Two of the higher profile technology incubator programs – Y Combinator and Tech Stars – recently announced their graduating classes (read about them here and here), and in looking at the companies, I saw, yet again, some reminders of the 1999-like frenzy that the technology industry is currently experiencing.
A few thoughts:
- Not everything needs to happen online; some things (eg. grocery shopping) satisfy a ton of people in their offline incarnation
- Lots of things are already online and don’t need a new vendor. Just because you call yourself the Airbnb of vacation rentals doesn’t mean that VRBO, the very successful existing vacation rental website, needs to be “disrupte.”
- Vertical slicing doesn’t work online. It turns out that the Yelp for contractors is Yelp.
We saw this back in 1999: remember “vertical portals?” Yahoo for gays was PlanetOut, and that didn’t work out too well at all. Vertical slices sound good on paper, but they just don’t work; online it’s just too easy to move from site to site to get what you want. We also saw in 1999 the dot-coming of everything. “We’re going to take your garden online!” Umm, no, you aren’t.
The article about the Y Combinator class even admitted that these companies aren’t world changers, but “perhaps they’ll save a headache or two.” When this is the best that a boosterish tech reporter can come up with, you’ve got problems.
Thoughtbasket 