A whole new ball game

Finally someone who gets it. "Tech startup" has become a term that gets thrown around way too much. Let's face the facts - every business utilizes technology in this day and age. Is ToysRUs (toys) a tech company? Or Airbnb (real estate)? Or even Uber (transportation services)? Companies are categorised by industry, not the tools they use to run their business. If McDonalds adds an iPhone app for ordering burgers or gets robots to make the burgers - it's still in the fast-food industry. So what's a "tech startup"? There's no such thing imo. There's the software industry & the hardware industry. Microsoft is in the software industry, a classic example of a "tech company". Apple does both. Boeing does hardware. What about Google & Facebook? Are these tech or media companies? After all, their revenues come from selling ads. They are the new magazines, the new yellow pages, the new classifieds.

I sure wish we had more "technology companies" making great new leaps in software, operating systems, hardware, etc. Unfortunately there aren't many examples of such companies becoming billion dollar businesses, compared to the variety of other industries that fit under the "e-commerce" umbrella. Why try to invent and sell great new software or hardware, when there are much easier opportunities in other industries, which are typically slow to adopt technology.

This isn't really a new kind of startup at all. The only thing that is changing is the scale companies like this can achieve.

Before, tech-enabled startups would have to build big tech chops in order to scale the business (i.e. amazon, tech enabled them to skip building storefronts and focus on innovating logistics), now the scaling problem has gotten much easier.

It seems to me that the questions we're asking in the 2010s seem to be less about "how can we make a new technology" and more about "how can we use the technology we already have". We already have pretty much all the computing power we need for most tasks* at our fingertips, and the question is now what do we do with it? It's the same for other technologies. How do we use, say, social networking, or databases, or what have you in a way that people want to use and that we can profit from?

* I don't want to fall into the trap of Bill Gates saying "640K is more memory than anyone will ever need."

This is how I would now explain what I've created for the cruise and travel industry. For a while I thought I was creating a tech company but it's become apparent that we're just using tech to reach an underserved audience and connect them with each other and with businesses who want to reach them in a new way. Plus, how can it be a tech company when I'm the only tech person.

My brother and I have found a new and interesting way to provide value to cruisers, travel agents and resellers and need help. Please contact me if you're interested in hearing more.