

A Second Internet Bubble? - michaporat
http://mporat.tumblr.com/post/17547826135/a-second-internet-bubble

======
freehunter
Maybe it's just me spending too much time here on "Startup News", but I think
the author has a fair point. There are a million startups with no real chance
of profitability in the near future (few years) or without really reworking
their idea once they gain traction that seem to be gaining huge amounts of
investment capital.

If VCs pour tons of money into startups that fail (one form of "exit"), the
bubble will burst. VCs don't like losing money, and if they see their money
going down the drain, they will pull out. We might not see a complete
withdrawl that causes an Internet collapse like in 2000, but at the very least
VCs will demand short term profitability realization, and that will put the
kibosh on a great number of MVPs and "like X but with Y" ideas.

Speculative, yes, but speculation is what the market is all about.

~~~
michaporat
Even worse - if VCs fund these startups, VC return will deteriorate, which
will stop LPs from funding VCs. That collapse of the ecosystem is the real
burst of the bubble.

------
j_baker
_Let me start by saying there is an obvious bubble in the market - or in more
professional terms, an oversupply of early stage capital, mostly in seed
stage. It is no news that in the last couple of years many new private
individuals / angels / micro-funds have entered the venture market, and are
funding companies at the earliest of stages._

Well since it's so obvious, it should be trivial to give data to back your
arbitrary-sounding claim. Unless of course, this really is an arbitrary and
unfounded claim.

------
darkxanthos
"Customer development"

I'm not sure that word means what you think it does. The whole point of
customer development as I interpret it is to GTFO of the building, find
customers, build relationships with them, and start making money ASAP.

Maybe the OP has had experience with individuals just getting to customer
engagement and then sitting on their thumbs? In that case I can understand the
frustration but it seems less customer development focused and more "why don't
people want to make money" focused.

~~~
dfragnito
"Customer Development" is not the same as a having an effective "business
model". I believe they should be treated differently. They will impact the
product/service in differnt ways.

Getting in front of (selling to) 1, 10 or even 100 customers, collect
feedback, implement feedback is easy. Getting in front of (selling to) 1000,
10,000, 100,000 is hard if your business model does not scale.

"Customer Development" is more "will they buy it"

"bus dev" is more "how to best penetrate the market efficiently"

"Bus Dev" will force you to change your product in ways you may never
imagined, and these changes will not be realized from customer feedback.
Customers do not care if you have an efficient b model.

Make sure you are not solving the wrong problem see
<http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/the-wrong-problem/>

While going through the customer feedback process I realized are b model
sucked (it always bothered me). The article above inspired to me solve the
right problem which has caused us to make a significant change to our
offering.

------
joejohnson
Why can I scroll the content left and right within the paper-looking element?
I like the style of this page, but this error is distracting.

