Entrepreneurship in the high-tech sector will undergo some dramatic changes over the next decade. I have developed a little visual model for the processes used by entrepreneurs to raise money, hire exec talent and develop & support products. Big caveat here. My experience is primarily in the high-tech sector and the only offshore experience I have today is in India. So, please extrapolate to other sectors and the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) block as appropriate.
A couple of notes on how I came up with the above model.
So what does this mean for the entrepreneur? I think the entrepreneur of the 2010s has to:
Would be glad to hear what you have to say ...
Sampath
There is a mind-numbing amount of information in the public domain about how Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 will change the world for ever. This article attempts to provide an entrepreneur’s perspective on these trends and distill the key issues with a bit of common sense. The term Web 2.0 was first coined by Tim O’Reilly to denote a new breed of Internet services companies. The key traits of companies in this new breed, according to O’Reilly, were:
Whether the above differentiators really warrant a new category or not is debatable. One could easily argue that these basic characteristics should have been incorporated into most, well thought-out “Web 1.0” Internet companies that were launched in the mid 1990s and that we are only now coming around to fully understand the implications. Nevertheless, Web 2.0 is a handy way to characterize these companies & somewhat comprehend the implications.
From its consumer underpinnings, Web 2.0 evolved over 2005 – 2006 to take on an enterprise flavor. Terms like Me, Inc., Prosumer and Enterprise 2.0 have been used to describe companies adopting this approach. Examples of companies in this space include SalesForce.com, SugarCRM, NetSuite etc. The case that is being made here is that business services can be delivered using a consumer model to professionals, hence the Prosumer go-to-market strategy. According to Philip Lay at TCG Advisors, the cornerstones of Enterprise 2.0 are
Philip rightly points out that now (2007) is not the time for us to get overly excited about Enterprise 2.0. We are not going to see Fortune 500 companies jump onto this bandwagon and move all their front & back office applications to an Enterprise 2.0 model in a big way. What we will see is niche solutions being brought to market with this model, focusing on narrow audiences & their key business problems. Over the next decade or so, the broader Enterprise 2.0 market should pick up a good bit of steam.
OK, now for the entrepreneur’s perspective. My thoughts on launching an Enterprise 2.0 start-up:
Thoughts?
Sampath