More companies are springing up with the aim of putting venture
capitalists in touch with hot young Internet entrepreneurs - an
idea pioneered by First Tuesday. Companies have been rushing to
form and join Web-based trading communities, and there is now even
a community to put entrepreneurs in touch with venture capitalists
as well as other services, such as technology and marketing.
Last weekend, DCfor.com - first formed by a team that included
expertise gained at firms such as SRI Consulting, e-business
services group Momentus, Deutsche Bank, and recruitment specialist
Robert Walters - formally launched. It held an all-day "offline"
event intended to help budding entrepreneurs realise their Web
dreams.
Its offerings include recruitment services for dotcoms hunting
for people to get their ideas off the ground. By last weekend, it
had more than 700 members, coming from all areas, including
entrepreneurs looking for seed capital, venture capitalists, job
seekers, even law firms and PR companies.
DCfor.com insists it is not challenging the First
Tuesday role, and does not consider itself to be a competitor. It
regards itself as creating a "community" to help dotcoms outsource
non-mission critical activities in order to help them focus on
their core propositions and get their ideas to market faster.
DCfor.com is already responsible for managing Compaq's own
"incubation" facility for dotcoms, dubbed "Ugly Duckling".
In keeping with its goal of helping prospective entrepreneurs
get their ideas off the ground, the organisation's Web site already
has a business planning wizard to help entrepreneurs submit their
ideas for assessment, and partner wizards to help start-ups find
development and marketing partners and management personnel.
The organisation might be a useful starting point for would-be
IT specialists working in lumbering bricks-and-mortar companies to
get their ideas off the ground. Eventually, they are going to have
to find the courage to leave the corporate nest, which is where
DCfor.com kicks in.
One would-be entrepreneur, Ben Southgate, admitted, "I was going
to quit my job on Monday. Now I'll do it with a lot more
confidence. I'm more inspired."
Does it have to be this way? Say you are a frustrated IT
executive who can see where things should be headed, do you have to
jump ship? Could the self-help idea offered by Dcfor.com be applied
to the bricks-and-mortar giants trying to become click-aware?
Frustrated executives require help to wake up a board, galvanise
a marketing department to work with IT, and persuade business units
to spot the opportunities for new online markets. It must be
readily available, and offer self-help.
Must companies go down the management consultancy route offered
by the Big Five, or turn to "digital consultants" such as Viant,
Scient, Razorfish and Agency.com? Or is there a Blair-like "Third
Way"?
The past few weeks have seen a string of business-to-business
exchanges set up, covering the retail, automotive and energy
sectors. Each one has major players - Shell, General Motors, Ford,
Carrefour - all driving the creation of exchanges which can cut
procurement costs. The conventional wisdom might be that these
exchanges would operate separately.
According to Commerce One, one of GM's partners in the huge
automotive exchange, what is really at stake here is a process
where traditional sectors in which these operate could become
blurred.
What is to prevent one exchange "portal" trading with another?
For example, Tesco could take advantage of services offered by
members of a specific energy portal. Eventually, what would stop
the whole traditional notion of "industry sectors" being turned on
their heads as new "industries" arise?
In future, even retailing, car-selling or energy production
might turn out to become an "old" industry in the same way we now
regard coal, or steel production.
Curiouser and curiouser
David
Bicknell