Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

IBM Think SeminarVinnie Lauria, co-founder @ lefora.com / organizer @ the Silicon Valley NewTech Meetup

What’s the temperature in Silicon Valley?

We’re getting pass the social...

... and getting back to the practical.

Silicon Valley NewTech Meetup

! 2-3 years ago, 75-100% of a startups primary function was‘social networking’ related

! Today, a startup with a primarily ‘social’ function may pop-up only every other month

4 consumer web startups demo to an audience of 150 every month

To my surprise, the past 3 months has been a boom in startup applications at the meetup

! Last fall, with the economy in free fall and investors pulling in the reins, there was a drop in budding new startups

! Now with the economic horizon still unknown and 10% unemployment, creative entrepreneurs are sprouting.

! They are creating focused solutions to specific problems

“Generally Speaking” Past Themes

! Social Networking

! Media Sharing

! Collaboration

! Productivity

! Reviews

! All-purpose

“Generally Speaking” Current Themes

! Finances

! Entertainment

! Real-world personalized products

! Content Filtering

! APIs, apps, and middle layers

! Specific Functions

One set didn’t replace the other

! Sites have grown above & beyond purely social networking

! Social software is an underlying requirement to enable new activities

Services must fit together like a large puzzle

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tcp909/132665279/

Think Platforms

! Facebook - created a richer offering with less resources

! iPhone - $100+mil market out of thin air

! Twitter - who knows

It’s no longer Open Source but Open API

Follow the consumer

! Unlike the old days of office suites and team collaboration tools, social networks, blogs, wikis, & tweeting didn’t grow from large enterprise offerings

! It took a significant consumer adoption before enterprise could realize the value

! The same is in store for what’s to come with hosted services (cloud computing)

! Due to corporate resistance, we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg

Overheard on the internet

! “Hosted services are not as powerful”

! “I want to own my data”

! “I want full customization options”

! “How can I trust you?”

How does a brand new company earn the trust of

100,000 people to hand over their most private

financial data within 4 months of launch?

Bucking the trend

! Offer features unavailable anywhere else

! Consistently improve the product so frequently, that in-house maintenance becomes a drag

! Solve a specific problem ‘really really’ well

! Make the barrier-to-entry so low that alternate self-managed costs become prohibitive

! Offer a clear & measurable value

Why startups like cloud computing

! Cost -> it’s practically free

! Ease of Use

! Less headaches

! Allows a company to stay focused on their ‘core competency’

Team Collaboration

Hosted On

Amazon EC2

Amazon S3

Code Repository

No more CVS

Hosted Gmail

(better than email)

Google Docs

Google AppEngine

(for hosting side projects)

Google Calendar

Customer Communication

Newsletters

Surveys & Forms

Support Forum

Blogging

ISP

Servers

Keep in mind

! Hosted services need to ‘play well with others’ in order to thrive

! Hosted services must be nimble to beat the competition

! “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”

! Because of corporate resistance but wide consumer adoption, there is opportunity for bottom-up entry into organizations, just like blogging and social networking.

Former IBM’er

Co-founder @ Lefora.com free forum hosting

Organizer @ the SiliconValley NewTech Meetup

San Francisco, California, USA

Vinnie Lauria

Ciao !

vinnie@lefora.com