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Agree on GroupOn and Zynga, and there are still plenty of popular services which are far from being economically sustainable and yet everybody says what a "grea
by antr 14y ago
Agree on GroupOn and Zynga, and there are still plenty of popular services which are far from being economically sustainable and yet everybody says what a "great company" that is, when in reality all it is is a "great product/service" with no revenue proposition (still, kudos for building it). See Path, Foursquare, Turntable.fm, Tumblr, etc.
If the liquidity from large companies such as FB, Google, AOL, Yahoo, etc. disappears, the value of the above mentioned startups will collapse. A big part of the startup ecosystem is a house of cards, unfortunately many first time entrepreneurs did not experience the .com rise and bust to understand what a downturn really looks like.
- untog 14y agoI would actually exclude Foursquare from that list- they're building up a really interesting collection of business partnerships- the one with American Express was particularly significant. Doesn't mean all their money making problems are solved of course, but they're further down the line than turntable.fm are, who continue to confuse me in terms of their lack of business model.
- hkmurakami 14y ago>See Path, Foursquare, Turntable.fm, Tumblr, etc. Gasp How could you forget Quora! :)
- pron 14y agoTo reiterate what I've said in my comment above, I'm not sure this is a downturn. A downturn implies some shift in the market, while this phenomenon is intrinsic to the particular startup economy. There might be a downturn in investment, though, as this inherent behavior gives rise to investment cycles.