Inspired again by this post from Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures, I began thinking of the differences in the capital required to launch something these days. Much ado has been made over Web 2.0, and how much cheaper it is to build technology solutions these todays.

I came across an old proposal that I received from a vendor years ago (in the 1.0 days), and got a good laugh out of it.

We all know that things are cheaper to build these days, but I thought it might be interesting to put together a post illustrating the actual dollar differences in hardware, software, services, and labor costs. And yes, this is my last official post for 2006 – so happy new year in advance (4 hours from now!).

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The State of Florida is contemplating some legislative action to help resurrect their startup/venture space. Last year, Florida accounted for only .3% of all seed activity in the country, and they’ve decided to do something about it – good for them! The most likely scenario would be a state-run venture fund backed by tax credits.

Red herring has a nice story on this.

Are you listening, Georgia?

There are some lobbying efforts underway here in Georgia to allow the state to tap its sizable pension fund to participate in venture financing. Georgia is one of the few states that doesn’t already do this.

I will be posting a rather lengthy piece soon which will serve up some cannon fodder (and hopefully, an idea or two) on how Georgia can break through this early stage impasse.

Cheers.

With the jolly fat man in red scheduled to visit tomorrow night, I have the holidays on my mind. We were listening to some holiday music today and this line from the song “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” caught my ear (note the line in bold):

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This blog has been fortunate enough to be included in the “Z-list” meme that is running through the blogosphere right now. After doing a little research into it, I came to a few conclusions.

First, if you don’t know what A-listers or Z-listers are, then here is a brief description. “A-listers” are essentially the “top bloggers” (in terms of traffic, inbound links, etc.) These are the “loudest” voices in the blogosphere, and subsequently, the ones that garner most of the attention from others.

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According to Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures, they do. If you are a web entrepreneur, you owe it to yourself to read this post.

This chart showing the capital requirements of “web 1.0″ startups compared to “web 2.0″ startups is brilliant (click to enlarge). Notice the nice curve on the web 2.0 line, which reflects the relative ease of getting into the game these days. But note how eventually, you end up with a “real” business, and the cash requirements become very similar. Good stuff, Fred.

Cheers.

With all of the chatter flying around about how much Facebook is worth, or how many “users” are needed (or how many “matter”) within an online social network, my head is starting to hurt. It is easy to get caught up in all of that sort of thing.

After a long period of soul searching, I have finally come to a very important realization (and conclusion) on the real value of a social network.

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Check out the latest episode of StartupLounge.com.  Chris Klaus of ISS and Kaneva fame stopped by and we had a great chat about virtual worlds, and the gaming/digital entertainment industry in Georgia.

Cheers.