Great post today from John Furrier on Furrier.org.
He points out – rightly – that:
I fully agree that it is the best time to start a company both for entrepreneur and the venture capitalist. In fact the angels are out there. I ran into one yesterday (granted I live in Palo Alto and you can swing a dead cat without hitting an angel or VC). There is big interest in seed, super seed, and full blown Series A deals.
In these downturn times the opportunities just fall out of the trees. In a downturn the noise level is reduced and it’s all signal. Thanks to the memo from Sequoia which was a strong signal from the Silicon Valley elite money machine on which behavior will be tolerated (translation they want less Seesmics and more real companies). The other them is that innovation is coming out strong. The real opportunities are presenting themselves. The real web 2.0 will emerge from this downturn.
Or – in the language I would use:
If you are building a startup that delivers real value to your prospective customers – real value they will pay for – now is a great time to get started. If you have a cool idea that lots of people will sign up for, but you are not sure anyone would pay for – keep your day job.
The idea that you can do something cool and aggregate subscribers and only then “monetize” the subscriber base is dead (and hopefully gone for good).