Trends in the Web Space, from an insider

1. Trends in the Web Space,from an insider Bharat Vijay Founder, Boltell

2. Today’s Talk • My background • Some web history • Inflexion points for web companies • Trends in modern web companies • Goal : Identify questions to ask when evaluating trends in the web space

3. The Web and I • 15 year long affair • Early-Yahoo!, mid nineties • Studying web users, late nineties • Web information retrieval, early 2000s • Global engineering for web companies, early 2000 • India conceptualized Global Web products, 2003-2005 • Amazon & e-commerce, 2004-2006

4. The Web and I • uGenie – an India based e-commerce startup (2007) • A startup for the Facebook revolution – weRead (2008) • New Web advertising models (2009) • 2nd Generation Information companies from the web - Boltell (2010)

5. More than 2 Billion people online

6. Question : What is the penetration ?

7. Evolution of the web

8. Inflexion points • Apply to portions of Web or any industry • Identifying them helps understand trends and short term plans • IMO, applicable in 5-10% of cases, but can be a costly miss • Is there a Land Grab ? • Are the products in an Improve phase ? • Are key players beginning to Experiment ? • Is it a Survive phase ?

9. Evolution of the web Improve Land Grab Dot com crash Experiment Survive Improve Land Grab

10. Land Grab • Growth/user interest in an area • Is there money being invested ? • Deferred business returns • Powerful ability to spread information • Key to a successful land grab is aggregation • Yahoo! Launched upwards of 50 products in a year and it was not alone • More than 10000 applications on facebook in 2007

11. 1996 Land Grab • Off-line information was fast spreading to the web • Web was spreading as a quick, cheap way to get information • People quickly wanted products to try out on the web • Yahoo!, Excite, Lycos, Infoseek and others launched thousands of products in 18 months. • Many companies were bought out for large sums of money • Key question : How important is first to market?

12. Yahoo! 1996

13. Yahoo 1998

14. 2007 Land grab (facebook) • Socially important information was spreading fast. • Facebook embraced openness – allow others to quickly innovate. • Not as much money as 1996, but not as expensive to launch either. • People tried out many products • Many companies bought for small amounts, but successful exits • Facebook rockets past Yahoo! And Google as the messaging platform • Key question : How fast can a product grow through the social network ?

15. Improve era • Most dominant players established • End users become discriminating in the new universe • Features become important. Companies and products that offer these features get gobbled up. • Key question : How to Retain customers ?

16. Experiment Era • No immediate danger of a collapse • Large companies place some big long term bets • Example – Amazon with S3, EC2 • Key question : Should I continue to survive and improve profits OR experiment at the cost of profitability ?

17. What does a web product need ? • Marketing and customer acquisition • Revenues through sales/advertising • Customer data • Infrastructure to improve/innovate • Uptime • Capital

18. Marketing trends • Social media integration is a must • Search engine optimization is crucial • Surprise – it may be cheaper to market offline ! • Mobile apps will go from simple to compelling • SEM can have prohibitive cost – probably a last resort • Key question : Who is able to market using leverage ?

19. Capital and Revenues • Capital is hard to come by for another 18-24 months. • Mad rush areas like iPhone apps, mobile apps, cloud computing are getting some funding. • Advertising revenues are available for content ads • Surprise : People may actually buy your premium products • Key question that techies don’t ask : How effective are the product sales ?

20. Infrastructure and Uptime • Cloud based services are already world class • Simple integration/development can be outsourced to 24x7 companies • The keyword is integration – widgets/APIs/virtual servers are available • Surprise : Minimize your time to first set of sales

21. Web Customer data • Very few products – area is wide open for innovation • Google Analytics provides reporting • Huge need to marry IR with traffic trending • Key question : Is there a real connection between data we are measuring and the sales process ?

22. Today’s opportunities • Information source is now the web. In fact there is too much information – too many informative writeups, too much video, too much news, noise level is very high • Devices are portable, powerful, smart. There are too many types and not yet wired well. China and Taiwan cranking them out by the 10s of millions. But people pay for them unlike the internet.

23. Today’s opportunities • Taking information through till the transactions and beyond. • Cleantech, Education, Healthcare, Infrastructure are the areas in India getting funding • Q1 2010 - $1.9 billion in funding Source: Deloitte Consulting Report

24. In a Nutshell • Each subdomain has inflexion points – Land grab, Improve, Experiment, Survive • Cost of web marketing is very high. Opportunity for new age content companies. • Web infrastructure can make it fast for you to reach sales and critical business feedback • End users may buy your products through interesting channels • Making sense of customer data today is tough, but is an opportunity • Ask questions to really interpret the trends