MissingMethod

The scary thing about being an entrepreneur right now is that you risk being swallowed by all the hype. For a primer on what’s wrong with Web 2.0, check out Zeldman’s article, Web 3.0, or Russle Beatie’s WTF 2.0.

There’s so much excitement (much of it legitimate) about new technologies (like Rails), new ways of using old technologies (AJAX), and new communications vehicles (MySpace, blogs, RSS, podcasts, etc.), that’s it’s easy to think that any idea can be successful. But’s that wrong.

The fundementals of business haven’t changed. You still have to sell something people want to buy. People don’t buy Ruby on Rails or AJAX or podcasting. Russle said it best:

Break it down - it seems pretty simple. You create a product or service with some inherent value, and then make money from that value and if the money you earn is more than it took you to produce that value, you’ve got a business.

Matt Mower was kind enough to tease out a reasonable top ten list out of this post on suggestions for not being a dot-bomb 2.0:

1. Have a revenue model
2. Be a complete business not a feature
3. Affect real people not just bloggers
4. Get a real memorable name
5. Don’t intertwine your fate with Web2.0
6. Get honest feedback
7. Make sure your revolution really is coming
8. Make sure your market can support you
9. Don’t expect to be (or be bought by) Google
10. Have fun

I agree with these for the most part, although I’m not sure about the order. I’d put #10, “Have fun” much higher on the list; having fun makes everything else easier.

One point that’s missing is “Build something people will pay for”. Maybe it’s implied in #1, but I worry that a lot of people set out to build something they think people will want, rather than figuring out what the market needs first and then building that. If you’re building a product for yourself first and others second (i.e. 37signals’ Basecamp or my own Feedmarker), that’s fine, because you already know what the customer wants. But if not, you need to validate that your idea fills a market need.

Another one I would have liked to see on there is “Try building something that doesn’t depend on the internet”. Maybe this belongs after #3 (affect real people). It’s a big world out there, and most of it still happens off-line. I know it sounds counterintuitive these days, but I think there are still a lot of great ways to make money that aren’t based online. Of course most business will have (or should have) and online component. But I’d like to hear more about the ones that work in the “old world”.

Last Modified : September 19th, 2006
Filed under : Web2.0, Entrepreneurship
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