I came across this (http://blogs.business2.com/business2blog/venture_capital/index.html) blog today, and was wondering if people are dreaming of achieving what YouTube has done.
After YouTube was acquired by Google for $1.65 billion, many people rush into the web scene with or without any golden idea, and venture capitalists pour millions into some of these web startups, hoping to gain substantially. I wonder if they had carefully done thier analysis, or are they merely playing with number games; investing in many baskets, hoping to stike in one of them.
You may then ask how do we determine if an idea is a good one? In fact, what’s so special about YouTube? Video streaming has been out there for years. They merely make it uploadable by any users. Blog too, which im writing one now 
, doesn’t seem that it would have gain much popularity; who will be so bored to read on other people’s article? Yet the web is such an amazing place, where nothing is predictable.
So how do we decide then if an idea should work? Probably it is not the idea, rather, how it is being marketed. For instance, my friends and I learned about YouTube only when CNN mentioned about millions of users watching a clip of an uncle cursing and swearing in a bus in HongKong. I wondered if the broadcast was planned, as a way of advertising the site. If so, then whoever is marketing YouTube has done a great job.
By the way, Sequoia Capital who funded YouTube has also funded Yahoo and Google previously. It’s fascinating to ask myself how did they manage to always hit the jackpot. Did they merely throw in cash and won by luck, or did they went all out to ensure that whatever site they invested will sure become a hit. They have recently funded heavily on some other sites, let’s see if they hit the jackpot again.
With RIAs (rich internet applications) made possible with tools like Adobe Flex and Microsoft Silverlight coming into the scence, there’s no doubt there will be more new ideas floating in (I’m creating one myself 
). It will be intersting to see how VCs will react the this next hype.
Tags: ria, venture capital, web2.0, youtube
September 30, 2007 at 5:45 pm
if they both meet then they can create the boom to the market .