{"id":791,"date":"2011-06-20T12:36:59","date_gmt":"2011-06-20T19:36:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/?p=791"},"modified":"2011-06-20T12:40:22","modified_gmt":"2011-06-20T19:40:22","slug":"a-basic-difference-between-a-20th-centiry-company-and-a-21st-century-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/2011\/06\/20\/a-basic-difference-between-a-20th-centiry-company-and-a-21st-century-one\/","title":{"rendered":"A basic difference between a 20th Century company and a 21st Century one"},"content":{"rendered":"

NYT Article Asks Whether It\u2019s a Good Idea for Investors to Pump Tens of Millions of Dollars Into Startups With Half-Baked Poorly-Conceived Ideas<\/a>
[Via Daring Fireball<\/a><\/span>]<\/p>\n

\n

Claire Cain Miller, writing for the NYT:<\/p>\n

\n

Two of Color\u2019s photo-sharing competitors, Instagram and PicPlz, exemplify the lean start-up ethos. They started with $500,000 and $350,000, respectively, and teams of just a few people. As they have introduced successful products and attracted users, they have slowly raised more money and hired engineers.<\/p>\n

Color, meanwhile, spent $350,000 to buy the Web address color.com, and an additional $75,000 to buy colour.com. It rents a cavernous office in downtown Palo Alto, where 38 employees work in a space with room for 160, amid beanbag chairs, tents for napping and a hand-built half-pipe skateboard ramp.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The difference between Instagram\/PicPlz and Color isn\u2019t just how much money they needed to get going. It\u2019s that Instagram and PicPlz are easily understood, clearly appealing concepts. It\u2019s easy to see what they do, and why one might want to use them. Color is just a mess. That they raised a ludicrous sum of money proves only that fools and their money are soon parted.<\/p>\n

[More<\/a>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A 20th Century company gets lots of venture capital, hires lots of people and creates, usually by committee, its vision tof a product, hoping that the market place will like it. It has little clue whether its vision is appropriate or even useful. They spend months if not years working to reach their vision, costing investors millions. Their vision must be almost complete before the world sees it, right or wrong. Their development cycle is too long for any other course to really work.<\/em><\/p>\n

A 21st Century bootstraps itself with just a few people who have internalized their vision and who work to get a working prototype of that vision out, and then work to adapt that product to what the market wants\/needs. They spend weeks but never more than months to create and market its vision. Then, based on feedback from the marketplace, they recreate their rapid development cycle to move closer to perfection.<\/em><\/p>\n

Color has raised $41 millon for a product no one really seems to like. They have grand visions but their first attempt is simply not making it in the marketplace. How in the world can they ever recoup that $41 million?<\/em><\/p>\n

Instagram started with $500,000 and got its vision in the marketplace quickly. It had over 1 million users in just 10 weeks<\/a>. There are now over 3.75 million. Millions of people who would be ready to download updates or \u00a0the next new thing. They plan to monetize by providing fun add-ons but are also looking to the community they are creating. <\/em><\/p>\n

The numbers are probably much larger now but think about how the investors might easily get back 10 times what they invested versus Color and their investors.<\/em><\/p>\n

Instagram, due to the lean structure a 21st Century company can attain and to the rapid development cycle it can use, is the clear winner here. By the time Color has finally come out with something that others might use, Instagram will have adapted and be onto the next new vision.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NYT Article Asks Whether It\u2019s a Good Idea for Investors to Pump Tens of Millions of Dollars Into Startups With Half-Baked Poorly-Conceived Ideas[Via Daring Fireball] Claire Cain Miller, writing for the NYT: Two of Color\u2019s photo-sharing competitors, Instagram and PicPlz, exemplify the lean start-up ethos. They started with $500,000 and $350,000, respectively, and teams of … Continue reading A basic difference between a 20th Century company and a 21st Century one<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-21st-century-company"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pe2yp-cL","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1041,"url":"https:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/2014\/06\/12\/a-21st-century-company-eschews-patents\/","url_meta":{"origin":791,"position":0},"title":"A 21st century company eschews patents?","date":"June 12, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Tesla's Elon Musk champions open source cars: 'All Our Patent Are Belong To\u00a0You'[Via Boing Boing] \"Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla patents in the lobby of our Palo Alto headquarters. That is no longer the case. They have been removed, in the spirit of the open source movement, for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "21st Century Company"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":749,"url":"https:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/2011\/05\/08\/describing-a-21st-century-company\/","url_meta":{"origin":791,"position":1},"title":"Describing a 21st century company","date":"May 8, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Codifying asymmetry: How Apple became Jobsian [Via asymco] Any student of organizational theory must struggle with the question of how to assign weight to the influence of the leadership of a company. In the case of Apple, the question is: Is Jobs is the embodiment of Apple or is Apple\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "21st Century Company"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":784,"url":"https:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/2011\/06\/11\/why-adaptation-is-just-a-critical-as-innovation\/","url_meta":{"origin":791,"position":2},"title":"Why adaptation is just a critical as innovation","date":"June 11, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by szeke Why Apple blinked[Via Brainstorm Tech: Technology blogs, news and analysis from Fortune Magazine \u00bb Apple 2.0] An analyst offers three reasons Apple relaxed its rules for App Store subscriptions Scott Forestall demoing iOS 5's Newsstand. Source: Apple Inc. RBC's Mike Abramsky was the first analyst out of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "21st Century Company"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.spreadingscience.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/6-11-2011adapt.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":820,"url":"https:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/2011\/08\/31\/jobs-videos-demonstrate-how-to-run-a-21st-century-organization\/","url_meta":{"origin":791,"position":3},"title":"Jobs' videos demonstrate how to run a 21st century organization","date":"August 31, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"He sets up what was wrong with Apple before 1997. \"The total is less than the sum of the parts.\" Things had to be restructured. The customer was being led to the altar of tech instead of the other way around. Great engineering, bad management. Focused on the tactics, not\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "21st Century Company"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":690,"url":"https:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/2011\/01\/22\/some-reasons-why-apple-is-one-of-the-first-21st-century-companies\/","url_meta":{"origin":791,"position":4},"title":"Some reasons why Apple is one of the first 21st Century companies","date":"January 22, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by leoncillo sabino Reasons for Apple\u2019s Greatness? How \u2018Bout The Cook Doctrine?[Via Mactropolis.com - Your Friendly Global Mac Community] Asymco has a great post up titled simply \u2018The Cook Doctrine\u2019. It\u2019s a compilation of statements from Tim Cook in a financial earnings call (for Q1 2009), while he was the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Knowledge Creation"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.spreadingscience.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/1-22-2011apple1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1076,"url":"https:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/2015\/05\/13\/its-all-personal\/","url_meta":{"origin":791,"position":5},"title":"It's all personal","date":"May 13, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Personal. And easy to see. Ask ten people who runs Apple or Tesla. You will get a large number who get the answer correct. Then ask them who runs GM or Boeing. Only rarely to you get a correct answer. 21st century companies create a personal connection with everyone, including\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "21st Century Company"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/www.spreadingscience.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/STA-website.016.png?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":796,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791\/revisions\/796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}