Last thursday saw a big event in Hamburg: 450 – 500 would-be netphiles converged on SinnerSchrader’s (one of the biggest new media agencies in Germany) to acclaim and discuss the virtues of web 2.0, mashups, social networks, long tail commerce, etc.
20 or so nervous VCs were imitating Dilberts Vijay (the World most Desperate VC), but I liked the rather cynical We’ll-Fan-The-Hype-And-Take-The-Money-But-Do-It-Right-This-Time entrepeneurs. My Favorite was Lukas Gadowski, founder of spreadshirt.net, who founded his 120-poeple company with 0$ VC money. that’s right, 0$. Cool guy. He urged “all the consultants and bankers in the room” to “do it again and found a startup, because you’ll get VC money now…” Hilarious, I keep thinking about the old adage of B2C and B2B meaning “back to consulting” and “back to banking” after going bust…. I now it’s really bubble 1.0-ish, but hey, I’m a veteran.
On a more serious note, while valuations are going up, it is true that there are four major differences between then and now:
1) development costs on more mature and open source technologies are a 10% fraction of the cost of 5 years ago
2) (viral, search, performance, affiliate) marketing costs are a factor of 100 cheaper now
3) there are 5-6 times more users with a wide range of needs and much higher affinity to web and mobile (adding up to 13 Mil. in Germany alone)
4) founders, even inexperienced, aren’t half as naive (though some ar getting giddy with the valuation thing).
Cheers!
