{"id":514,"date":"2012-08-21T12:19:05","date_gmt":"2012-08-21T16:19:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.payne.org\/?p=514"},"modified":"2012-08-21T12:19:05","modified_gmt":"2012-08-21T16:19:05","slug":"its-not-the-wild-west-anymore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/its-not-the-wild-west-anymore\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s Not the Wild West Anymore"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recent Facebook post<\/a> by David Sacks is worth reading. \u00a0He said:<\/p>\n

I think silicon valley as we know it may be coming to an end. In order to create a successful new company, you have to find an idea that (1) has escaped the attention of the major Internet companies, which are better run than ever before; (2) is capable of being launched and proven out for ~$5M, the typical seed plus series A investment; and (3) is protectable from the onslaught of those big companies once they figure out what you’re onto. How many ideas like that are left?<\/em><\/p>\n

As you might expect, his note sparked a fierce debate in the comments (and a TechCrunch article<\/a>).<\/p>\n

I think he’s more right than not: \u00a0the unbounded “wild west” days of the Internet are winding down. \u00a0 I’ve written before about the GAAF ecosystem<\/a>, and how\u00a0much of the Internet is now controlled by Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook. \u00a0Those gorilla incumbents have taken a lot of friction out of the system, but they also tax, manipulate, control, and limit success at the upper-bound. \u00a0You’re not going to build the next Facebook on Facebook.<\/p>\n

(The incumbents will get replaced, but it will be a LONG timeframe — they’re too deeply entrenched.)<\/p>\n

However, the Facebook discussion suggests a nice framework for evaluating opportunities. \u00a0Ideas within the incumbent ecosystem (especially pure Internet software ideas) will be\u00a0limited. \u00a0But stepping outside that ecosystem makes things much, much more interesting. \u00a0Uber<\/a> (mentioned in one comment) is a great example: \u00a0they solve a messy, real-world problem — they’re a lot more than just a app.<\/p>\n

Markets are smart: \u00a0Silicon Valley will figure it out, but it might take a while.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent Facebook post by David Sacks is worth reading. \u00a0He said: I think silicon valley as we know it may be coming to an end. In order to create a successful new company, you have to find an idea … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entrepreneurship","category-ramblings","category-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}