Had a great time at Web 2.0 last month! The team met lots of enthusiastic customers and developers interested in learning more about our new Platform offering. We showed off some early demo’s of developer apps and got plenty of ooh’s and ahh’s. Here are a few random thoughts from the show:
1) Platform’s for developers are all the buzz and we’re right in the middle of it. In the very first session I attended Wednesday morning about Enterprise Mashups, QuickBase was mentioned twice in the first 45 mins. This came less than a week after our Platform Announcement. Very exciting!
2) Everyone’s thinking about how to sell to Enterprises but no one’s having much success. There seemed to be a half a dozen “social network for enterprise” startups and a bunch of other business platforms for enterprises and none of them had any significant customer growth. I felt very good about our strategy and progress in selling QuickBase throughout the Enterprise.
3) There was no “wow” booth that was a “must-see.” Definitely some interesting companies and cool technology, but nothing stood out as “awesome!” (QuickBase excluded of course!) This says to me that the technology out there is pretty darn good – and now it’s about business models and customers – Who can capitalize best on the technology at hand and build a big business? This is a good place for us to be!
4) Working a booth for three days is hard work! I was lucky enough to get to wander the conference and do press, but our team that stood in the booth all day and did demos and presentations worked their buns off! Kudos to them!
5) The economy is on everyone’s mind. Marc Andreessen said it best in his Keynote…Paraphrasing: Startups don’t take on lots of debt so that’s good, but the Internet is so tied in to every part of the economy now, a downturn can have a big impact.
6) Mobile is HOT HOT HOT, but way too fragmented to be a short-term win right now. It’s still very early in its evolution (especially in the U.S.)
7) Lastly, it felt to me like the end of “Web 2.0”. I’m not sure exactly what that means, but it felt like we are about to hit a new cycle of startup consolidation/implosion, followed by real businesses being created with real revenues, followed by a new “something” (technology, business model, Web 3.0?). Not sure how else to explain this feeling, but I think it’s a good feeling. It keeps us moving, innovating, and honest (i.e. building real value).
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