Enterprise

Images of Clixtr HQ.

Fergus Hurley, a native of Galway, and a graduate of University College Cork and MIT, now resides in California. He is the CEO of Clixtr. His new venture - Picbounce - is in beta and will be live shortly. In a very short time, he has acquired a lot of experience doing business in Silicon Valley, and he shares some of his thoughts with us here.

We started off by discussing the role of venture captialists (VCs) in Silicon Valley.

”In businesses there are certain things that have to be done every time that are replicable and repeatable, and the same for every business and other things that are unique to that business. You have to excel on the things that are unique and that makes you different because other people are going to be very, very good at doing the business side of things and executing very well. So the VCs are able to execute well on the business side while you are able to innovate well on the product side.

Image via Best Design Options by Vector Portal.

We don’t build the tools first. We build with what we have, and out of that which is constructed, new tools become possible. The technologies enabled by the industrial revolution led to the creation of the technological age, which in turn led on to the information revolution, which segued into the digital age. We now have the social media revolution. Like the preceding ages and revolutions, social media is going to affect every aspect, if it is not already, of our lives - including the way we do business.

Corporations are instruments of commerce. For the times when they came to the fore, they were necessary entities which were needed to source, manufacture and distribute goods and commodities, and they did it very effectively. I say "for the times" because as the times will change, so will corporations. The will have to - if they want to survive.

I've just read Chris Horn's article entitled "The Long Tail Wags" which was inspired by a recent conference I participated in.