Chemistry?

I went to the WPI Venture Forum last night. Basically it's a lot of old people with money giving advice and listening to propositions from other people who want money to do something "new". It was intimidating. It was also a very odd situation. I perceive startups as a bunch of 20 somethings with no money trying to get a great product out the door, but most of these people were in their 40s and 50s and even 60s. I'm not sure they qualified as entrepreneurs or venture capitalists or why they were all there. One older guy asked about young people trying to do stuff on their own and failing because of lack of chemistry at their job. Young people are motivated but have so few skills, I guess.

It was also very interesting to see all of the elevator pitches. Every one in my mind had been done or did not interest me. Why would I want a second life in the virtual world. I've read about it in books but this real one is enough for me. I also like the linking advertisers to people who want to be advertised to... doesn't Google already do that based on keywords in the page I'm reading?

So on the one hand it made me feel a little better about my ideas because I think they are really revolutionary. It also made me think that someone not in the mountaineering industry might look at my stuff and see it as the same as everything else. There lies the challenge: finding someone who most likely doesn't understand mountaineering to give me 100,000 dollars to make this stuff. Better yet, finding someone who does know about mountaineering to give me money and come on as CEO or CFO so I can just be CTO.