

There's room for one more startup. - michjeanty

When starting a startup, we shouldn't worry about if there's room in a particular market or not. If we're solving a problem, there's always room. Who would have thought google would become the biggest software company in the world. Software moves to the web, and google is the leader in that world. Almost everyone uses goog applications in one way or another. When our startup is in the idea stage, many companies can emerge into our market, and we wouldn't have time to track all of them down.
If we have a competitive advantage, there's always room. We don't start a startup to be 20% better than the competitors; we start a startup to be 20 times better than the competitors. When goog started, there were excite, lycos, aliweb, altavista, webcrawler..., but goog came in and kick ass. If we have to know something about our market, make sure we know if the market is new, or declining.
Trust me, if we're solving a problem, and we have competitive advantage, there's plenty of room.
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aneesh
Umm, Google is not the biggest software company in the world. Microsoft and
Cisco, to name two off the top of my head, are both bigger than Google by
revenue and market cap.

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michjeanty
Microsoft used to be the biggest software company in the world; not anymore.
Google innovates; microsoft doesn't innovate anymore. Search is to the web
what window is to the desktop. The desktop is dead, everything is on the web
now. Goog controls 60% of the search market share; MSN barely controls 10%.
Microsoft is doing everything possible to catch google in search; goog doesn't
care about PC operating system. IBM has a market cap of $160 biilion, and $100
billion revenue, but who cares. When was the last time IBM did something to
make your life easier? Cisco designs, manufactures and sells Internet protocol
(IP). That's not software; that's IT.

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aneesh
Sure, Microsoft today is not the force it was 10 years ago. But to say that
"Microsoft doesn't innovate anymore" is a bit far-fetched.

