Approaches to Web Entrepreneurship

Writer Vera Bass has become a recent favorite of mine, sharing her experiences, memories, questions, opinions and ideas about business and life at her blog “Musings & Meanderings”. The following is an excerpt from one of her most recent entries about Web Entrepreneurship:

“Every brilliant entrepreneurial and successful business idea is about one thing. Creating value. Rarely, in fact almost never, is it about a new invention. Although amazing inventions have changed the way we live and the world we live in dramatically through recent centuries, few inventors get rich. In fact, many new inventions are big losers financially for those who pioneer their introduction into consumer markets. Although there may be some future shift in this balance, as the population gap between early adopters and the tipping point is substantially shortened by electronic connections, the primary hurdles of introducing something truly new will always be the biggest ones there are in business. Imagine the difficulty of creating and introducing telephones. Think of the massive post war prosperity that finally enabled the funding of applied technology to mass marketing of things such as home washing machines. (…)”

“Instead of producing dazzling new applications, most successful web developers are taking a rudimentary value producing idea and making it operable in a more usable way. The latest wave of ‘innovation’ on the web beginning with blogging and then social networking, has been all about putting a tool into the hands of the individual and finding ways to connect existing users and services. Both, from the original entrepreneurial point of view, derive from a viewpoint that was no different 10 years ago. Traffic. (…)”

“This focus on traffic represents a web equivalent to the real estate maxim. ‘location location location’. Aiming to be where the largest surge of traffic is heading is a sensible business goal. To take the analogy to real estate further, study the urban growth patterns, take into account related variables, and buy the most expensive thing you can afford as close to the path of redevelopment as you can.”

“On the web, though, unlike in real estate, getting in the path of growth and traffic is not easily guided and determined by physical boundaries and possibilities. Here, we are guided only by observable patterns of human behavior, and limited only by our own imaginations. In some ways, this makes it easier to conceive and execute a new idea, and in other ways harder. In real estate, you can physically follow the traffic surges, observe behavior, identify and interview select individuals, and determine your own desired location in ways that do not translate to the virtual world. The closest actual equivalent to study is television, however knowing that business will only inform you that almost no one in it can reliably predict what people will want. The big potential advantage here is direct and personal connectivity. (…)”

“This is a perspective from which most any true entrepreneur can develop many ideas. This new world and its burgeoning citizenry needs and wants lots and lots of new development. Great places to go and things to do and ways to do them. If you’re working on developing new ideas, there are at least 2 perspectives from which to approach your goal:

• The first starts with resources. Existing technology, tools, and applications offer a wealth of resources we haven’t begun to fully tap. The tech entrepreneur can micro focus on innovative ways of managing and transmitting content, or on applications not yet widely available, such as multidimensional images. He/she can macro focus in the equivalent of playing with a mecchano set, innovating ways to link and connect existing tools and functions to build more sophisticated (or less primitive) structures.
• The second starts with people. We’ve an involved and committed citizenry that has been long growing far beyond just geeks and early adapters, and hundreds of millions more who are occasionally putting a toe in the water until they’re offered enough motivation to dive in. Motivate them. Instead of searching for ideas beginning with your personal perspective, which you then first test out with your immediate peers and others ‘just like you’, step back and start from a wider view. Include your family, your neighbors, your non-tech social circles. Get interested in what motivates them. We’ve all the tools and enough population here to start building really great destinations.”

Every brilliant business idea creates value that did not previously exist. If you can create real value for your target markets, be they businesses or consumers, then you have a playing piece with which to enter the game. (…)”

Don’t miss to read the full essay »

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