Jason Calacanis email titled ‘the future of startups’. Subscribe to Jasin’s email list and read a lot of interesting mail.
If you haven’t subscribed to Jason’s email list till now then better subscribe it now itself.Must say,it’s worth subscribing.I truly appreciate,not just his insight into web technology but also his ability to write such long(really long) emails to his subscribers with hardly any uninteresting stuff.
And after going through his recent mail titled “The Future of Startups“,you can certainly visualise the technology trends/changes that have happened so far and the changes that may happen in the time to come.
So,here is a very short summary of his long mail titled “The Future of Startups“(specially helpful to those who have less time but still want themselves to be updated with jason’s knowledge bank).
And it’s not republishing at all.Have a look !
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The Future of Startups
1. Centimillionaires on JetBlue
Spending BIG on luxury is passe(even for rich folks).What sells is cheap and stylish.(iPhone or G1 prove it well).So,future startups will focus more on providing cheap or free services which are fancy and attractive enough but light,very light on pocket.
2. The Zero Cost Startup
With cloud computing services on a roll and major players such as Amazon, Google, Rackspace and Microsoft are participating with full enthusiasm (seeing it as the ‘pathbreaker’), the startups are shrinking on seed investment. Virtual offices are proving office space irrelevant and the major cost goes in ‘human involvement’ only.
3. The Age of the Microstartup
Gone are the days when startups used to spend tens of thousands of dollars in marketing their lavishly launched product/service.With majorly all social media platforms coming for free,a startup does not need a press coverage to be in the limelight.With obvious chain reaction of blogosphere and social bookmarking services,startups are turning ‘micro’ in investment but are equally(or more) effective compared to earlier methods.
4. The “Try Everything” Era
As the effective investment in any startup is folk’s time and creativity so folks are trying just about everything to be successful.They are ‘riffing off’ other known services,making a replica or just an extension of popular sites.So stay aware & cautious about everything that’s happening in startup industry.You can even make a deadpooled company’s idea successful.
5. Longevity is Innovative
In this down market,’survival’ will be the only key to success.A launch with a lot of buzz does not guarantee your startup’s long life.You will establish yourself as a brand in your arena only if you stay alive(and active) for the next five years.
6. The Rising Feature Bar
Today’s startups are high on features.Be it maps,iPhone apps,widgets,web 2.0 GUI and everything you can think of…It’s right there in today’s web startups.And if it’s not their own then they get it integrated through a API.So the standard of ‘features’ is rising every moment.
7. Features Over Brands & Businesses
Most of the startups are,more or less,features.They are way away from a becoming a Brand.Bring around 10K folks a day coming directly to your domain name and then dare to call yourself a ‘brand’.
8. Focus on Revenue or Rating?
Both the approaches are OK.The end result remains the same.What matters is choosing one of the two paths and sticking to it all the way(means all your startup’s folks are of same frequency in this decision).
9. The End of Servers?
Cloud computing services have started playing a big roll in upcoming startup’s IT infrastructure and the trend will only gain momentum.
10. The Oversourcing of Crowds
Many services have always pitched ‘Crowdsourcing’ on a high note(ex. Digg or Wikipedia) but they have never been completely powered by the users.They have always been partially driven.And today,the age of professional expertise and curation is ready for a comeback.
11. Social Network fatigue & data portability
Users are no more interested in filling out their profiles on countless networking sites.Data portability will soon be a reality in full effect.
12. Meetups & Professional Accounts
In a down market situation,people love to socialise and therefore web services like Meetup.com will be high on use.Those popular free services which have now become an addiction to millions will open up their professional account options(ex. twitter) as well.
13. Make Media Time
Future startups will focus on targeting ‘free’ folks who will have good amount of time online in the time to come.Folks will spend plenty of time exploring their creative side and many startups will find a bulk of users if they satisfy the folks.
14. Game time
‘Free time’ means more time to leisure out.Hence gaming startups might see an additional rise in usage.
15. Hookups
In a stressed out situation,relationships serve as a soft cushion and hence dating sites might see rise in usage.
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