New Technologies and Web Services Make it Easy to Start an Internet Business – Is That Good?
It is again a dreamy period of time for web entrepreneurs. As technology continues to improve, with information becoming ever more standardized and easily accessible, related costs continue to diminish the barriers to entry for new web startups to extreme minimal levels. It takes only certain knowledge and a few bucks to get started with a web business. These low barriers to entry are great for startups. Seeking out further capital can come later. But good investors know that this also means any startup with such low barriers is an easy target for competition. Furthermore, once the business is established, protecting it from competitors and newer innovations continues to grow harder.
“It’s a Good Idea” Syndrome
You have a “good idea” and you just want to do it. And in today’s world you CAN do it without huge investments. Hobbies continue to transform into legitimate businesses at an alarming rate. The bad part is the business model is now often being left behind. If you have a good idea, then by all means proceed with it. Just remember to establish what you want out of it. Is it an additional revenue stream, a quick addition to your resume, or something you see becoming your full time job? At least determine your goals before diving into something new.
For those building up existing platforms, namely web services, there are issues with using these web services as a practical business model. The “Who controls the business” issue is critical and often a concern only after the business is launched. It is a good practice you utilize web services that are offered by multiple vendors and easily interchangeable. If the web service you utilize is only offered by one vendor and your entire business is based on it, then ensure you have a good working relationship, your vision aligns with theirs, and you have a solid contract.
Keeping an Eye on the Industry
It has grown hard to keep up with all the new innovations from web entrepreneurs. To keep up to date with what is happening in the Web 2.0 arena you can tune into sites like TechCrunch and Mashable. TechCrunch and Mashable provide thorough coverage of Web 2.0 launches, but generally they cover products of which they have an optimistic view of and provide only a short overview. This makes it hard to weed out businesses that have a serious shot and those that will fall apart. You might also want to hear what the other side is saying. If you are looking for analysis, sarcasm, and more of a “realist” standpoint you can check out Dead 2.0. One article recently written there I would suggest is 11 Suggestions For Not Being a Dot-Com Bomb. Another site you may want to check out is Disconnect The Dots. This is my brother’s blog which provides general analysis, sarcastic, and often a philosophical view of some of the Web 2.0 happenings.
Ultimately I see all of this new technology as being an opportunity for web entrepreneurs. While I don’t know what the future holds for us, I hope this tidbit helps provide a few pointers to those new to the space, specifically in the web service arena.
Technorati Tags: startup, entrepreneur, web entrepreneur, web 2.0, web startup
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A question like this is kind of like anything else on the web these days.
Semantic markup and microformats make it easier to make content more meaningful and transformable into useful data that can plug into applications we already use. But of course this makes content stealing, scraping, plagiarism, spamming, and splogging even easier and sometimes dangerous.
All this technology is great, but we’re becoming to dependent on it. I KNOW that’s not a good thing. Most businesses don’t have contingency plans. How often does the IT guy walk in and say “Fire Computers Down Drill!” flick a switch and shut down the network for the day?
Advertising-driven business models aren’t good and an influx of startups with plenty of cash and NO real business model isn’t so good either. Lots of free services are nice, but how nice will it be when none of us can get jobs for years because these half-wit hacks didn’t learn from the first time the tech market tanked? The only thing we’ll be getting free is food at the soup kitchen and a nice cardboard apartment in the gutter.
And I’m feeling positive today, heh.
Jā