FC NOW: The Fast Company Weblog
September 26, 2007
Entrepreneurship: Bill Gross on Atoms and Bits
CNN Money has an interesting Q&A with Bill Gross, the serial entrepreneur whose brain birthed startups like NetZero, CitySearch, eToys, and GoTo.com. While the interview questions aren't particularly hard-hitting, they do encourage Gross to make a few salient statements about what he thinks makes an excellent startup. His first comment is about how his company, Idealab, looked for "disruptive" internet ideas:
... We look for a disruptive opportunity... for a big problem and a way to solve it that no one else was willing to try. I would say we're going much more after white space... We prefer to look for a big itch that isn't being scratched.
Finding that so-called "white space" has been, maybe until recently, much easier on the web. Gross implicitly suggests as much when he mentions how margin-obsessed web entrepreneurs tend to be; they quickly find a niche (or "white space") and produce a site with low overhead, presuming that they'll be enjoying 90% margins on their service for as long as they live. While web businesses do indeed see those kind of margins, Gross is quick to point out that the real value in a web startup isn't terrific margins or low overhead, it's high barriers for competition. Web startups seem to Gross too complacent and satisfied over finding white space to take this into account:
It's not a matter of how cheap you can start the company. You also need to have a way to stop other people from doing the same thing once they see that your idea is taking off.
The interview goes on to ask him why his incubator, Idealab, has shifted from growing web businesses to growing actual brick-and-mortar startups that produce tangible goods. He says at first that they were merely excited about the web as a medium, but he then asks a telling rhetorical question about a hypothetical web startup:
[Is] there a core intellectual property with which you could differentiate yourself and earn sustainable margins?
The tacit implication, of course, is that Web 2.0, for all its glitz, is running out of truly valuable white space. What's left, Gross' question asserts, are a pool of ideas easily replicated and short on true technical innovation (which might create intellectual property.) That would mean that today's startups are seeing more copy-cats, quicker failures, smaller venture capital commitments and less success. Is this true, or is Gross an anachronism? He's personally moved on to robotics and solar collection technology -- away from "bits" and towards "atoms". But is he missing the nuance of a new generation of web entrepreneurship?
Posted by Chris Dannen at September 26, 2007 1:30 PM | Category: entrepreneurship + small business |
5 Comments
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I don't think it's a simple as 'are business-owners ready to live online'
Part of the problem I see is that right now we'd have to choose to take different services from different service providers e.g. financial stuff from NetBooks, CRM from Salesforce, email from Google etc.
Perhaps we need to be able choose the whole service from a single provider with the advantage of a user interface that's familiar throughout, a single logon etc.
The price point strikes me as off. It's not that you don't appear to get a lot of value here, but the migration headaches/costs would be pretty nasty. Part of the problem, as Andy notes, is that SMBs tend to have their data all over the place. The only viable option for most accounting and book keeping is QB on the client, but we've had success with a lightweight CRM from 37 Signals called Highrise (www.highrisehq.com). We still don't like any of the options we've had for invoicing (freshbooks.com, paypal, QB, etc.) All have their drawbacks and their benefits. Overall we're a hodgepodge of apps and data pools. Sure, integration would be nice, but inertia is a bitch. :-)
Online applications are terrific for small businesses with mobile and remote office employees. Unfortunately, many of the online apps currently available only provide a piece of the pie. Those that are available today, seem to be weak on or fully lacking key pieces of functionality as compared to their desktop counterparts.
For my business, I am less interested in hand holding from a CSR and more interested in finding an application that actually provides more of the functionality my small business needs. Hopefully an increased number of competitors in this space will lead to more innovation. Fingers crossed...
That's a good point, Andy; NetBooks seems to have anticipated it. Their suite of software purports to manage CRM, VRM, Sales, Production, Marketing, Inventory and Shipping -- as well as Bookkeeping. But as David said... Intertia is indeed a bitch.
Gwen, good point -- I agree that functionality is better than some "concierge". Hey, we want ERP, not a hotel room! But, NetBooks does have production modules that offer more than QB, NetSuite, etc. But, are their modules full featured enough? Can't tell yet because they force you to hold their CSR's hand to do a demo before showing you the features.