Damien Mulley points to the buzz surrounding proposals to reboot the way venture capitalism works. And Scoble's post extrapolates the ideas around outsourcing business functions and building virtual companies, eg -
"5) Venture deep technical help. Let’s be honest. The skills to get a prototype service up and working are far different than making it work for 10 million users. Building UI’s in Ruby on Rails is a lot easier than building a server farm that can handle exponentially-growing loads. So, can you build a network where you share one tech team among a group of startups? Then you’ll add value to the whole network and be sought after. I saw just this happening at startups in Silicon Valley where one deeply-skilled tech guy was shared among three or four startups."This reminded me of Paul O'Mahony's comments on the PXN8 review at Web2.0Ireland.com -
"Surely bloggers should come together and form some sort of loosely bound structure/organisation to facilitate this kind of collaborative enterprise. With enough members we may even be able to boot strap our own ventures through membersip fees... I was half thinking of starting a blog on Web 2.0 also. It would be devoted to discovering fast growing Web 2.0 startups and assessing the potential of porting them to Ireland."
Paul also made a very interesting point in an email -
"I guess its fair to say that a high percentage of bloggers are programmers and that bloggers in general are a skilled and enterprising bunch. After all, making a blog in itself is an enterprising act. So I think it makes sense to channel all that energy in a collective way."
And while Paul thought that TechCamp was great he wondered why the Wiki wasn't an ongoing affair, acting as a collaborative business plan. Why indeed?
I started asking myself similar questions recently after putting together a reading list for Irish entrepreneurs. It occured to me that the list was something of a fantasy business team. If I was to be struck by a flash of inspiration for the right business idea I can't imagine having a better team than the 13 people on that list. Granted it may need to be rounded out a little with other skillsets but its an incredible starting point.
Incredible indeed. Good things could only come if you got that lot in a room together.
Posted by: Alan O'Rourke | January 30, 2006 at 01:28 PM
By the way, are many people going to the web apps summit in london?
Posted by: Alan O'Rourke | January 30, 2006 at 01:30 PM
Why isn't the Techcamp Wiki an on-going affair? Good question. No answer I'm afriad. It's open for anyone to add to it!
The idea of Techcamp is exactly what you're proposing here James, it didn't really work out that way first time - although it was a good event.
I agree - we should run the next Techcamp (or another event) this way - and the wiki really should be used for more than just the event planning (which means it gets dumped immediately after the event).
Any ideas / suggestions welcome! Planning the next Techcamp at the moment :-)
Posted by: Ed Byrne | January 31, 2006 at 12:26 PM
Alan, seems to be a few going alright -
http://web2.0ireland.com/2006/01/30/calling-all-irish-future-of-web-apps-summit/#comments
Unfortunately I can't make it myself but I'm looking forward to being virtually there by following the tagmob!
Ed, I'm really looking forward to the next TechCamp and hope that we can all, as a community, put keep the continuous, informal, Silicon Valley style networking going. There's no better hub than your Wiki :)
I do have one idea - as soon as we decide the venue can we put together a detailed map of the city's entertainments spots? Maybe something like map of Limerick I'm doing with Mapbuilder right now -
http://eirepreneur.blogs.com/eirepreneur/maptest2.htm
Posted by: James Corbett | January 31, 2006 at 12:54 PM
Sounds good James!
Posted by: Ed Byrne | January 31, 2006 at 01:18 PM
Thanks for the mention James. I'm going to go ahead with the new blog. Hopefully we can start a dialogue going on possible startup ideas. I know some people would be reticent about publicising their business ideas online, but its interesting the kind of feedback you get if you take the chance.
http://mashable.com/2006/01/31/my-latest-harebrained-idea-distributed-interactive-photos/
Also http://thebusinessexperiment.com/ is due to release its first product next month. Fascinating to see how they managed to get the corporate structure in place so quickly (HR, Sales, Developers etc)
Posted by: Paul O Mahony | February 01, 2006 at 08:52 PM