when the idea hit: teleporters! I did a quick Google search and learned that no one had made one yet, which frankly, sounded kinda nuts. I mean, how could nobody think to start a teleporter company and turn the whole transportation industry on its head? Think about it, you could be in California one minute and New York the next. Then you could go to London to have fish and chips or maybe to Taiwan for Chinese food and then be back in Cali in time for Jimmy Fallon!

I knew I had a golden ticket here, but now came the hard part. I needed money and scientists. I was able to scrape together $40 MM from friends and family and hired some Indian exchange students to get to work. We started off small, trying to teleport a hamster from one end of the room to the other, but the technology proved to be harder that we thought.  After about six months we had what amounted to basically a zipline that went from one end of campus to the other. At this point I started to lose hope, when I had my second epiphany.

It could take maybe even years to get a teleporter working right and by that time I’d be too old to really enjoy it. Why not disrupt another arena, one that’s been almost as problematic as transportation: communication!  If you can’t actually go to places that are far away without a hassle, then the next best thing is to talk to people that are far away and maybe even see images of stuff that’s far away. Telephones have been around for hundreds of years and people still use them. Why? What is this, Mexico?

Enter Vydeotalkk. The solution to my problem was right in front of my eyes – literally – the whole time. I changed the Indian’s focus to figure out a way people could talk to other people on their computers while being able to see them at the same time. The concept was easy, instead of a phone call, you just Vydeotalkk your friend and you can see what they’re wearing and stuff like that. It was the next technological revolution.

We spent the next month pioneering the technology and as of today, people are doing this all the time. There are competitors sure, but all good businesses need competition to stay lean. Currently we have a App in the works that will bring Vydeotalkk to your mobile device allowing you to see anyone anywhere while talking to them at the same time! And this is how I created my own luck. I still have about $32 MM of seed money in the bank and by the time I graduate, I can safely say I won’t ever have to worry about finding a job.

The conclusion here is this: sure it’s hard to get a job out there. Sure it seems like all the good ideas are taken and there might not be much of a future. To that I say bull. You don’t have to be rich or go to Stanford, you could even go to state school. Just think hard about what the world needs and then the money and the scientists will come. It is literally that easy.”

– Brylen Walch