My Internet Notebook

Since my last post touched on this open source service provider as a viable business model, I might as well find and list a couple of prominent companies in this space.

SpikeSource – Business-Ready Open Source Infrastructure has a celebrity CEO Kim Polese.

SourceLabs | Dependable Open Source Systems is in the business of providing no-charge, certified stacks of Open Source infrastructure software, and charging for service.

OpSource – The Software as a Service (SaaS) Experts is in the OSS for SaaS areana.

The latest issue of Business 2.o again has a good article on startup – Startup Last, Finish First.

The concept of second mover advantage isn’t that intriguing. But the mentioning of a startup called PeerFlix is pretty interesting. They basically took the business models that work, at ebay and netflix respectively, to come up with the idea for a DVD exchange site. That in essence is the mash-up of working business models. (we have seen enough mash-up from the media content, technology side.)

So I guess everyone needs to take a harder look at the business models of established players, there might be something you can learn and mashup from the big guys.

The greater San Francisco Bay Area has a long tradition of createing non-profit organizations. Now companies in Silicon Valley can get very specific help in setting up philanthropy programs, through non-profit organizations such as the Entrepreneurs Foundation. Link http://www.efbayarea.org/

Social entrepreneurship is catching on, not only here in the silicon valley, but also in other parts of the world.

I recall that Yale even hosts an annual Business Plan competition for for-profit ventures of non-profit organizations.

Totally missed this news last week (1/9/2006):

China’s fast growing economy is expected to help the nation’s private equity market to double over the next three years to $10 billion, but competition is also rising.

Silicon Valley-based early-stage venture capital firm Doll Capital Management said on Monday it would expand in China with 4 billion yuan ($500 million) of planned investment there over the next decade. “China is an agent of change for (global) technological innovation,” said David Chao, a co-founder and managing general partner of DCM. Hurst Lin, COO of Sina will join DCM as a general partner, extending a trend where successful Chinsese entrepreneurs move to venture capital industry.

DCM will target Chinese companies involved in wireless services, outsourcing, semiconductors and digital media, said Chao.

Bnoopy: The long tail of software. Millions of Markets of Dozens. By Joe Krauss

You know the real reason Excite went out of business? We couldn’t figure out how to make money from 97% of our traffic. We couldn’t figure out how to make money from the long tail – from those queries asked only once a day.

Also Chris Anderson’s article on the Long Tail.