Nice piece. But it is hard to discuss the historical trends in the “me too zone” without noting how dramatically the flock of sheep has grown over the last 10 years.

If we charaterize VC’s over funding the disk drive space between 1975 and 1995 as “piling on” when as a group they were only investing $8b to $10b per year, then we need to raise the description several orders of magnitude to describe the same behavior when the dollar volumes are 5x to 10x.

Also difficult to discuss “me too” behavior without acknowledging that is is rational given 2% management fees. Well fed sheep flock together.

Chris Bulger

Struggling to keep up with all the emerging consumer related technology out there? Join the club. Check out the post by venture capitalist Brad Feld about what he calls the “Me Too Zone.” Every emerging market hits a point where there is a mad rush of …

A few posts back I wrote about trackbacks vs. comments (with an insightful comment by Aaron Campbell thrown into the mix). Developments on my course blogs and with former students who miss the blogs have me thinking more about the…

Struggling to keep up with all the emerging consumer related technology out there? Join the club. Check out the post by venture capitalist Brad Feld about what he calls the “Me Too Zone.” Every emerging market hits a point where there is a mad rush of …

bgblogging: Saturation point? Barbara is grappling with the same questions that I think are creeping into the whole blogosphere in one form or another. What is the saturation point for blogging in the classroom? I extend this to ask, “What…

I thought you’d find it interesting that the VC “pile on” behavior in the disk drive industry described by Christensen was well-treated earlier by Sahlman and Stevenson in the HBS case “Capital Market Myopia” in 1985.

http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=288005

Seems like this behavior shows no sign of abating. VC’s now seem to over-apply Christensen’s distruption model and use it as an excuse to “pile on” even more. They’re getting clumpier and clumpier even as funds get larger and larger.

Perhaps it’s time to consider how to “disrupt” the VC’s themselves.

Nice blog. Keep it up.

Eliot Jacobsen

Someone finally explained to me why I don’t like blogs.

ths is a great analysis of the “me too” phase – but let’s phase it, how many options are there – it’s either “me too” OR, “me first” (any other options?) – which is the worst of the 2 evils?

It just so happens that “me first” recently developed a bad name again – ‘member the .com thang? – so, it naturally stands to rason that there will be a phase of “me too” right now. Having personally heard a self-professed “Angel Investor” say, “we don’t do startups” in the past week, I can understand how the entire business food-chain is driving the “me too” trend at present – for better or for worse.

I love Dave Jilk’s response above – “just differentiate” – beautiful – I agree – whether the prevailing trend is “me too” or “me first”, the single test of a great idea should be;
“does this innovation create new & attractive value for its customers?” – if so, it should be executed on – fast! Competition will come, and you’ll have to keep moving – if it’s in a “me too” space, competition will come from established players, with installed capacity – in a “me first” sace, competition comes from upstarts due to the low barrier to entry. But, regardless of the “phase”, there will be competition. So……..Just Innovate – again! To identify value innovation, I highly recommend the book, “blue ocean strategy” by Kim and Maubourgne. I personally believe that all strategies that get money – either ventire or corporate ca$h should first have to present their “strategy canvas” per this book’s templates – with an annual review of the same.

Me too’s are sometimes a great investment – a few “late starters” that have managed to make their competition irrelevant by value innovation: google, ford – both should have come to market!

Another area I’d dispute is the theory that a space gets stagnant as it gets crowded. With all due respects, oh please! If Necessity if the mother of Invention, (market) Density is the mother of Innovation, Invention’s step-brother. This week’s interview with Bill Gate’s (see “one on one with bill gates”) illustrates this point – Gate’s is predicting both a) the convergence of communications and computing and b) SIMPLIFICATION of computing interfaces as the next “killer app” in IT / IS. The only reason there’s a need for simplification and integration is BECAUSE the market for info tech and systems is so crowded – not because there’s nothing there.

What I do appreciate is that maybe, the business and particularly the venture community is getting bored of seeing “me too” business plans in general. If this is the prevailing mood, hold on, it’s going to be 1999 all over again. wooooohhooooooo – here we go. luckily, my business plan has both – i’d planned on funding the “me first” part in 2007, but maybe, just maybe … we should float that first.

As for blogging etc., I may be a pleb, but I only started blogging & subscribing this past qtr. – & I consider myself an “early adopter” (questioning that, after reading this post). I think there will be a lot more density in this _space_ – more innovation – and maybe even a few useful products. Let’s face it, there probably isn’t even a single product in the space that has broad brand awareness. There’s LOTS of room! What about knowledge management applications for blogging & subscribing in the enterprise – that alone could be huge

Feld, I may be reading too much between the lines here – but my recommendation – take a vacation, sit on a beach, read “blue ocean strategy”, come back ready to sift through the pile of both “me too’s” and “me first’s” – thar’s some blue ocean’s thar !!!

Feld Thoughts: The Me Too Zone. Every emerging market hits a point where there is a mad rush of early stage entrepreneurs and VC’s piling in….I’m afraid we just hit that point with RSS / Blogging….

Feld Thoughts: The Me Too Zone. Every emerging market hits a point where there is a mad rush of early stage entrepreneurs and VC’s piling in….I’m afraid we just hit that point with RSS / Blogging….

A dog-eared copy of The Innovator’s Dilemma, which I’ve been re-reading in preparation for some planning meetings this week, sits on the table in front of me. I’m plowing through my morning RSS feeds when I come across this post by Brad Feld…

[Innovator's Dilemma...]

Agree 100%, and we enjoyed his follow-on, Innovator’s Solutions; it’s like a bible for us. Here’s a similar observation about RSS from 2003.

RSS: Disruptive Technology Hiding in Plain Sight [by F. Andy Seidl]

We put a stake in this “space” in 2002, but not as a blog or RSS tools company; those are simply things we do well because paying customers have asked us to. In that sense, we’re part of the “me too” crowd, but we see blogs and RSS as part of a natural transition to smarter information systems that are based on web services; systems that will ultimately lead to entirely new applications that enterprises will derive great benefit from.

Looking forward to your “space” take.

BF –

However, while Christensen focuses on the disruptiveness of innovation, this study focuses on the fact that most storage ventures are not disruptive at all. This is interesting to me, with all due respect to Mr. Christensen, because while this may no…