9/23/2004

Start Ups Have New Cost Advantages

This post from TJ's Weblog points to a post by Joe Kraus that highlights the cost differences that make it much easier to start a business on much less capital today than, say, ten years ago.

The advantages cited by Joe are as follows:

1. The tools to develop software cost nothing now.
2. Hardware costs are approaching 0.
3. Start-ups have access to global labor.

To which TJ adds:

4. Marketing works different nowadays - blogs are an ever increasing marketing power and (smaller) cost factor
5. Enterprise Software Sales have gone ASP - there are many ways to reach customer besides the old-fashioned sales pitch (for some products at least)
6. Communication Costs appraoch 0 with Skype and Skypeout
7. Offices lose their value - small businesses are often virtual