Feature vs Company
My list of the top two moronic questions VCs/financiers ask entrepreneurs/startups are:
1) Is this a feature or a company?
and
2) Used to be: What if Microsoft decides to build something similar? Now: What if Google decides to build something similar?
There is a delicious irony to the two questions.
As late as 2002, search was considered a feature and not worthy of the company status. Portals paid technology companies like Informix single digit millions in licensing fees to use their search and threw away their internal efforts. If you were a search engine even as recently as then you were dismissed as a ‘feature’ and not a product.
And so it stands now that advertising on Google sites will pass Windows in revenue next year (with similar margins) and that because of this trend the second moronic question has become ‘what if Google decided to do something similar’.
The folks who ask this question display zero recognition that their current framework would have prevented them from investing in Google at any stage along the way. And so if you are an entrepreneur having to hear the question, you can smile at the irony.
