The latest issue of Business 2.0 lists "The Next Net 25" which attempts to better encapsulate the innovation made possible by ubiquitous broadband, cheap hardware and open-source software. The Next Net 25 was pulled together by Erick Schonfeld, Om Malik, and Michael Copeland, who have been living these innovations with all of us. While I'm sure there are folks who will quibble with their choices, the Business 2.0 team pulled together a list of really interesting companies.
In connection with the publication of The Next Net 25, Business 2.0 decided to host a roundtable of executives from the various companies they had selected. That roundtable took place last Thursday with a surprisingly large subset of The Next Net 25 execs — Joe Kraus, Michael Robertson, Kevin Rose, Sam Schillace, Barak Berkowitz, Phil Wessels, Dave McClure, Mark Fletcher, Jeremy Zawodny, Fred Krueger, Toni Schneider, Joshua Schachter, Stewart Butterfield, Geoffrey Mack, Mark Pincus, Chris Lyman, Rob Seaver, Dmitri Shapiro, Adam Gross, Mike Davidson, Steven Marder, Jim Fowler, and many others who I apologize for not listing. Along with these phenomenal entrepreneurs, a few folks from the "ecosystem" were invited along as well. I had the good fortune to be among those hangers on. In the category of money guys, there were four of us around the table — me, Jeff Clavier, Bill Burnham and David Sze. Our role at the event was to politely endure being told that we were either irrelevant or, worse yet, harmful to the development of web companies. Ironically, of the couple dozen execs in the room, all but maybe a handful of them were venture funded. Which isn't to say that all companies should be venture backed. But surely some of them should, as I suppose most of the folks in the room recognized in their own cases.
The conversation during the roundtable was wide ranging, covering lots of the typical Next Net topics we have tread pretty broadly on our respective blogs. For example, everyone in the room had clear answers to the "what is your business model" question. But that's where we started the conversation. I suppose it was a little bit like a vocal warm up before a concert or stretching out before a marathon — by the time the business model question had been beaten to death, everyone was ready to dig into some of the more interesting topics at hand.
The Business 2.0 guys conveniently gave everyone nifty Business 2.0 pads and pens when we arrived, so I actually took a few notes during the event. But I'm not a particularly good note taker. So rather than recount all the twists and turns of the conversation, let me share with you a couple of the interesting quotes from the day and the context in which they were spoken. With any luck, that will give you a flavor for the discussion.
One particular quote that resonated well with everyone and has already started making its way around the Next Net world (in fact, it was just used by Adam Gross in a presentation he gave at the O'Reilly Etech Conference) was Bill Burnham's triple "A" business model:
It's the triple "A" business model: AJAX, Adsense and Arrogance.
Despite the fact that essentially everyone in the room had embraced AJAX and many of the folks in the room had also incorporated Adsense in some way or other, everyone went out of their way to make clear that their businesses were in no way defined by the Double "A," let alone the Triple "A." AJAX for AJAX sake was roundly rejected — what Jeremy Zawodny called "AJAX info porn" — but there was a great appreciation for the better user experience AJAX had to offer. As for the third "A" (arrogance), one need read no further than VentureBlog itself to see that I am not one to comment.
If there was a mantra of the day, I think that it was user experience uber alles. Everyone in the room recognized that the key to success was to give the people what they want, whether creating a better PBX or a better Job Search. And the way to maximize user experience is unquestionably through iteration. A comment made by Sam Schillace from Writely particularly resonated with me:
We've probably had more releases already than Word did in its first decade.
The folks at Writely are getting a pile of feedback from their users and they are quickly incorporating it into the product to make it better. While chatting with a couple of really smart geeks at Etech this week, I was reminded of Sam's comment. One developer told the other that in order to increase the agility of his organization they had moved from bi-weekly to weekly release cycles. To which the other developer quipped, "that's great, now you're 1/14 as fast as Flickr." I don't know that revving your product twice a day is the answer (perhaps it is), but rapid iteration is unquestionably one of the tactics that has driven real innovation and customer satisfaction in this most recent wave of web companies.
Far more was said than can reasonably be encapsulated in a blog post, but for more color on the event check out these posts by Erick, Mark and Jeremy. I hope that the folks at Business 2.0 will consider having another gathering in the Fall to see what more we've learned about building the Next Net. I'm certain that there will be a pile of activity between now and then. Thanks to everyone involved for letting me lend an ear and, occasionally, a voice to the event.