Automation Makes or Breaks Internet Startups

I've been hearing a lot about costs of running a datacenter these days, and how important it is to outsource even though administration and overhead of international contracts is not cheap either. I've been hearing about projects that were transferred out of the US only to die in a foreign land. Seems it would be cheaper to just abandon those projects, rather than slowly kill them.

But there are other ways to reduce the costs - especially for startups - you automate and use the Internet. As Tony Perkins says, "the costs of launching an Internet company have never been lower". You've got customer acceptance, branding is cost-effective, and now over 50% of the domestic US Internet customer base is on broadband. It's all about the service, and ease of use.

That's why we chose email as our basic service vehicle, all that spam nonsense aside - simply put, everyone uses it. Everyone also has a video digital camera these days - Canon A60's with great video/sound go for $130 on Amazon, 2 day delivery. Everyone knows how to shoot a clip / photo and send an attachment. Online photo sites got the customer conditioned to showing off their work. And Apple and atomfilms got people to watch movie trailers and shorts, which drives broadband usage up. It's all hinged on driving more content faster.

But generating interesting (good quality and Internet-ready) video content takes dollars / time / training - I do it automatically with a datacenter in realtime via email. And putting video on the web takes web design / development and $$$, but we do it automatically as well. It's all about using the Internet to create more efficient business processes. We've had Internet I and key Internet companies like Google, Amazon, and EBay have survived and florished because they took everyday activities (manual document searches, book search and purchases, auctions) and automated and streamlined the processes with the Internet. Just think about what Internet II is going to accomplish.