I have a line on the uber-minimalist front page for mahasoftware.com: “maha::software is about creating mobile applications that help you connect with people.”

That statement has purposefully been left pretty general. You can fit a lot of things under that umbrella. Social networking, volunteerism. But it’s also specific enough to eliminate some things. Puzzle games. Flashlight apps.

I’m not trying to be secretive or stealth about it. Like I said in maha::values, I’m starting the company without a Big Idea. I do have a lot of product ideas, though— some of which are relatively small in scope, and some which are pretty big in scale. Some of the small, focused ideas have the potential to grow into more. Some of the big ones have the potential to fall flat on their faces. Lack of ideas is not the problem— it’s how to pick. I’ve got some clarity on how to approach this problem. I’ll share my thoughts on that with you in a future post.

Also, I’m pretty excited about mobile. What better way to write software that connects people than for devices that people have with them everywhere, all the time?

I want to share my vision of what maha::software is going to be about. I’m going to try to do something a little strange here. I’m not going to start from an idea, or a business plan, or a brilliant paper napkin sketch. I’m going to start with values. To answer my self-proposed question “What do I care about?” in Thoughts on Startup School, I’ll answer:

• Make things that help people connect with others.
• Be an active member of the community.
• Operate with integrity and transparency.
• Make people happier.

The idea is, everything that maha::software does will be done with these values in mind.

This list will probably change. But I think the core ideals and intentions will stay the same. Is it crazy to start a company without a Big Idea?

Paul Graham, in his essay on essays, makes a beautiful insight on why we should bother writing anything:

“Expressing ideas helps to form them.”

The more I write, the more I get this. I’ve experienced this many times, ephemerally, and this sentence captures my intuition perfectly. To me, this means:

If you have a thought in your mind, write it.

If you have a picture in your mind, draw it.

If you have a song in your mind, compose it.

If you have a design in your mind, build it.

The journey of doing it, whatever “it” may be, will crystallize, expand, and perhaps completely transform what you see in your mind’s eye.