In a previous post I wrote about Network Economics, which is all about networking users together. The next dimension of Web 2.0 to understand is Distributed Economies. The new laws of Web 2.0 economics say that if you can massively distribute microchunked things, you should see increasing levels of returns. It’s all about networking peers together. A good Web 2.0 platform will mediate the connections between peers, and add value to it (hopefully without adding [...]
Back in 2002 Brian Sharples announced that he was raising money for an investment group that was buying high-end vacation properties. He must have learned a lot about that market, which led him to start HomeAway. The company has raised over $200M in venture capital, which has to be some sort of Austin record. They’ve used that money to essentially do a rollup in the vacation rental home market. I haven’t done any significant market [...]
Someone at the Austin Business Journal is doing their homework and scouring filings at the Texas State Securities Board. That seems to be how they uncovered the $13M funding of StorSpeed. I’m guessing that they really did uncover some sort of scoop here, as the website just has the logo on it and nothing else (check the picture). A quick search in the "whois" database shows the domain name registration as private, and they didn’t [...]
The Austin Business Journal writes today about House Bill 2714 which takes effect this fall. Computers and monitors sold in Texas must have free recycling provided by their manufacturers, and the equipment must have the company brand name on it. No doubt our planet (including the ocean) is getting full of garbage. I will personally gladly pay a few more dollars for a PC or monitor knowing that somebody is stripping out the lead and [...]
Inc. Magazine wrote last month that 85% of a company’s value resides in intangible assets like brand, databases, employee expertise, and software code. But these assets are hard to categorize, inventory, manage, or license for profit. That’s where Fluid steps in. They help large companies manage and commercialize their software assets. For most companies this would be a kind of one-off exercise that would be difficult to execute, and in the end the costs associated [...]
As I start to look past the news, and try to perform some analysis on the web strategies of some of the companies that I tend to be interested in (and write about), it’s important to understand some of the basics of strategy in a Web 2.0 world. People sometimes use the term "network effects" when they mean "lost of eyeballs" but network effects is more of an economic principle. The Wikipedia credits ethernet founder [...]
FameCast is like American Idol online. Only with more categories than just pop singers. There is spoken word, short film, comedy, and other "stages." The company raised $4.5M in venture funds from (big stretch here) Austin Ventures. I’m not sure if this is a big vote for the FameCast business model, or for CEO Kent Savage. I don’t know Kent personally, but people that I have spoken with who know him all speak very highly [...]
We’ve had some time to absorb this revelation, and I’ve been pondering the strategic implications of this move. In the interest of full disclosure, Dell is a client of mine but I have no inside information on sales strategy or anything remotely to do with retail sales. Wal-Mart is famous for having low cost suppliers. Reports in the trade press say that the Wal-Mart buyer for socks, for instance, will call in all the sock [...]
This is one of the top events in Austin. Several people tell me that this is the one event each year that they make sure they attend. If you are at all interested in innovation, success, and entrepreneurship then this event is worth attending. I was 50% on my predictions, which I guess is pretty good considering that I was purely guessing, or in some cases wishing. I was correct in predicting Bill Bayless from [...]
