KEY POINTS:
I've been ducking in and out of the TechCrunch tech start-up conference here in San Francisco all day and have seen some interesting little companies deliver their pitches to a room full of Silicon Valley's deep-pocketed venture capitalists.
I'll blog more about the companies, including New Zealand's
own Ponoko, when I've had a look at each of their products (they're all internet-based businesses).
As the first day of TechCrunch wrapped up, an interesting interview was conducted by TechCrunch's Michael Arlington, with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Towards the end of the interview, which focused too much on the finer details and not the philosophical and motivational stuff the entrepreneurs in the room wanted to hear, Zuckerberg made a surprise announcement about cold, hard cash.
Here I think is a great opportunity for any enterprising New Zealand web developers who want to score US$25,000 to US$250,000 in seed funding and win the attention of the VCs behind the hottest social networking website.
Facebook's backers have put together a US$10 million fund to inject cash into businesses that are making third-party applications for Facebook that they really like the look of.
Earlier this year, Facebook unveiled Facebook Platform, which allows independent development of services that can be used with Facebook, which has around 40 million active users. So instead of building your own internet start-up from scratch, you can leverage off the power of an established internet brand and the eyeballs it attracts.
What sort of application would fly? Who knows, Facebook hasn't given any guidelines, it's just looking for "innovative and disruptive things" according to Zuckerberg. That also goes for the business models, whether they be advertising-driven or otherwise, that may go with your fledgling application.
We're seeing more and more of this type of business model, which is parasitic in that web developers create applications specifically for someone else's website.
But it can also be mutually beneficial and fosters an open development community which is ultimately good for Facebook users. All you need to do is submit your application and a business plan to platform@facebook.com.
Zuckerberg for his part is young, articulate and intelligent. He reminded me a lot of Sam Morgan. Despite rumours of multibillion dollar offers, Zukcerberg claims he doesn't want to sell out.
"We're not planning to get acquired, we're not planning to go public," he told the TechCrunch audience.
"I remember [YouTube founder] Chad Hurley saying that in 2006," Arlington retorted. Hurley and his partners sold Youtube to Google in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion.
If anything, Facebook will raise more money to expand and won't have any problem finding money from new or existing investors.
"We're coming to the point now where if we do something like that it will be because we want to do it, not because we have to," said Zuckerberg.
A position most of the tech entrepreneurs in the room could only dream of.