Enterprise Ireland Web 2.0 : Conference Notes

Caveat : These are my unexpurgated notes. Some of it should make sense but some of it is just brain splurge. You have been warned.

Judy Gibbons:

Consumer behaviour is changing

  • PC Migration to consumer and merged devices
  • Servercentric development
  • Its all about timing
    • Netflix – Just deliver by post
    • Refresh Mobile – load software on mobiles
  • Web 1.0 created a platform based on search and credit card payment
  • All companies have web presence
  • Meta-searching market
  • Content created by the user (you can’t create all your own content as a single business)
  • EBay is a product selling platform (businesses as platforms)
  • Web 2.0 Environment
    • Communications
    • Search
    • Content
    • eCommerce
    • Community (My Space, Facebook)
  • No one will ever download anything
  • Need to auto customise (nobody changes their preferences or customises)
  • Hard to mobilise the end-user personally
  • People who “get” the enduser create fantastic businesses
  • Proximity and accessibility generates markets
    • Move from Bank Tellers to ATMs as an example
  • Get more done in less time
  • Different perspectives of network operators vs PC manufactureres
  • Business Models
    • Advertising – Solves classic problems (disruptive to trandtional models of advertising)
      • Audience Targetting
      • Pay for performance
      • Marketing pricing
      • Advertising industry is finding accountability quite hard
      • Contextual (adsense)
      • Demographics (niche) Facebook, glam.com
    • Subscriptions (SAAS), Edge Cases
    • Micro transactions
  • Forces of Freedom
    • Open Source
    • Lower barrier to entry
    • User in control
    • PC/Mobile Interplay
    • Virtuous Cycles of value
    • Global Flattening
    • More exit options
  • PC/Mobile Interplay is a key opportunity for Europe (GSM and PCs)
  • There is now a critical mass of VC, legal, financial resources available in London
  • There is an opportunity to build global companies out of Europe
  • Europe needs to understand different startup/funding models
  • Book recommendation “Raising Venture Capital” by Rupert Pierce and Simon Barnes.

Marc Canter:

  • Founded MacroMedia
  • Been in the business 25 years
  • Known as the Father of Multimedia
  • Took the 90′s off
  • Deliver compelling applications to end-users
  • Broadband Mechanics (Marc’s Company) creates Digital Lifestyle Aggregators (DLAs)
  • Personal Publishing, Structured Blogging, OurMedia.org
  • Apple and Microsoft are the enemy
  • Their are no new ideas
  • Web 2.0 Factors
    • Broadband (dial should never have happened)
    • Open Source
    • Out Sourcing
  • Islands of functionality
  • New kinds of tools
  • International Market
  • Acquisition not IPO – Companies do not go up all the time -fuck that shit! (the stock market)
  • Attitude
    • How you change
    • How much you give away for free
    • What about the support thing
  • Paranoia
    • ISPs getting squeezed out by carriers
    • Data lookup – Google
    • Hollyweird
      • Struggling to understand new media
      • Napsterised
      • Bitorrented
      • PIXAR regularising downloading
  • Big/Small Balance
    • Innovation – Small
    • Infrastructure/Hosting/Bandwidth – Big
  • User Interface is an art form- creativity/convenience
  • How do I get rich?
    • Don’t need VCs
    • Success is relative to overhead (raise 2m sell for 20m, raise 10m have to sell for 100m)
  • Marc Canter doesn’t like John Doerr (’nuff said)
  • Whats wrong?
    • Entrepreneurs in corporate environment
    • why do mergers fail
    • Professional management can destroy anything
  • Want a million groups with 10 people in them as opposed to 1 group with ten million people in it
  • Personal Digital ID
    • Glue that ties us together
    • Digital lynch PIN
    • End Users
      • Control their data
      • Monetise their attention
      • Slice it up
    • Social networking as common as “Save As” and CDROM
    • Without a personal page you’ll be naked (imagine no phone number or no address)
  • Its about me not you
  • Hierarchy, me, friends and family, the rest
  • There are no consumers just end-users
  • Open Standards
    • Uptake and evangelism are the only factors that matter
    • Official standards bodies are not motivated or incentivised to complete their work
    • First beats better every time
  • Blogosphere
  • Peoples DNS – people will use different reputation systems

Adam Green

  • RSS is a mess
  • RSS normalisers are about making sense of this mess GDATA from google, VISTA
  • Microcontent: large numbers of producers, small numbers of consumers
  • Flickr APIs lockin via community rather than technology
  • Flickr creates end user DNA
  • MC: Need normalised APIs for calendaring, storage and photos

Jeff Clavier

  • Reuters, SoftTech Ventures
  • Web 2.0 Key Factors for success
  • Depends on your expected outcome
  • Its ongoing
  • I would not have invested in MySpace
  • Its all BS I just wanted to come to Dublin
  • Consumer Infrastructure – Cheaper, More Open, More Social
  • Lower cost of failure
  • Real scale costs (10m and up)
  • Success = how much money ends up in founders pockets
  • Keys to success
    • Sustained differentiation (box.net vs Amazon S3)
    • End user value
    • distribution
  • Don’t make me join all friends to get value
  • You can’t all be the “wikipedia of…” (e.g. not everybody can get that much high quality user generated content).
  • Value to the end user – Appeal to the Seven Sins
  • KISS
  • Adoption
    • No friction
    • Addictive (use counters, no of clicks, hits, visits etc.)
    • Limit churn/attrition
    • Think aggregation
  • Differentiation
    • be 100% better
    • be 100% bigger
    • Market: Aim High
  • Distribution
    • How do you get to your first million users
    • Do you have a real network effect?
    • Search engine – building a brand costs serious $$$$
    • Registrations are not valuable your first 10000 are the same 10000 that register for every new service
  • Business Models
    • Prepare for it
    • More than one – advertisting, branding, referrals, premiums
  • Technology
    • Who cares?
    • Don’t reinvent the wheel
  • What do VCs look for?
    • Team – track record, why, who the next hire
    • Better a good team with a bad idea than a bad team with a good idea
    • Plan – Needs, Milestones, what am I using the money for)
    • Ambition – What is it? 10m, 100m,1bn
  • Launch your product on TechCrunch
  • Dogster – $4 a year per user, get it to $7 a year per user and then grow the crap out of it

Daniel Waterhouse

  • Sector partner for 3i
  • Was at M&A at Yahoo
  • 1bn internet users
  • 30bn in classifieds
  • 70bn items of consumer content
  • 60bn services
  • 1trn transactions
  • Business Models
    • Advertising
    • Sponsored links
    • Qualified lead gen
    • Listings
    • Commerce
    • Paid for consumer service
  • Core Technology – Maps
  • Access data anywhere (no downloads)
  • Problems
    • Lots of companies
    • Lots of meToos
    • Lack of thought in business models
    • Feature businesses
    • No defensibility
    • Google will do it
    • mgmt teams with no experience
  • Many Web 2.0 companies may not need VC
  • Pricing is hot
  • Bubble 2.0
    • Large capital injections :NO
    • Downside for investors: NO
    • IPO Frenzy: NO
    • Many companies will fail: YES
    • Blogosphere self fulfilment
  • 10 Characteristics of great web companies
    • Solves a real customer problem
    • Passionate founders, savvy engineers
    • First mover advantage
    • Rapidly growing customer base ( exponential)
    • Watches metrics of business like a hawk and reacts quickly (kelkoo)
    • Valuable, proprietary, hard to replicate technology (navtecq map database)
    • Product is simple, easy to use and is fun
    • Business model – it has one

Nasser Batley

  • Alliances guy are DRKW
  • Web 1.0 Failures
    • Webvan IPO $375m. Crashed and burned
    • Pets.com IPO $82.5m. Crashed and burned
    • Kozmo.com raised $280. Crahsed and burned.
    • eToys.com IPO $166m. crashed and burned.
  • Web 2.0 Successes
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