Internet

Internet is not yet dead. Here are some doctrines about this mighty trend:

  1. It’s become fashionable among VCs to say that the Internet is dead, paradoxically even as venture portfolios become more and more concentrated in the same few consumer internet companies (and their clones). The problem with web-bashing, of course, is that the Internet is one of the most powerful technologies ever created and the idea that we have exhausted its potential two decades after we started exploiting it commercially is as ridiculous as saying that there was nothing left to do with electricity after the light bulb. Companies like Facebook, Spotify, and YouTube demonstrate that there is life after pets.com.
  2. Advances in cloud and other computing technologies radically reduce the costs of starting and running new businesses, creating opportunities for even larger returns.As a general matter, Internet companies that will outperform are the companies that take the Internet seriously – as a technology for transferring information on a scale and at a level of convenience that can’t be replicated elsewhere – and that have a plan for translating those advantages into cash. They probably won’t look anything like the companies that exist today; all great companies, internet and otherwise, tend to be sui generis.