SacStarts - startup

5 Keys to Web 2.0 Success

Geoff Sakala — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 01:32:55 +0000

A few months back Tom Shields of Woodside Funds wrote a post for VentureBeat on investing principles for web 2.0 companies. Nisan Gabbay of Startup Review subsequently distilled it down into 7 indicators of consumer Internet success. Let me suggest only 5 keys to success.

Five Keys to Web 2.0 Success

1. Solve a problem, and make it easy (flickr - photo sharing, stubhub - ticket sales)
2. Ability to leverage free user acquisition (natural search, viral marketing, widgets)
3. Service that enables commerce (ebay, skype, adsense)
4. Shrink a market (wikipedia, itunes)
5. Compelling story that attracts mass media (youtube, netflix)

I'm sure this list could expand exponentially, but for the most part this seems like the short list. Of course no startup will leverage all of these, but the more they accomplish the higher the likelihood of success.

Building a startup scene

Adam Kalsey — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 05:46:29 +0000

A British expat living in San Francisco, Ben Metcalfe took a trip back to London and had a discussion about lack of a startup scene in the UK.

Many of the issues there are similar to what I see in Sacramento.

There are two overall aspects to this: creating an interest in startup culture (the spark) and then ensuring the financial backing and support network is there (the fuel).

In the Bay Area, everyone has a startup and there are investors everywhere. I was once discussing an idea with a group of people at a conference and one of the people in the group approached me afterward, offering to fund the idea. The fact that there are startup-centric conferences and parties all the time helps contribute to the support network.

Having seen people with the same skills sets working in both London and San Francisco I had been surprised at how much harder people worked in San Francisco, and how much more hungry they were for success.

As the seat of government for the largest state in the country, Sacramento has a huge number of government workers putting in their 9-5 for 40 years so they can retire. It’s a whole different mindset from the startup culture. You don’t often realize just how ubiquitous state employment is until you hit the freeways at rush hour on one of those holidays that only state workers have off (like President’s day). The freeways are empty.

The concept of working late at night, on weekends, and on holidays is completely foreign to these people.

The more I look into what makes a startup culture thrive, the more I get back to the network.

People in San Francisco and The Valley are happy to meet over a coffee to chat about things openly. I know there’s people in San Francisco I can turn to for advice about VC money, potential hires, etc (all free, no-obligation, etc) and in turn I too give out advice to others to put something back. In the 7 years I really worked at a professional level in the London Internet scene, I cannot think of many people who I knew who would be so available.

When I’ve helped companies and individuals locally, there’s always an underlying question of reciprocation. There’s often genuine surprise that I’m not looking for part of the company, financial consideration, or even a return favor. The idea that I’d just help for nothing often comes as a shock. But that’s what’s needed around here.

Startup locations

Adam Kalsey — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 22:33:36 +0000

Does it matter where you locate your startup? While it seems that the SF Bay Area is the most fertile breeding ground for startups, is it necessary to launch there?

Sure, some of the top internet startups of all time launched there… Yahoo, EBay, and Google. And some of the hot startups and acquisitions of late were founded there as well. YouTube is from San Bruno, Six Apart and Wordpress are each in San Francisco, MyBlogLog is in Berkeley.

But a whole host of other hot startups have their roots outside the Bay Area. Flickr, Upcoming, and Del.icio.us are all under Yahoo’s Bay Area roof now, but they moved in from elsewhere only after being acquired. Amazon.com is in Seattle. Skype’s from Europe. MySpace is from Southern California. Some of the hottest funded startups like FeedBurner, NewsGator, 37Signals, and Big In Japan are located in the midwest. And the recent acquisition streak for Sacramento startups is proving exciting for local entrepreneurs.

You certainly see more startups in the Bay Area, and in fact, some argue that there’s a near magical quality to the area that makes it more conducive to launching a company. But does having more companies equal success?

In the Bay Area, it’s not hard to find the successes. They’re well publicized — everyone likes to talk about the big wins. The failures can be harder to find. If a high-flier or a heavily-funded startup crashes and burns, it makes news but how many smaller companies die before they get off the drawing board? When you live in the Bay Area tech economy, “me too” ideas seem to pop up regularly, and the echo chamber can make even the silliest company sound good. When everyone has a startup the success rate among startups in the Bay Area must be approaching single digits.

In Sacramento and other cities with less of a startup culture, fewer people try and create companies. The ones that do are more serious about it. You aren’t as likely to start a social network for reptile owners, quit your job to live off the AdSense ads, and expect that it’s going to be the next big thing.

Sure, in Sacramento you don’t run into VCs while standing in line at Peets so it can be harder to find funding. Office space means renting an actual office or working from home, since there’s not an abundance of worker-friendly coffee shops, co-working spots, or shared offices clustered together. Even meeting other entrepreneurs can be hard, since so many local companies are focused outward. Unlike the Bay Area, most Sacramento startups have customers, suppliers, and partners that are outside the area.

But getting out of the echo chamber might help businesses become more successful. Talking to real people about their needs means you’ll deliver a product that’s useful to people that aren’t steeped in Web 2.0 culture.

(Thanks to Fred Wilson for the idea for this post)

Startup Profile: WhosOnMyPage

Scott Hildebrand — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 09:58:44 +0000

Company: WhosOnMyPage
Founded: March 2006
Founders: Mike DiCarlo and Layton Wedgeworth

WhosOnMyPage just did a re-launch on February 9th, which included support for tracking the social networks Bebo, Friendster, and Hi5. This is a Sacramento company, and the guys are regulars at SacStarts dinners.

A bit of background is in order. WhosOnMyPage is a profile tracker that allows the owner of a social network page to see who’s viewing it, as long as the other user is using the service as well. The first version was launched in March of 2006 and went from 0 to more than a million users in less than one month. They had over 1.5 million daily page views and more than half a million unique users. As a result the system was tracking 15-20 million profile views each day. Then MySpace blocked the service, just like they did to other trackers such as Trakzor and Revver.

This new version is significant for multiple reasons, but mostly because MySpace and anybody else can no longer block them. It used to be that the owner of a social network page would have to place a small script in their page code, and all MySpace and their ilk needed to do to block a service was to simply block that individual script. The solution to the problem is a Firefox plugin, which does the very same thing as an embedded script and is completely outside the control of MySpace, Bebo, etc.

It’s going to be exciting to see this one unfold, and this time there’s nothing to stop them. Congrats to Mike, Layton, and Lindsay on a great job!