Richard Rodger pointed to a great post by serial entrepreneur Joe Kraus who says it's a great time to be an entrepreneur because -
- hardware is 100X cheaper
- Infrastructure software is free
- Access to Global Labor Markets
- SEM changes everything
Having come to an agreement with a software developer last weekend to jointly work on a new business idea I have a new found appreciation for the above points. We're going to be building upon a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MSQL and PHP/Perl/Python) architecture for which the hosting plans available have a negligible cost. And my new business partner only moved to Ireland a few years ago from Pakistan so in that sense I have also availed of 'access to global labour markets'. While he's working on the nitty gritty of the coding I'll be drawing up a marketing plan in which highly targetted Search Engine Marketing will obviously play a role.
The point is that it's extremely affordable nowadays to be an internet entrepreneur. The cost is your time, the tools are practically free.
Yeah but people seriously underestimate how important marketing is. Its ok having the best site in the world, but if no one knows about it your screwed.
Advertising is incredibly expensive, and I estimate up to 80% of advertising that companies undertake has no effect at all.
You can go do the viral/pr route but this is a very in exist science that most people can't get right.
I love to see people starting their own businesses, but I do wish people would give more thought in how they stand out in an incredibly crowded marketplace.
After 5 years in marketing, even I still get it badly wrong ;-)
Posted by: Brian O'Neill | July 02, 2005 at 01:08 PM