That actually brings up another point. In the commercial world,
it's easy to introduct a new product to an existing market, or introduce
an existing product to a new market, but introducing a new product
to a new market is almost always fatal. Anyone have any counter-
examples?
Greg
Mike Masnick wrote:
>
> I am so sick of the web calendaring business being "the next big thing"...
> There are too many companies doing it, and none of them have a very
> distinct business model or idea. The best, that I've found, has been
> when.com because they include events and book releases, and other stuff as
> opposed to just your own personal appointments.
>
> That article is amusing in that I wonder how the guy plans to compete with
> any of the following companies. I also have discovered that I immediately
> distrust anyone who is founding their own company saying "well, it's a $xx
> billion market". Don't tell me that. Tell me how you will capture your
> slice. I don't need to know the size of the overall market. I need to
> know the size that your business will do. These days I'm almost
> embarrassed to mention that I work for an internet startup. It's like
> living in Hollywood and saying you're an actor or that you've written a
> screenplay....
>
> Online calendaring companies:
> http://www.when.com/
> http://www.jump.com/
> http://calendar.yahoo.com/ (used to be webcal)
> http://www.visto.com/
> http://www.anyday.com/
> http://www.magicaldesk.com/
> http://digital.daytimer.com/ (yes, the planner company)
> http://www.appoint.net/
> http://www.supercalendar.com/
> http://www.calendars.net/
> and, of course: http://www.planetall.com/
>
> I assume there are plenty more, as well. It's not that this is a bad idea,
> it's just that there are way too many players, and none of them have
> anything special. If anything, it's an interesting product idea, but it's
> not a business idea. I expect that one of three things will happen to
> almost all of these: (1) they get bought by a bigger player (as a few
> already have) who wants to add online calendars to their suite of services
> (2) they change their business model (or their entire business - as
> jump.com did to become jump.com after being both microcontent.com and
> clockwise.com prior to this) or (3) they just go out of business.
>
> -Mike
>
> At 09:25 AM 2/21/99 -0800, Gregory Alan Bolcer wrote:
> >Heck, you don't have to have a product to get an IPO. This story is
> >interesting as they company they mention talks about providing calendaring
> >services to people on the WWW. How many people would want their private
> >scheduling information stored by some 3rd party? They'd probably sell
> >it to the advertisers and marketers in order to get you trip coupons.
> >
> >Greg
> >
> >-------- Original Message --------
> >Subject: FORTUNE.com: 2/19/1999 - Valley Life: Which Comes First--the
> Product or the IPO?
> >Date: Sun, 21 Feb 1999 00:44:18 -0800
> >From: M Bolcer <mbolcer@earthlink.net>
> >To: "Gregory A. Bolcer" <gbolcer@endeavors.org>
> >
> >Greg:
> >IPO's on the light side.
> >Dad
> >http://cgi.pathfinder.com/fortune/technology/daily/
> >