Last night I attended the IBDNetwork Strategies Series: Stepping on the Web 2.0 Scale. The event was hosted at Shasta Ventures and featured these guest speakers:
- Moderator: Tod Francis, Managing Director, Shasta Ventures
- Panel of Experts:
- Adam Gross, VP Developer Marketing, Salesforce
- Shawn Hardin, CEO, Flock
- Jason Pressman, Partner, Shasta Ventures
- Sam Schillace, Engineer, Writely/Google
Stepping on the Web 2.0 Scale at IBDNetwork Jan-23-07
The panel addressed these questions and more:
- What does a scalable Web 2.0 business model look like?
- Is the ad model really the only viable option?
- Are you a feature or a business? How does this impact your business outlook?
- What are the long-run goals? Acquisition or go it alone?
- How does team building affect a company’s success? What other factors come into play?
I noted a couple of good quotes, the first were two answers to “How would you define Web 2.0?”
Sam Schillace stated that Web 2.0 revolves around collaboration. It is a better model for interacting with customers and quicker release times due to user demand.
Jason Pressman believes an ideal Web 2.0 application should be built with AJAX or a LAMP Stack. The application should allow interaction with data that comes mostly from the users vs. company generated. He believes a good example of a Web 2.0 company is Logoworks.
The next were some detailed answers to “What does it take to be a successful ad website?”
Jason Pressman believes that it needs to be a consumer conversation driven website for three reasons:
- Nobody is buying technology anymore, there is always more than one person developing the same technology
- Investors are buying teams that can execute and provide returns
- Investors want companies with defensibility, competitive advantage, IP, a good team
Pressman indicated that there were significant Web 2.0 opportunities for E-commerce: continues to grow, more people shop online; security has improved but needs to continue to develop; the key challenges are scaling and inventory.
There is also event recap on the Under the Radar Blog.