Earlier this spring, I started work with a young firm, set up by three successful German entrepreneurs. Our business: an internet one. We provide blogs, or online personal journals, to Europe's youth (and young-at-heart). With the tremors from the dotcom crash and the technology bubble still being felt, it might seem an odd time to get involved in an internet venture.
The firm, 20six, is my fourth entrepreneurial role in as many years. My shortest tenure was three days, my longest 20 months. The entrepreneurial bug has been addictive, but I think that today is the best time in four years to launch a business.
Why now? While capital is, admittedly, scarcer, the environment for entrepreneurial internet ventures is in many ways not as hostile as it was a few years ago. For one thing, many of us have learnt from the errors of the bubble period. This generation cares about cost management and revenues. We recognise there isn't really such a thing as an internet business anyway, the internet being so woven into the fabric of the communications and media industries.
Also important is a change in the internet ecosystem. There are new emergent standards that reduce the cost of doing business, afford new opportunities and increase complexity in the system. For example, wireless internet access, such as Wi-Fi, does all these things. It reduces the costs of getting online, provides a raft of new services, such as public hotspots, while increasing complexities.
How, for example, do you easily roam across mobile phone networks, public hotspots and your office Lan? Firms like Boingo Wireless and WiFinder exist because of these opportunities. The growing connection between mobile phones and the internet is compelling. It is creating the always-on crowd who wish to access resources on the move.
Mobiles also provide a billing mechanism for internet or online services, helping us satisfy our needs for a payment system. Large established firms were burnt by their own excessive investments in internet businesses they didn't really understand, didn't really work, or to which they weren't really committed.
Large phone companies are saddled with debt. Their obligation is to reduce their debt, not invest in developing new products. Media firms, particularly in the UK, are on the back foot, concentrating on structural shifts in the advertising business and their declining audiences. Once bitten, twice shy. They won't innovate for a while.
And if that doesn't persuade you, perhaps this will. There is a trusted investor's adage: if a cab driver asks you about investing in a particular company, it is time to sell. It certainly rang true during the 2000 bubble. I think it still does.
Last week, returning from a dinner, I mentioned my new venture to my cab driver. "An internet business?" he replied, "Do they still do those?" We certainly do.
· Azeem Azhar is UK managing director for 20six. You can find it at www.20six.co.uk
