I have spent the best part of the last couple of days at the excellent Web & Mobility Summit, organised by the European Tech Tour team. There I saw a goodly number of the 25 start-ups that had their 15 minutes of fame in front of the great and the good of the European VC industry. Among them were six UK entrepreneurs whose companies well deserve a name check: Just Eat, StrikeAd, Everbread, Halo Networks, Badoo and Paythru.
Although the 25 start-ups were preselected by an ETT panel around the ‘web and mobility’ theme, I have no reason to doubt that they are typical of the hundreds, if not thousands, of start-ups jockeying for a position in the market – and of course vying for the investors’ dollar. As such, the key themes were very clear for all to see, especially social gaming and mobile commerce. And in case you were still in any doubt whatsoever, the social platform upon which social ‘anything’ is based is of course Facebook.
What I heard at the conference confirmed two things in my mind. Firstly, that social media and mobile platforms create huge opportunities for new businesses – and new business models – which simply could not have existed (or at least, existed profitably) just a few years ago. And, secondly (and as a direct result), these new businesses have every chance of disrupting existing markets and upsetting the business models of established players. But I hope you already realised this.
Frankly, few of the start-ups I saw will actually make it to the big time. Some will starve through lack of funding; others will not survive the ultimate test of market acceptance. But along the way, we will see new stars shine – and some of the older planets crash and burn.
Which is why you will increasingly see our research switch its focus to the impact that disruptive technologies, like social media and mobile platforms, and also disruptive trends, such as ‘BYOT’ (bring your own technology – see More evidence of move to BYOT) and the consumerisation of enterprise IT, are having on the UK software and IT services market and its players. We will also be paying closer attention to these very start-ups that are causing much of this disruption – indeed, watch out for news on this front very soon.