I'm working on a startup (servicevines.com) and recently the WSJ article by mark Andreessen and a post by Arrington reminded me how I've overlooked just how far things have progressed since the start of the internet becoming the biggest disruption in my lifetime. Creative destruction is easier and cheaper than ever. If I were trying to start a company in the first internet age I would have went about it buy going and buying the following software and hardware, this assumes I could find the money from someone to let me try.
- Development tools, I could have spent tens of thousands of dollars on what I can have for free now.
- Web Server software
- Web Server Hardware
- Bandwidth
- Analytic tools like webtrends
- email server and software
- Database Software
- Database Hardware
Today I use the following free solutions to accomplish the same thing.
- Cake PHP
- Wordpress
- Free PHPFOG instance (upgraded to small instance)
- Google Analytics
- Google Apps
- MYSQL
- Sendgrid
- MailChip free (for marketing)
- Youtube
- all kinds of free and open source add-in's, tools, and community driven projects
There is more free software and services for startup out there than you could possibly use. All this means you can find out if an idea you have is worth pursuing with just a little bit of time and effort. In the old days it might cost upwards of $10,000 just to try your idea. Today the barrier to starting a company is ZERO dollars. $10,000 that most people don't have to ZERO is how far we have come. Couple this with thousands of limited trial services, or low priced starter services, free distribution of apps via various appstores and some free ads on sites like google and facebook and if you're going to start now is the time. It's amazing just in a 15 years how far we've come.
I just wonder what free services are out there I need to know about?
