{"id":125,"date":"2005-10-17T09:16:53","date_gmt":"2005-10-17T15:16:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/wp\/?p=125"},"modified":"2005-10-17T09:16:53","modified_gmt":"2005-10-17T15:16:53","slug":"entrepreneurs_e","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=125","title":{"rendered":"Entrepreneurs everywhere"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Peter Rip, managing director of VC firm Leapfrog Ventures, has an insightful post on what he calls the <a href=\"http:\/\/earlystagevc.typepad.com\/earlystagevc\/2005\/10\/the_web_20_entr.html\">Web 2.0 Entrepreneur Bubble<\/a>. As the components of digital computing and communications get ever cheaper, the investment required to start up a software business falls ever lower. (Om Malik today <a href=\"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/2005\/10\/17\/why-less-is-more\/\">talks about<\/a> &#8220;virtual companies&#8221; that conduct &#8220;most of [their] business through cellphones, Skype and AIM.&#8221;) Combine that with easy access to inexpensive capital (seemingly the new American birthright), and you&#8217;ve got the recipe for another boom &#8211; and bust &#8211; in Internet startups.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s what Rip sees happening now. A lot of people, intoxicated by Web 2.0 hype, are rushing to launch new ventures. Unfortunately, many of them are pursuing similar, and usually flimsy, business models. Rip suggests that all would-be entrepreneurs ask themselves two simple questions: &#8220;How will you sustainably differentiate yourself? What will you do when 15 other similar sites appear in the next 12 months?&#8221; Don&#8217;t assume, in other words, that low entry barriers make it easier to succeed. It&#8217;s exactly the opposite. Where there are low entry barriers, there are also low barriers to competition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Peter Rip, managing director of VC firm Leapfrog Ventures, has an insightful post on what he calls the Web 2.0 Entrepreneur Bubble. As the components of digital computing and communications get ever cheaper, the investment required to start up a software business falls ever lower. (Om Malik today talks about &#8220;virtual companies&#8221; that conduct &#8220;most [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}