Posts tagged as: startup

Boston Web industry showing signs of maturity

Monday night's Web Innovator's Group meeting had a different vibe from the meeting in January. January's meeting seemed to be about "I can't believe there are actually Web people coming out in public and identifying themselves as such," while this week's was more "Yeah, we're Web guys and this is what we do." People seemed more comfortable and more about getting down to the business of networking. There were more people this time, but the room was much larger, which may have cut the intensity of the crowd. I actually preferred Monday's session, because everyone seemed to be ready to get to work, rather than just being amazed they were awake again. Of course, this may all be projection on my part.

There were three poducts demoed on Monday, the best of which was certainly LocaModa. I'll have more to say about this in a later post. As for the other presentations, the best comment I heard from one of the hecklers in the room during the demo of Blue Trim was "I guess he believes in tell, don't show." In the case of Nextcode, it was hard to tell which was the product as opposed to an application of the product. In general presentations of new technology should start with a clear demo of the product being sold, then a discussion of applications of that product, and finally a brief explanation of the technology used. LocaModa did this to superb effect.

When we got to the question and answer portion of the demos I realised that Boston may be ready for an Under the Radar type event. I didn't attend this when it was held in Silicon Valley a few weeks ago, but it sure got plenty of blog coverage. There were 32 companies making presentations, which must have been pretty intense, but to me the important part of the format was the presence of a panel of industry experts asking questions. I think having people who can ask pointed questions, and who get a chance to do some follow-up is key for really extracting the best information from a presenter. It is uncertain if Boston could deliver 32 Web start-ups, but if this was held once every 6 months, we could pull companies in from New York and maybe DC. Those are fairly big cities. Together we might be able to compete with Silicon Valley.

Jobs? We don't need no stinking jobs!

After spending time lately with people running Web start-ups, I can see an interesting pattern that I hadn't been aware of. Many of them are Gen-Xers who spent the dot-com era working in IT departments of large corporations, or for large technology companies, like EMC or Adobe. Now that Web 2.0 is presenting them with a market that is receptive for new products and development strategies that have a low barrier to entry, they have quit their jobs and bet their savings on a year or two without a paycheck while they try to build something cool.

This reflects an interesting confidence in their abilities and the market. Part of that confidence shows up in their reluctance to take venture capital money early in the game. That is a reversal of the model in the dot com and the several years after, when entrepreneurs would identify a market need, write a business plan, shop it around, and only start development after the money was raised. This model was based on the idea that VCs played a role in vetting ideas at an early stage; if a plan can't raise money, the product probably isn't going to find a market. It isn't just that this new breed of start-upers don't want to take money early on as a way of preventing dilution of their ownership. They don't think the VCs are necessary to validate their ideas. They know that the market will play that role.

I don't even think many of these people think of themselves as "entrepreneurs." They don't seem to use that word to describe themselves. Maybe it is too much of a Boomer term. They surely want to make money, but even more important is the opportunity to work for themselves. More than anything else, they don't want a job, they want their own company. Maybe it is all that time spent in cubicles. One thing many of them say is that this is their last chance to keep from working for someone else for the rest of their lives. They aren't saying it is their chance to get rich. I think they are running from a life of being held back by Boomer managers. As long as they are doing something out of love for technology, it is better than possibly making more money in a 9-5 job.

Book Note: Hackers & Painters

Paul Graham seems like a very smart person, I'm just not sure he is as smart as he thinks he is. His book is a collection of thoughtful essays on everything from why nerds are unpopular to why expensive watches aren't as reliable as cheap ones. If this sounds like too wide a range for a single book, you are right, but within it there are enough useful insights to make it well worth the time of anyone involved in making software. The two basic themes that run through the essays are Graham's experiences with the Viaweb startup, which was sold to Yahoo!, and the advantages of Lisp over other programming languages. I don't buy his arguments in favor of Lisp, but I found his comments on managing programmers to be right on target.

What I have a problem with, is his tendency to make sweeping generalizations about the history of technology, such as: Yes, and corporate DP departments weren't able to keep up with the demand for custom applications at the departmental level (dBASE), and word processing systems on PCs were more responsive than dedicated word processing systems on terminals (WordStar), and small businesses could run accounting software on PCs for much less than an account on a timesharing system (Peachtree), and Baby Boomers were just having their first children and wanted computers that they could use for work and to run games and educational software (Apple), and a host of other reasons. Graham may have gotten a Computer Science Ph.D. from Harvard, while I only got a Masters, but mine was in History of Science. After being called simplistic enough times for making statements like his, I learned that there is rarely a single cause for anything, especially in technology. Despite his fondness for historical generalities, I found the book to be a good read and recommend it highly.

Is it art or software?

The Museum of Modern Betas lists dozens of start-up alpha and beta websites for your viewing pleasure. I was planning on studying the new crop of Web 2.0 sites, and now my list is already prepared. Talk about LazyWeb! (via Supr.c.ilio.us)