The X Factor for tech: here’s what to expect

Simon Cowell and will.i.am are planning an X Factor-style talent show ‘to find the next Bill Gates’. Milo Yiannopoulos explains why it’s such a brilliant idea.

It’s the stuff dreams are made of: Simon Cowell and will.i.am are in talks to create an X Factor format show to discover the tech mogul of tomorrow. So what kind of outlandish pitches can we expect?

Online social capital

How about a company that takes the number of wallies on social media that repost your Hitler parody videos and lame puns and give you a number that tells the world how fantastically clever, influential and important you are? Then you can take that number and put it on your CV and ask companies to give you stuff for free because you’re such a big deal.

What the judges will say: Come off it. No one is that egotistical and retarded.

The women’s social network

A place for girls to gossip, bitch and – most thrillingly – rate the men they’ve dated! The copy and design will be hilariously outmoded and the concept will offend women everywhere, but politically correct reviewers, along with people who want to fuck the foxy CEO, will celebrate it as a triumph for equality.

What the judges will say: This is a spoof, surely?

Clones

Look at a big, profitable business and just do exactly what they do. You won’t be able to beat them on CPA, or any other metric that matters, but you can spunk a decent quantity of venture cash away for a few years and give 7 developers jobs for a while. Oh, and you get to go to lots of conferences and parties and be really famous and get in Evening Standard features and all that stuff.

What the judges will say: Sorry, PROfounders Capital is up the road.

Lifecasting for profit

Take a middlingly successful fashion blog or loan service and pretend you can make it scale across tens of thousands of customers. Pick a hot CEO, ideally a girl with a harrowing life story, to appear in the press coverage. Alternatively, lie about your life, wear borrowed clothes and take pictures of yourself baking cupcakes and outside Parliament. Sell ads.

What the judges will say: Yeah, you and the next 4,999 girls who are bored of their marketing jobs.

Get normal people to prop up VC

Here’s a doozy. The venture capital industry is failing, so why don’t we get idiot amateur investors to burn their cash on bonkers start-up ideas? Let’s make sure the selection committee has no one with any investing or entrepreneurial experience whatsoever. And when it all goes wrong and the lawsuits start flooding in, hey, we can point them to those emboldened terms and conditions!

What the judges will say: This is deeply fucking immoral. Get out.

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London-based venture capitalist Max Niederhofer, tweeting in a personal capacity, said this morning: ”The adverse selection on the Simon Cowell thing will be a hoot.”

Maybe. But will anything on the show be as daft as some of the venture-funded start-ups already in east London?