A VC - Latest Comments in Web Startups Are A Commodity

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

Joel Smernoff — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:58:27 -0000

I completely agree that the cost inputs for start-ups have plummeted (server, hosting, bandwidth, coding, etc), but I think the tougher dilema for an entrepreneur currently is to decide whether or not to try to monetize the biz (via freemium, advertising, ecommerce, etc) or pursue the old get big fast paradigm (ie hypergrowth of the user base) and then get acquired for a large and buzzy community (a la last.fm or StumbleUpon).

Hard to believe that this is back in favor again, but it seems to be the latest M&A zeitgeist (unfortunately for those of us making real revenue/profits).

-Joel Smernoff
President & COO, Paltalk

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

Christine — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 22:51:15 -0000

10,000 applications...not such a bad thing. it means survival of the fittest business model kicks in and those that are truly worth funding will be obvious because they stand out from the rest.

business is business. as someone who was flying at the seat of her pants back in '99 during the dotcom bubble in China (a place where EVERY business idea from every industry is new) -- tech, new media, web 2.0 type startups are no different from any other industry in that it's a business. it has to have a sound business model. it needs to be sustainable over time...and it needs to (eventually or hopefully being the operative words) be able to turn a profit or be profitable for those who found and fund it.

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

Sylvain Carle — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 08:46:54 -0000

Will we see the atomization of VCs? Probably not, but the trend happening on the internet will sure make its mark on "freer" markets for startups... if it can happen for banks (ie. wesabe, mint) it could for the startup market too.

But then again, as Ron S said, it's all about the team and that analysis is much harder to commoditize. We just raised seed money for our startup (praized) and it was on the combination of team/market much more than technology (and as the CTO, I still think it's the right way to go)!

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

Mike — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 23:57:05 -0000

Excellent post and you are dead on! In fact, at our startup we are already launching startups within our startup to retain talent and motivate our employees. Our launch of www.SocialRank.com would be the first example and there are more on the way.

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

Scott Rafer — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 15:31:16 -0000

I've been suggesting to VCs that they make 'net startups install reporting (GA, MBL, etc.) and get the analytics passwords before they get the pitches. Data mining in advance of powerpoint/keynote is the way to go.

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

Nate Westheimer — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 03:07:02 -0000

If this is so, they should all be funded immediately. I think the commodification of web apps demands differentiation. You can only differentiate yourself in two ways: make whatever userbase + userdata closed (boo!) or offer technology which provides value to users (allowing the data to roam free).

I think Boris is right on that the next round of successful companies will be more technology plays than content plays.

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

Lloyd Fassett — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 01:43:28 -0000

This seems true, but a bit overblown. What I'm seeing is an ecosystem like Cisco's hardware acquisition ecosystem. "R&D" risk gets diversified by buying up the more interesting ones and putting them in your pipeline. The key similarity is a technology focus. As other commenters have noticed, it's a technology and it's not a solution. Paul starts with hackers and hackers generally do cool stuff, not mundane technolgies to cool solutions. Refer here to Nick Carr's April 2004 "Does IT Matter?" http://www.amazon.com/gp/pr.... Hackers might play the role of developing technologies for aquisition by pure web businesses, but they also might just get crushed because you can't sell 'technology' anymore. just users and defensible markets positions.

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

AlFromChicago — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 23:09:26 -0000

Fred --
The other point of this I think is that you still need massive scale to generate significant financial returns for yourself and investors -- so while all these startups may be happening; and while it may be much easier for these folks to get payback individually on what they are doing -- you still need VC financing to get to the promised land which is massive adoption. This gets back to a post you wrote a while ago about how you can "wait and see" now much more than you used to -- the independent great entrepreneur will not need outside help to get some initial recognition, etc....you theoretically should be able to demand much better performance out there than previously to capture your attention -- so my guess is your hit rate will go up ultimately. People who invest in raw startups will have it much tougher I think -- will the very very best guys really need "seed" capital or will they (like a mutual friend of ours) get to millions of users before raising capital? Your model is better for the latter.

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

alan p — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 18:52:27 -0000

Did some thinking about this...commoditiisng startups means more spend on marketing and PR as the 15 me-too's Phil Wilkinson mentions try to grab mindshare. Blogged quite a long post here:

http://broadstuff.com/archi...

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

Philip Wilkinson — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 14:45:39 -0000

The thing is - there may well be 10,000 new start-ups created by hackers over the coming years but they won't be 10,000 GOOD ideas. All it actually means is increased competition on the good businesses with good solid ideas who then have to try and out-compete another 15 doing the same thing with the same amount of funding, basically turning into an arms race again. The remaining bad ones go on to fail and reduce the chance of others investing in similar ones again...

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

crawford — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 12:53:38 -0000

Just imagine if we solve the health care crisis with some solutions that make it even easier for more fence sitters to take the plunge into self-employment. The world gets smaller and smaller every day. What fun.

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

crawford — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 12:25:01 -0000

So is this a market for micro lending more than vc? Sounds like it might be a niche opp. Or maybe I should stick to what I know...which at the moment is making chocolate chip pancakes for my daughter.

Happy Sunday

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

jill — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 08:46:12 -0000

I like what he writes about:

Starting a startup is hard, but having a 9 to 5 job is hard too, and in some ways a worse kind of hard.

The good news is that now it is easier (and less costly) to do your own thing if you are an out of the box thinker!

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

fredwilson — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 08:22:01 -0000

That's a good point

That certainly was true of the hundreds of video sharing services and the hundreds of social bookmarking services

Fred

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

fredwilson — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 08:17:01 -0000

So true ron

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

fredwilson — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 08:17:01 -0000

Of course that's true in general but I could point to dozens of really useful technologies that have come to market in the past six months

Fred

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

fredwilson — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 07:47:01 -0000

I am not sure deep comp sci knowledge is as important as early leadership which leads to network effects which leads to data leverage

Fred

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

Jeff — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 06:45:27 -0000

We think of web startup's as commidities because programming is social network, user-generated or video website is really not that hard. I think it is dangerous to think that anyone can make it in this space; it is just too crowded. I sense a possible downturn.

However, where unique innovations will come from are people who have a deep understanding of computer science algorithms. Sure, it still might cost very little in start, but not many can copy the knowledge or idea.

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

Phony Identity — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 02:42:39 -0000

"Paul Graham... argues that... web startups themselves are commodifying."

No, he says they are hugely increasing in number. In fact, I think if anything that will increase gap between the best and the worst of them. So they are becoming even less of a commodity than previously, which was not at all.

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

Joe Duck — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 21:13:50 -0000

This is a very interesting way to characterize things though I'm not sure this is helpful when winnowing winners from losers. When computers became a commodity you didn't run huge risks with a wrong pick (unless it was one of those early Packard Bells).
"
Startups, however, are almost all crappy but luckily face the ruthless axe of user enthusiasm. Only a handful out of a hundred will survive. VCs (present company excluded of course) have, on average, failed to break even with investments. Will this bad record will get even worse?

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

Sridhar Vembu — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 20:23:40 -0000

Typical late cycle "new era" thinking - I say that as a Paul Graham fan. Paul thinks he has discovered something new here - but just go back and look at the late 80's-early 90's PC era (thousands of PC companies in just the US, most bootstrapped - and this was after a big bust in the mid 80's that killed the non-IBM clone vendors - does that sound familiar?), and the early internet access era in the mid 90s (7000 ISPs, most bootstrapped again). The number of web startups today is probably of a similar magnitude. This is a point in time snapshot of an industry in transition. The next logical cycle is relentless consolidation. Consolidation is driven not by the dictates of ambitious capitalists, but by the needs of the consumers.

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

Boris M. Silver — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 19:41:02 -0000

I think we'll agree on the large number of startups coming out -- the problem is that the web is now full of startups producing really "cool" and "interesting" technology that has lots of features and can do really cool stuff, but is of no REAL VALUE to the masses. I think too few people are focusing on providing scalable, mainstream, easy to use, and most of all valuable products. Instead, we are seeing all these widgets, mashups, etc. that do nothing more than some interesting hack or limited feature set.

End story:

cool technology does not mean valuable technology

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

Brandon Wirtz — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 19:18:46 -0000

I have dibs on the Webstartup futures business...

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

ron s — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 18:00:21 -0000

This may be true except that there is a qualifier that always separates the winning new venture from the rest of the pack and that is the team. As a VC it has always been my experience and I believe the experience of nearly all of my peers that the dependency is on the quality of the entrepreneur/senior manager and the rest of the management team to succeed more so than the idea itself. Building a new business is simply hard and requires superior individuals who can navigate the company through the tough times and make the good decisions along the way to win in the end. We hope to follow successful entrepreneurs in our ecosystems through multiply startups in hopes of a repeat performance of past successes and more often than not it works. We have even created a holding pattern in our firms (called Entrepreneurs in Residence) to retain the talent between gigs in anticipation of the next great idea. Unfortunately there are more interesting ideas than there are quality leaders to insure their success. Ron S.

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

fredwilson — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 17:38:07 -0000

that has been one of the defining characteristics of successful VC firms since the beginning of the VC business.

many VC firms have deep rolodexes they rely on to help build their portfolio companies

the harder part is finding the right people who can work hand in hand with the founders so that the founder DNA can remain part of the business for the long haul.

fred