52 Bicycles

Lisa Williams liveblogged the Boston Startup Meetup event (I discussed it too, though afterwards) and had the following analogy that I think is really on-target as regards the “acquisition” business plan that seems so in vogue these days:

This is interesting. Web 2.0 companies are like drug discovery companies — small, most go out of business, some end up selling something to Pfizer for megabucks.

I think I used the term “research lab” in a prior post (yep, I did) but Lisa really gave it the clearer analogy, because this is a “modern” example in high-technology that others can look to guide their business planning.

But even these new biotech companies don’t hang their hat on a single drug combination - their gig is finding a lot of them, such that some of them work out. And perhaps the “web 2.0″ phenom would be well-served going in a similar direction, taking some core technology and trying a few different applications, see which sticks (perhaps more than one of them will), build it out to the next level (though not to the nth level), and shop it around.

A possible model. Worth thinking about.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 5th, 2006 at 8:51 pm and is filed under Technology Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. Reddit This