It’s a different world

The site that made me an entrepreneur was something I started in my “free time” back in 1999. This was pretty close to the peak of the first dot com bubble and since everyone else was getting rich I figured why not me.

The first dot com explosion was decidedly web 1.0. I’m sure that many of today’s startups look back at what was happening then and laugh. Oddly though my site was based on user generated content. All you kids today need to remember that many of us have been doing web 2.0 things way before there was even the term or the need to add version numbers to something as large as the web.

What was different however is we didn’t have the huge explosion of “social networking” sites that we see now. I’ll cover my skepticism around some of the big names (Facebook, MySpace) at a later time but clearly this is a big change in the nature of the web. Part of the reason I want to do this blog is because I’d like to do some things in support of this new world and need to be part of it to help me understand it.

5 or 6 years ago as my site was growing I remember commenting that there was a limited window of opportunity for small startups to create new sites and grow them to a reasonable size. That’s come true to a certain extent. What I did then was find a niche that was underserved and look to serve it. Finding that underserved niche is nearly impossible today since there’s just so many sites out there and so many startups jumping on every new opportunity.

Still I think it’s a fun world to operate in and look forward to trying to navigate these new waters and figure out the new rules. I hope to eventually get a few readers along for the ride.