Where Are The Game Changers?
Here’s the lifecycle for new companies that launch in the tech (*cough* The Valley) industry:
- Cool, new service comes out, people like it.
- The PR machine ramps up, this service is heralded as “the next big thing”.
- People want to jump on the bandwagon so they create piggyback services that either use its API or data in some way to do something auxiliary. Or they take the original concept and create a copycat service.
- Venture capitalists finally get wind of what’s going on, invest in some of the biggest of these bandwagon ideas and talk about how they’re the new game changers.
- More people create auxiliary services looking to cash in on the VC interest, these services fail to latch on.
- The cool, original service jumps the shark, people create a cool, new service and people like it, go back to Step 2.
Some companies who defined Step 1, off the top of my head, were Upcoming (what’s going on locally), Facebook (social network), Flickr (Web 2.0 photo sharing), and Twitter (what you’re doing). Out of those four, only one launched in the past few years, the other three are “old” in the age of the Internet.
Web 2.0, as defined by people who obviously got their definition from someone smarter than themselves, is about sharing, remixing, and connecting. Or something like that. Too bad all this sharing and remixing doesn’t really make much of a real company with real revenues, and unless you’re a Big Dog in the social networking world, the whole “connecting” thing means you cobbled together a few APIs into a service that’s pre-revenue.
Sure, new companies have started up based on new ideas, but they’re unsexy and haven’t changed the whole playing field like other companies have. Twitter created a whole new medium for communication. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they’re a game changer. The dozen web apps that let you manage your finances online? Not so much. The dozen more Ajax homepage portals? Nope, not them either.
What companies or services do you think are, or are going to be, game changers?
Posted January 21, 2008 with 6 Comments
Alex # —
Youtube was one of course.
Twitter absolutely is.
There are a few ramping up, all in closed beta, that are semantic data aggregators. Something like a smart super-portal, but I think they are still a ways off from being viable.
Netflix/iTunes renting of movies via the net. If apple does enough marketing and starts adding to their library at a good rate it’ll change a lot.
Michael # —
Mike I think you are forgetting the step where established companies pick and choose the useful technologies and integrate them into their own websites.
Web 2.0 has brought us some awesome technologies but successful business people are business people and engineers probably don’t have the chops to run a successful startup.
Unless like you said, you can deliver to a web only audience. That site plenty of fish isn’t really ashamed to admit what it is about and what kind of people they cater to, thus there is an understanding and business is awesome.
Jeff # —
Michael, I partially agree with your comment. The part I agree with is that Web 2.0 has brought us some awesome technologies.
While its partially true engineers “might” not have the business “knack” or “sense” to run a giant company from a pure business perspective, I think most engineers could damn well manage and run a team much better then said “business managers or marketers”.
I have seen first hand how business owners in a startup literally throw money away at many critical moments instead of harnessing such funding to truly make a big difference, not just in the employees but in the company. The marketing team literally waste hundreds of thousands of dollars on the drop of a dime versus thinking “long and hard” about where that money could be spent.
I will say it another way…the startup I am at literally goes through $1.5 million dollars a month.
Some of that is legitimate expenses, a part of it is inflated salaries to people that don’t deserve them, and another part is just wasting money on ideas that won’t see the light of day.
I guess my point is…I have yet to find business owners that truly understand how to successfully run a company from a business/financial standpoint, but also truly understanding the technology behind what their company is about.
While someone in business or marketing has a nice $140,000 salary, the engineering staff who works dozens more hours per week then the business side only generate salaries ranging from $35,000 - $80,000. Yea, that is nice.
Sorry, just wanted to comment and rant at the same time
Mike Rundle # —
Michael:
They actually do that? I thought they just acquired startups and left them to die like Jaiku, Dodgeball, etc.?
YouTube certainly was too, not sure how I missed that one.
And if your startup pays marketing people $140k and engineers $35k then ….. get the heck outta dodge!
Michael # —
@Jeff: Yeah well not all businesspeople are good businesspeople but more often than not, I usually find that engineers don’t make good businesspeople.
Remember what happened to that Engineer Commander in Battlestar Galactica.
Another thing…those “business managers or marketers” you speak of sort of remind me of those hack businesspeople who trick unsuspecting people into running their businesses. Sorta shady and like a con man.
@Mike: lol what I meant is that a company will see something like tagging and then create their own version of it on their site.
ah let’s take a digg idea of voting. before digg the idea was unheard of but of course a tech oriented site would probably never make it into the mainstream.
So then take a look at the new AOL News and you will see that you can vote up or down the stories. Bamn! digg like technology but at the same time a big company like AOL couldn’t really acquire something like digg. why would they?
Why do that when it is cheaper to develop a similar technology in house? And it’s not like digg has a patent on the idea of voting. They have an algorithm. Nor does anyone have a patent on tagging.
It is unfortunate but we the geeks invent the new technologies but are unable to participate when it starts to catch on. I mean look at how web geeks are refusing to use Facebook?
Jeff # —
I have thought about it
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