http://i.cdn.turner.com/money/.element/script/3.0/video/evp/module.js?loc=dom&vid=/video/technology/2009/10/21/twitter_ceo_williams_fad.fortuneEmbedded video from CNNMoney.com Video
Great video of Evan Williams talking about past mistakes, focus and what they look for when interviewing candidates at Twitter.
Skeletons – Yeah Yeah Yeahs (acoustic)
I love when artists do unplugged versions of their music. This is wonderful.
It’s only Thursday but I’ve already heard the expression “the winner takes it all” at least five times this week.
The concept is where the winner of a market dominates the entire market. Think ebay for auctions, amazon for online shopping, google for search, facebook for social networks etc.
Often advocates of the “winner takes it all” theory also tend to believe that the best way to compete with the incumbant is too build a better/bigger mousetrap or create the “blah blah on steroids”
I don’t think about markets like that.
Often times the winner doesn’t take it all. And the best way to compete with the winner (or current market leader) is by either doing less (not more) and focusing on one thing and doing it very well. It’s actually the opposite of the “blah blah on steroids” approach.
Few examples come to mind:
1. Jobs.
The market leader for some time was Monster. This is a huge market but it’s certainly not a winner takes all market. Instead we now have powerful companies building tremendous value by focusing on different opportunities in the job market with different business models and different experiences (ie Craigslist, LinkedIn, The Ladders and Indeed).
2. Smartphone
Apple built the amazing iPhone, iTunes & App Store. Those things work together in a smooth & beautiful way. They are killing it right now. The alternative: Not an iPhone on steroids. Instead, Andy Rubin and Rich Miner created Android. A free, open source alternative. Absolutely brilliant. Google understood that vision and bought the company very quickly. I’m extremely bullish on Android’s opportunity with mobile devices.
3. Social networking
Facebook is the market leader for sure. But its not winner takes all because its just too big of a category for innovation & creativity. Right now my social network for music isn’t on facebook (instead it’s on hypemachine and tumblr). My photo social net is on tumblr and flickr. My social net for television is Boxee. My information social net is Twitter. FourSquare and Twitter are my social net for places & events. The list goes on.
There are many more examples (gaming, ecommerce, payments, browsers, etc) but this post is already getting too long for it’s own good. So let me try and bring this puppy home with one last thought.
At the end of the day, I believe that entrepreneurs are just too creative, too ambitious and too optimistic to allow for a winner takes all world.
Crying Lightning – Arctic Monkeys
This is the last acoustic track from their MPR appearance. I posted the other two earlier this week. I would love to see the Arctic Monkeys unplugged at a small venue. Dare to dream :)
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Just ordered the new Magic Mouse. Amazing.
The Shins – Gone For Good
automatic reblog. Great song.
Earlier today Steven Johnson and John Borthwick were on CNBC talking about the real time web.
At one point in the discussion the CNBC guys ask how can users handle this constant flow of data. They were wondering if all of this real time data was beyond what users can handle or manage.
Steven and John gave great answers but I thought it was funny question because at the same time the CNBC screen was filled with all sorts of streaming data that doesn’t have any filter on it whatsoever. Just look at that screen: tickers, news, “breaking news” etc coming in all over the video.
Twitter offers a flow that is quite different. In fact it’s the opposite of the CNBC broadcast. It starts with following people you think are interesting and it takes off from there.
Btw, here’s the actual video, it showed up on my Twitter feed :)
Dance Little Liar – Arctic Monkeys
Here’s another song from the acoustic set that Alex and the boys performed on MPR recently. So good.
In startup and venturespeak sometimes we use the word “forklift” which means a startup that builds a product that requires customers to rip out their current solution completely to use a new product.
It’s commonly referenced in networking, telecom and enterprise software. Want a new billing system? Well, that means you need to forklift the old one out of there.
For the most part, forklifts are tough to say the least. And it’s one of the reasons why enterprise software can be challenging. It’s also why the best forklift solutions make it easy to ramp (e.g. software as a service).
Capital efficient startups and VCs have tried to avoid direct forklifts when possible. That was one lesson we learned from Bubble 1.0.
But sometimes existing technical problems can become so big that merely fixing/improving the current model isn’t interesting. We need something brand spanking new.
For example, right now our wirelesss system isn’t scaling. We are still in the top half of the first inning when it comes to wireless data services. What happens when everyone has a smartphone (e.g. Android, iPhone, Palm Pre etc). The current cellular system won’t scale as we all make data services requests. They were built with a different design goal and use case in mind.
The same thing is true with the current sytems that deliver video on demand to cable and telco subscribers. Those systems were designed for a different use case than a world where everything single piece of content is on demand.
It doesn’t make sense in every case but I do hope we see more entpreneurs and VCs take on forklifts. But this time with the benefits of cloud computing, open source and with new models of efficiency.
(photo via flickr).