One part of the current Web 2.0 boom (and perhaps the part that most justifies a lot of the bubble talk going around) that is reminiscent of the dot-com days is the focus many companies have on pageviews and users over revenue models and profits. A lot of industry folks claim this is completely different due to the monetization magic of AdWords and the resurgence of online advertising in general. In some cases that holds true, but oftentimes it’s just an excuse for a lack of substance and product people are willing to actually pay for.
What I enjoy most about the startup world is solving problems for people and companies. Which is why building products and solutions that people actually want to buy is always a major focus for me in my businesses. This once standard approach sometimes feels almost unconventional in the startup world these days.
So I always like it when I read things like "Then, for us, we knew in our hearts, and we didn’t want to be a web 2.0
company that’s just all hype and glam. We knew that we had planned all
of this carefully with our board. We had always wanted to start making
money." from startups that become really successful. In this case, it’s from an article about Zimbra, an open-source email startup that sold to Yahoo for $350M. That’s a significantly bigger exit than a lot of pretty "hot" web 2.0 acquisitions.
Here’s the full podcast and transcript.