Mike Arrington
"Winners and Losers"
- newRoo (?) sold for 65(?) million before launch!
- PlentyOfFish.com was founded by a guy who didn't like having to pay for match.com and now brings in $300,000/month from adsense.
Shared Attributes of winners:
Passion for what they are doing
doing something extraordinary
Remove serious friction
Great founder dynamics
Never raised money or raised it after theyw on
Perfect revenue model not required
Shared Attributes of Losers:
Poor founder/team choices
Lifestyle/ego entrpreneurs
Raised too much money
Over business-planned
Forgot about scaling
Mike really likes Adobe Apollo.
Market Saturation:
Avoid these markets:
Social networking
Social bookmarks
Video
Photos
Bloggin/podcasting
Portals/homepages
feed readers
Big Potential in the markets:
Platforms
Desktop apps
Office efficiency
Cloud storage
Identity
Developer tools
Market destruction (1800free411)
ENTERPRISE
Note: the best entrepreneurs avoid this type of advice. Invent a new market.
Mike was once kicked out of an Apple event for live blogging Steve's speech from his Motorola Q, standing to take pics, etc, unapologetically. I think he may be my new hero.
(posted from my HTC Wizard via Diarist)