While the Long Tail has been a central topic of conversation among the Network Theory and “Web 2.x” crowd, we haven’t heard much from Wall Street’s analyst community. If there really is money to be made in the Long Tail, Wall Street will embrace the ideas. The first step in that direction is Spencer Wang’s research report for Bear Stearns. Wang’s idea is that aggregation and context are the central business ideas in the new era of the entertainment industry. Jason Calacanis talked about this on the Gillmor Gang as an “enabling platform.” Paid Content also weighs in. I view this as enabling playlists of time shifted content (audio/video/text). Dave Winer’s RSS will end up playing a crucial role in all of this.
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When it cost a bundle to buy the basic infrastructure to create an Internet-based businesss — venture money was critical. It’s still expensive to scale and handle large bandwidth requirements, but it’s not as bad as it used to be. When asking the question about whether the venture capital model is broken, one might ask what are top 10 things to remember when building a Web application-based business today? Are any of those things made easier or better with venture capital funding?
Comments closedOne sign that the business of building businesses on the Web has changed since the bubble years is that entrepreneurs are talking about “good money” and “bad money.” Used to be that all money was good. The idea used to be to get as much money as you could from a VC, then go public as soon as you could. And of course investors would cooperate by buying lots of stock, causing the price to sky rocket. Quick riches and early retirement. Then on to create a second company that never quite captured the magic of the first.
The VC funded IPO is becoming rarer and rarer. I wonder if the Small Business Administration will be the new funder of small Web businesses?
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