Success Tools: Quickstart, Eyespot
Modern technology is drastically accelerating the pace at which a business can grow, as well as drastically decreasing the startup funds necessary to get a business off the ground.
Charles River Ventures Quickstart program is a great example. They are soliciting entrepreneurs to send them ideas which they will fund in a highly efficient loan format instead of the slower-moving and regulation-heavy VC investment format. They want to fund dozens of startups in a hurry with a minimum of formality. Part of the reason they can do this is that modern ventures can be started with a lot less cash than even a few years ago. Today, a two-man shop started on a shoestring can pull in millions of users or subscribers. The Quickstart program got 1000 emails on its first day.
And that money can buy a lot more: 1980 it cost around $1,000,000 to buy a suite of video editing gear. By 2001, Macs could do it for under $2,000. And the next price reduction: how about free? Eyespot has put a complete video toolkit online. Trim your video, add effects, mix audio, insert titles...and they're only in beta!
And, of course, Google Docs and Spreadsheets can repleace a lot of what that $300+ office suite used to do.
We are clearly living in an age where all barriers to human aspiration and human creativity are falling away at an exponential rate. The world is hungry for new ideas. That leaves us (you and me) with the hard part: for no startup can allow us to download entrepreneurial spirit, determination, audacity, vision, or will.
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