Web Business is a pure Brain business

Writing after some long time as was busy with designing new salary structure. Also was busy with the Inferno Blog hunt (which is going great guns with over 170 blogs). Indian Web business is heating up with the new generation becoming more Internet Savvy because of cheaper broadband (Rs 500 for a month with great speed and download limits).

Read the stories of successful businessmen/businesswomen and you will find that they started the business with very less amount like Rs 15,000 (+ Rs 15,000 , Reliance) or Rs 10,000 (Infosys). During late 80s this was quite some amount (worth atleast Rs 1,00,000, present value).

For a startup web business all you need is $10 - $ 50 per month and one or two quality brains who are ready to spend 20 hrs a day. Web business is more of a brain business than the power of money investment, infrastructure, man power e.tc. Lets take it point by point that why a web business is a pure brain business :-

1. To implement an idea you do not need a shop (a shop will cost you atleast Rs 50,000) of your own, a simple web page will do. Domain charges $9 per year, hosting (with ssh and required programming platforms) $5.
2. Advertisements - With blogs, social networking sites, free chat rooms, free emails this is absolutely close to $0 affair. You will just need a viral idea. Other means of advertisements will cost anything over Rs 10,000 (min).
3. Hiring people - You do not need a lot of staffs, just 2 programmers with quality brain can start the work and a billion dollar company can be run with just 50 staffs. Even you do not need offices, just get hold of people who can work from home and earn money through your platform. In the initial phase of project you may have to spend some additional amount on them but later on they can earn their own salaries.
4. Everything else is free. From a webserver to a script everything comes free. You just need the right brains to make it work for you with some modification.

Some Stories which look real

• YouTube (founded by 3 in Feb 2005, was sold for $1.65 billions with just 67 employees) :
  
  Money is no more a barrier in Web business. It is the real brain tussle. Google with few billions won’t be able to beat Youtube (which started with just 3 members and was sold with just over 60 members) they can just accept the defeat and buy success through them. YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, who were all early employees of PayPal.
• Digg (founded by 4 in Nov 2004) :
  
  It Started out as an experiment in November 2004 by Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson. Taking bigger news companies with an idea.
• Del.icio.us (founded by 1 during Late 2003 and acquired by Yahoo for some 15-30 million dollars)
  
  The site came online in late 2003 and was founded by Joshua Schachter, co-maintainer of Memepool. It is now part of Yahoo!.
• Wikipedia (founded by 1 in Jan 2001 and now has over six million articles in 250 languages)
  
  Wikipedia was launched as the English Wikipedia on January 15, 2001, as a complement to Nupedia, an expert-written and now defunct encyclopedia. The project is now operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization created by Jimmy Wales, and has over six million articles in 250 languages, including 1.6 million in the English edition. Wikipedia has steadily risen in popularity since its inception and currently ranks among the twelve most-visited websites worldwide.
• MyBlogLog (founded by 2 in Mar 2005 acquired by Yahoo in 2007)
  
  The company has deployed close to 100 million profile cookies, signed up 14 thousand blogs in their first year and more than 1000 blogs currently display MyBlogLog widgets.

There are more such stories (blogger, skype messenger, hotmail, urchin …) and I will also cover the Indian Stories. I have already seen Indian doing great in this field and still calling many Techno-leaders to pinch in.

2 Comments »

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1. My partner and I hope to be on a list like this in a few years. We are just starting out going from city to city with a bullhorn (megaphone) and advertising. This is a wonderful way to advertise. Also in all of the cities we have visited there is no violation for using the voice amplifier as long as you do not disturb businesses and their normal transactions. This is really a cheap and effective method. Good article and great advice!

   
   
   Ryan Blankenship on February 18, 2007 - 2:31 am @ 2:31 am

2. Best of Luck for your business Ryan. Whenever you feel low just look at how some companies progressed. It wasn’t all that sunny all day, they too had some ups and downs but a determination can help you reach your dreams. May God be with you and your new venture.

   
   
   AjiNIMC on February 18, 2007 - 6:53 am @ 6:53 am

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