8 comments

• 

  Seth Finkelstein

  3 months ago

  Bah, humbug.
  
  This post regurgitates the most dangerous idea: "IT'S DIFFERENT THIS TIME"
  
  As in: "The bottom line is that the Web makes it so much easier to start and run a business " - it's different! Not like the old bubble! DON'T LEARN THAT LESSON!!!
  
  In fact, I'd argue starting and running a real business is pretty much as hard as it's always been. People are confusing a shift in expenses with a revolution in economics.
  reply
• 

  mathewi

  3 months ago

  I had a feeling you would be dropping by, Seth. You know the funny
  thing about saying "It's different this time?" Sometimes it really
  *is* different -- and refusing to acknowledge that is just as much an
  example of blinkered, head-in-the-sand behaviour as the opposite.
  
  Was there a distributed server cluster like Amazon's S3 back in the
  first bubble? No. Or if there was, it was orders of magnitude more
  expensive than what startups can currently afford -- that's a real
  difference in economics. So is the existence of Google Apps, and of
  Amazon's EC2 and Simple DB, and even of Basecamp, for that matter.
  
  Those things make a difference -- maybe not enough to turn a dumb idea
  into a smart one, but enough to make it easier to try them both out
  and figure out which is which. In the last bubble that didn't become
  obvious until after the IPO.
  reply
• 

  Seth Finkelstein

  3 months ago

  "I had a feeling you would be dropping by, Seth."
  
  And, see, it wasn't different this time! :-)
  
  Again, you're confusing one component with an overall process. That's a very standard evangelist ploy, Since the laws of mathematics haven't changed, to a good approximation, the net results will never be different.
  
  150 years ago, were their railroads like [BigName]? 100 years ago, was there TV and radio like [BigName]? 50 years ago, was there cheap air travel like [BigName]? All of these created a few new big businesses - and also lots of failed businesses. It's never different, in that there's always people running around saying that this time it's different.
  reply
• 

  mathewi

  3 months ago

  Wow -- I'm impressed that you were able to dismiss the past 100 years
  or so worth of economic progress so quickly. Nice work. "All of
  these created a few new big businesses -- and also lots of failed
  businesses." That pretty much describes every technology ever
  invented since the industrial revolution.
  
  Your comment reminds me of Warren Buffett's famous saying about how
  the airline industry has been a net destroyer of capital since the
  Wright Brother first flew at Kitty Hawk. The upside? We get to fly
  places instead of taking boats and cars.
  reply
• 

  Warren Whitlock

  3 months ago

  companies will come and go, money will change hands, but the trend is the thing to watch.
  
  Obvious that the technology is here to stay, no deaths from start up hyperbole, and good ideas get out regardless of the economy.
  
  Millions of small businesses are doing things more efficiently due to the net, billions of consumers lives are better.
  
  Great post, those pundits have myopia. You have it right
  reply
• 

  Alexander van Elsas

  3 months ago

  Good one Mathew. I agree with you. I wrote a post about this a few days ago, in which I argued that web 2.0 technology has made the cost of starting a web service drop to almost zero. That allows anyone with an idea (it doens't have o be a good idea) to start a business. But lowering the thresholds to create new services doesn’t make the process of creating a great service ANY easier. It still requires craftsmanship. Web technology has brought us democracy, but it comes at a cost.
  reply
• 

  evan barton

  3 months ago

  i think that you and the mashable guy are focusing on
  the wrong angle. with the exception of a handful of
  very successful companies, most web 2.0 shops are
  small fry. here's the problem: the CPMs utterly blow -
  and unless you're a onesie, twosie shop and can keep
  expense way low, it's tough to make a buck. more power
  to anyone who can do that but then you're not talking
  about the next google here. second point, in a
  recession, who do you think is going to get whacked
  first? that's easy. advertising-dependent startups.
  i'm not saying the web 2.0 landscape will get
  decimated but let's not close our eyes to what's
  happening on the ground. also,.lots more enterprise
  companies are getting into the space and they have
  staying power just in case the economy heads south.
  saw this post apropos...http://www.news.com/8301-10787_3-9929415-60.html?tag=nefd.top
  reply
• 

  Aidan Henry

  3 months ago

  The potential cost of launching a new web venture nowadays can be close to 0, if you discount human labour and leverage free software/tools/platforms. For this reason, I don't see an Internet bubble in sight. I wrote about it all here:
  
  http://www.mappingtheweb.com/2008/03/20/there-i...
  
  Cheers,
  Aidan
  reply