For a good number of topics we search on the web today, we are repeatedly doing the same search all over again. Weather report for Tahoe in the winter, apartment rental listings on craigslist and mortgage rates are common examples that come to mind. Everytime I am searching for such topcis, I just wonder why it can’t be simpler. Why can’t I get this search to work for me and let me know when things of my interest happen. If you add up all such searches performed by all the users on the web today, I believe it will be a sizeable number of searches, which could potentially be made persistent by letting them run in the background and alert the users when a new matching result pops up. It will save every user a lot of effort and frustration with having to do the same thing again and again, but most importantly will help her find something she wants to know exactly when it happens. Its not an easy problem to solve but I think we are at a juncture, in terms of when we can solve it just enough to make it instantly useful and valuable and then build on it.
Fliptop, which was initially incubated at BetterLabs, is solving this problem with its first two products that launched at DEMO 2010 on Monday. The best way to understand it by watching this 6 mins DEMO pitch from Fliptop CEO Doug Camplejohn: Click here to watch.
Persistent search has a lot of implications. The total number of searches will reduce as persistent search gets wide adoption. Search gets a lot more democratized as publishers gain control of users who are searching for topics they cover or their latest updates. Search might also loose is current dominant role as the middleman between user and information, especially for searches that can be made persistent. A lot of possibilities but its too early to predict anything other than that it will be interesting.
Adeo Ressi’s HBS presentation that claimed that the VC model is broken has been discussed over and over in the last few days. Here is the slideshow of his presentation and while I agree that all his arguments are not acceptable, there is definitely merit to the question he raises about the current VC model. GigaOm disagrees wtih:
Have there been too many funds created, too much money poured into finding the next Facebook, Twitter or YouTube? Undoubtedly. But the VC industry is subject to the same economic forces and laws of supply and demand as any other industry — in other words, if some funds are making money, others will emerge and try to duplicate that success, even if they know the odds are against them. The same dynamic can be seen in plenty of other businesses, including the mining industry: When gold is hot, everyone wants to be (or invest in) a gold miner, even though they all secretly know that too many miners means less gold for everyone.
Like everything else there are always two sides to a coin, but the recent years have seen very little in terms of VCs making big and bold bets to truly spur innovation. In fact the entire web 2.0 space has been filled with highly funded me-too plays and others that are products and features (not companies) that do not need or merit VC. But considering the fact that we are where we are, I think there is a severe need for someone or some model to come up that puts a bet or allows entrepreneurs to bet on pie-in-the-sky ideas that stand a chance to bring about a disruptive change. We are taking a tiny step in that direction and so are YCombinator, betaworks, Techstars and others. There may be other models that might evolve too, but there is no doubt that traditional VC must evolve from where it stands today.
