(2008-04-08) Haque Edge Strategy

Umair Haque thinks the Credit Crisis 2008 and rest of the "MacroPocalypse" are just symptoms of the bankruptcy of traditional Business Strategy, which tries to avoid Commoditization through secrecy and other Consumer-hostile acts. And that the only answer is a Network Economy.

Fred Wilson is intrigued, and has many comments. I Commented about the fact that many Start Up-s would have greater sustainability if Google kept a smaller piece of the Ad Network pie.

Update: Fred raises the issue of Liquidity, wondering whether Private Capital can play a greater role. I Commented as to need to unbundle the discussion into separate bits on best ownership model for sustainability, vs financial engineering of cash-flow timing.

• Alex Iskold called for the End Of Free.

• Umair Haque thinks Start Up-s are doing the Sell Out too soon. Let's go back to the spectre haunting Venture Capital. Why aren't there more Googles? The answer's very simple. Because every company that had the potential to be as revolutionary as Google over the last five years sold out long before it ever had the chance to revolutionize anything economically. Think about that for a second. Every single one: MySpace, Skype, LastFm, Del.icio.us, Right Media, the works. All sold out to behemoths who destroyed, with Kafkaesque precision, every ounce of radical Innovation within them.

  • Paul Graham thinks he's wrong. While I'm sure Larry and Sergey do want to change the world, at least now, the reason Google survived to become a big, independent company is the same reason FaceBook has so far remained independent: acquirers underestimated them... The reason there aren't more Googles is not that investors encourage innovative startups to sell out, but that they won't even fund them.

  • Umair replied