The Tomigaia Blog

MarketBoy

Innovation is alive at MarketBoy.
I recently met with the people who founded MarketBoy, a new type of
commerce site, and was given new hope. Their office is located in the
newly reasonable Tribeca area of Manhattan, and are still in the
post-site-launch phase of their business. I think they have a
fascinating idea for a new kind of intermediary business. They have
taken the long tested ideas used in electronic financial markets and
applied them to consumer commerce on the web. Customers make bids on
products, but unlike at an auction site, there are many sellers
competing for one buyer, not just one. Also, all the products are new,
not used. There is transparency to the market, and the laws of supply
and demand should get the best price on a DVD player for both the
buyer and the seller (as you would for a stock on a stock
market). There have been many attempts to succeed at being a B2B
marketplace, and most have not flourished, but as web-consumers enter
the next phase of their education, they may want to go beyond
price-comparison shopping robots, and actually use an efficient
marketplace like MarketBoy's. I have used the site, and find it very
addictive. If you are interested in new types of e-commerce, take a
look at this site, and see what you think.

News Analysis: Is Silicon Alley Dead?

It has been exactly one year since I moved to New York after
living for 7 years in Tokyo, and I have gained a new
perspective on the world after seeing Japan from the outside,
and seeing New York as a returning expatriate. I arrived in
New York as the bubble finally burst, and observed the
shrinking Internet economy of 2001 firsthand. I asked myself:
is this the end of Silicon Alley, the convergence of finance,
media and advertising that was born in New York in the mid
nineties? I saw a broad shrinkage, hurting companies that were
doing fine, as well as those who were not managed well. Many
thousands of skilled workers became unemployed (and perhaps
unemployable), and many buildings are still vacant. It is
somewhat ironic that much of the office space left empty by
closed web companies was taken over temporarily by financial
companies after the World Trade Center attacks. That has now
ended, as many financial companies move to permanent offices
in neighboring New Jersey and Westchester, giving some parts
of Silicon Alley the feeling of a ghost town. To get closer
to the action, I recently moved to a small office in a
building called 55 Broad St, right across the street from the
New York Stock Exchange, and every day I sense the loss of
vitality in the street. Greenspan may think that 2002 will be
the year for the US to recover from this recession, but
downtown New York and Silicon Alley are still hurting. The
problem? My feeling is that it is the business mood. The mood
in most corporations these days is one of cautiousness. Enron,
9/11 and the recession have built fear in the minds of
American businesspeople. Everyone is thinking "Let's do a
reality check. Do all our activities still make sense? What
can we cut?" This mood hurts many providers of goods and
services, but those companies that can adapt to the demand
will survive. A good example of adaption is the wireless
industry, where some companies have moved quickly into urgent
messaging (for when you need to tell many people that you are
alive in a hurry.) The appeal of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and
Doubt) as a marketing tool has increased lately. Israeli
security technology companies may do very well in the near
future in the USA. Another problem is the blockage of capital
earmarked for new ventures. With so much negative feeling
towards dot-com flops, and no IPOs to speak of, it has become
very hard for some entrepreneurs to find funding. This will
slow the pace of innovation for the short term, but for
companies that were funded in 2000, or companies that do not
require large amounts of capital, there is still room to grow.

The only transactions that seem to be happening with any
frequency in Silicon Alley these days are purchasing of
distressed assets and other types of buy-outs. Many companies
that developed great software, finished up their capital and
had to shut down are now trying to sell their intellectual
property as a way to recoup what they can. This is not an very
visible market, but there seems to be still some activity
there. (See links in references below)

With so much attention spent on the problems in America, there
is little time left over for US companies to think about doing
business with Japan. The news media are mostly reporting
impending implosions, and there is not much chance of that
changing in the near future. I was only able to travel to
Japan twice in 2001, but I got the sense both times that
beneath the surface, a lot of changes are taking place in the
psychology of the Japanese people. Perhaps it is a true
"reality check". I see a lot of pain for Japan in the future,
but I see Japan emerging from the current deflated situation
in 2 or 3 years. In the meantime, only the fittest will
survive.

References:
KPE

Razorfish