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July 9, 2003
Building a service provider today
I started inQuo, an Internet Service Provider, in 1994. Over 5 years, I along with between 2 and 20 employees, built up a company with a $1M/yr revenue stream, and had a lot of fun (and a lot of hours). In 1999, I sold the remaining business units of inQuo to FirstWorld, who is now defunct.
Every few months, someone bugs me to do something like inQuo again. We built a great reputation with customers, employees and the industry. Could we do the same again?
If I were to start a company again today, what would I do?
Though it is certainly intriguing to consider a software-development or software-services company, I always feel a bias to networking. Though if I focused on software, I think OSS integration would be interesting.
Small network service providers can fairly successfully (and inexpensively) ride the disruptive niches. It's chaotic, but as long as you know what to expect, you live with the chaos. As an ISP in the 90's, I lived with my fair share of chaos, alternately being the incumbent telco's best customer and worst competitor, as they figured out how to deal with the Internet.
The disruptive market now is clearly customer-owned infrastructure. Wireless appears to be the path of least resistance, but may be constrained long-term. Fiber is unquestionably the right long-term solution, but has a major barrier to entry: cost.
Wireless something-or-other is the most intriguing small-provider opportunity right now, I think. It may be short-lived, like the 90's ISP market, but that's the nature of disruptive technologies: they're ephemeral.
It's fun to think about, but I really like working for UEN now. Where I get to do the same thing, on a much larger scale.
Posted by pete at July 9, 2003 8:12 PM