The Mesh - Lisa Gansky [17]
their billions. our inheritance. or, who’s that standing on my shoulders?
Mesh businesses also begin with a huge technical advantage. The billions spent in developing the Internet, mobile infrastructure, and certain large platforms—such as Amazon, Google, 3G, Facebook, PayPal, and eBay—have lowered the financial and time barriers for starting new businesses. This key development in the evolution of the Internet favors Mesh businesses. From product development to marketing, Mesh businesses can and do deploy assets they don’t own but can easily access. Ebay, for example, pioneered a Mesh-style global platform that enables people to sell almost anything. Other available assets include cloud computing services, social networks, and national postal services, UPS, and FedEx package services. Leveraging existing, well-established, scaled, and trusted assets significantly lowers the cost and risk of starting a new enterprise.
This is a big reason that Mesh businesses are starting to thrive. The enhanced ability to leverage existing platforms, and lower incremental costs, is a big reason that Mesh businesses are starting to thrive. If we were to start Ofoto today, offering the same products and services (reliable network storage, customer order systems, backend systems, printing and shipping facilities), I estimate that it would take 10 percent of the nearly $60 million we raised at the time. Why? The cloud computing networks, tools, talent pool, and software as a service (SaaS) vendors in place today would allow us to go to market faster with far less capital. That reality improves nearly every aspect of getting a venture successfully off the ground and in condition to grow—the number of core staff required, the funding needed, and the time it takes to get to market.
the seriously friendly effect.
Knowing how to take advantage of social networks is important to Mesh businesses. Say you connect to 10,000 people who have more than 200 friends on Facebook or orkut. And imagine you impress those people with the quality of your service. Some number of them will share information about your business with their friends and family on their social networking sites. Or one will just mention it over coffee. That’s leverage.
At Ofoto, we encouraged the sharing of digital photos among social networks of friends and family. We knew that people enjoyed sharing photos of events, and shaped our offer accordingly. At the time, people would share photo albums with on average five or six of their friends and family. Someone would go to a party, take a bunch of pictures, and share them. Friends and family members would see how fabulous they looked in a photo, and then buy the print, often signing up for an account of their own. We would pay to acquire one customer and get five for free. The “network effect,” as it’s known, was a new phenomenon then, but has grown dramatically in the years since. Newer photo services, such as Olapic, allow shots from anyone who attends an event, such as a wedding, to be uploaded in a single place and shared on social networking sites.
panning for gold. or meet my friend, the filter.
In social networks, certain people act as “discoverers.” I am one in particular domains. My friends expect me to occasionally find new music, or artists, or great restaurants and bars, or relatively unknown spots in faraway places. Likewise, in