7 Comments

  1. Hi Lauren,

    Happy to have a chat to you about what we do and why we won an award. I think you will find our stuff sexier than you think!

    Cheers,

    Michael Stone
    CEO – Amethon Solutions

  2. Deal! I’m giving a presentation at the end of Sep to 500 Web 2.0 types at WebDirections on social networks and mobiles. I need someone to tell me what to say – I’m notoriously lazy – and monitoring how the great unwashed move around mobile online communities would be a good start. Out of all the Red Herring companies, yours was the sexiest BTW. I’m not just saying that… 😀

  3. Aaaaah. I get it now! Even tho I don’t follow sport, it’s a widgety thing to make things clear. Uhoh. Richmond aren’t doing well, are they? 🙁

    You should have anexample like that one, on the home page – just because its a business service doesn’t mean you can’t make it cool. 😛

  4. The problem with “sexy” stuff is that it’s often short-term fizz instead of long-term core value — the stuff that generates newspaper headlines and VC surge.

    I like to compare this Internet Age thing with the rise of railways and the telegraph – same thing, building global networks with new technology. My favourite example is Westinghouse…

    The newspapers focused on the massive speculation in new rail lines, property developments along those lines, fortunes rising and falling overnight etc. But meanwhile a little-known engineer called George Westinghouse was working with compressed air.

    Very un-sexy.

    The railways were built with fast profits in mind, not safety – just like the Internet’s been built with scant regard for security. So when there were the inevitable fatal crashes the legislators demanded that all trains be fitted with fail-safe brakes – and the Westinghouse Air Brake Company was there, ready, with a patent.

    After that success George founded Westinghouse Electric Corporation – because he had the patents to Nicolai Tesla’s AC technology and the knowledge of building a reliable engineering firm just as AC electricity distribution became the norm.

    Having said all that, if I were investing in companies now I’d be looking for core items that have to appear everywhere, not surface fluff.

  5. Yeah I was just being silly. But don’t you find it odd that Red Herring should nominate only 6 Australian companies from 200 in Asia Pacific and none of them seem to be Web 2.0? If you think web 2.0 is just sexy fluff and not a fundamental change, then you won’t be surprised. But I was.

    1995 was the canals and trains. 2005 onwards is about getting those new industrial products (developments) out on the infrastructure we’ve been laying for the last ten years. Yes there’s still stuff to be done and I have no doubt these companies are worthy of investment. But “disruptive”…?

    If one is risk averse, stick with Web 1.0 technologies. If one is interested in the “next wave of disruption and innovation” then we need to see more Web 2.0 stuff.

    We are in agreement, just not discussing the same things. I think. 🙂

  6. Oh Laurel, I didn’t realise you equated Web 2.0 = sexy. 😉 But then Red Herring did say “disruption and innovation”.

    Yes, we’re in “furious agreement”. And I love every minute of it.

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