Web Zombies I

The web is full of zombie companies, which are unable to live and unable to die. From time to time I like to watch some of these living dead.Here is our "web zombie of the month":

Once upon an time there was a company.  A famous one, almost everybody knew it. It's estimated worth was $ 580 million at its peak.  In early days the platform even was a facebook competitor, which overtook it in 2008 - regarding user numbers.

But in just 6 years the company managed to loose 90% of its value (or shall I say - was managed to loose?). The platform finally was sold for $31 million (a dollar per user, more or less). In the last years the involvment of a well-known celebrity from the music business might have helped to win some users back. But the truth is, that this extended only the time of its undead existence.

Today the platform is truly "out". No current usage statistic is provided by the company. Nobody needs it. Nobody wants it. It seems that the crowd moved on. Game over. I am talking about myspace.

Web Zombies:
The web is full of zombie companies, which are unable to live and unable to die. From time to time I like to watch some of these living dead.

We know the phenomenom from the startup scene: a great idea gets some funding, but after some time of enthusiasm, or even visible success, the company either reaches its limits, fails to create a business model, or both. But instead of being kill and buried, it  becomes a living dead. Why? Too much money has been spent, too many emotions are involved, too many reasons seemed to provide a vivid future.  Everybody knows some of these "nice-idea-didnt-work-out" companies. And in many cases one would have wished they have failed earlier and letal, instead of hanging around in the internet basement, waiting for a miracle or someone to kill it, finally.

Follow the money!

Hey Startups! In case you want to follow the VC money here is the list of the Top 20 locations in the US. BTW: Silicon Valley dominance is over, now San Francisco is on top. And: the east coast comes closer, which is a good thing for european startups (at least the flight is much shorter;).

Ever heard of Provo-Orem? It's a small city in Utah, a bit more than 500,000 people live there. And guess what? They generate 168m/year VC capital. How much does  Berlin? I think there is no correlation of being a Partytown/Hip Place and the money which is raised. Sorry for that, Berlin, but you better focus on being an event park. The race is over, dont start to run now.

Top 20 Locations for Venture Capital Investment (taken from from theatlantic)
		Investments		Deals
Rank	Metropolitan Area (listed by core city)	Dollars (Millions)	Share of Total	Number	Share of Total
1	San Francisco-Oakland, CA	$6,896	25.6%	744	19.7%
2	San Jose-Sunnyvale, CA	$3,985	14.8%	415	11.0%
3	Boston, MA	$3,101	11.5%	408	10.8%
4	New York, NY	$2,269	8.4%	379	10.0%
5	Los Angeles, CA	$1,677	6.2%	232	6.1%
6	San Diego, CA	$1,134	4.2%	103	2.7%
7	Seattle, WA	$886	3.3%	112	3.0%
8	Austin, TX	$626	2.3%	87	2.3%
9	Chicago, IL	$547	2.0%	71	1.9%
10	Washington, DC	$484	1.8%	117	3.1%
11	Philadelphia, PA	$347	1.3%	105	2.8%
12	Denver, CO	$264	1.0%	53	1.4%
13	Atlanta, GA	$262	1.0%	53	1.4%
14	Boulder, CO	$256	1.0%	40	1.1%
15	Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN	$256	0.9%	29	0.8%
16	Santa Barbara, CA	$251	0.9%	14	0.4%
17	Phoenix, AZ	$214	0.8%	15	0.4%
18	Raleigh-Cary, NC	$184	0.7%	28	0.7%
19	Pittsburgh, PA	$167	0.6%	76	2.0%
20	Provo-Orem, UT	$162	0.6%	14	0.4%

Business Model Generation

Business model generation sounds promising.Who would not like a generator which produces valid and working business models? Does that sound like entrepreneur's paradise? Yes, it does.

But don' t mix a business model with a business plan, which is ususally more like a fictional piece of literature, based on lots of hypothesis' described as facts and containing some cool charts. For this kind of literature generators are easy to provide But they do not create any business, just blabla and blingbling.

Alex Osterwalder defines a business model as " the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value." I like Alex' presentation style (and the the contents too). Especially when it is about two things which have my special attention: business models and innovation. Get it all in one presentation, which is really funny too, especially the part with the desperated record company guy, who has no idea how to face the download culture business threads. Enjoy!