Back in 2011 Marc Andreessen wrote that software was eating the world, it was disrupting everything from retail through to music. Currently it’s a golden age of the software industry, we’re seeing advancements across the board as scalability becomes easier, as development platforms increase across the spectrum and data becomes more and more available to use and manipulate. Ideas no longer remain as just ideas, concepts can be pitched to VCs and funding is coming thick and fast, with Crunchbase data claiming software investments in all categories passed the $1 billion mark.
Later stage funding has seen some big contributions, the $250 million raised for Dropbox, Stripe raising another $80 million and Nutanix, the virtualisation developer raising $101 million Series D funding. Though software investment was on the rise, certain areas saw a decline in the amount of cash opening up to them.
Acquisitions and IPOs are making headlines across the space, Nest being recently bought by Google for $3.2 billion. Dropbox is heading for an IPO, as is its competitor, Box and the seven year old Zendesk which is heading for a 2014 IPO. The valuations of software companies that scale have hit the roof recently with billion dollar numbers regularly making the news. Big IPOs from the past couple of years are merely fuelling the speculative valuations.
Software has and will continue to disrupt older companies, Microsoft and Oracle being put under consistent pressure from the likes of Salesforce and Android. Software has changed the way we access information and it’s changed the way we do business.
The rise of new software tech giants, such as Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon have disrupted large older sectors and now have the cash piles to either acquire the competition or dominate through hiring the best talent. From their slightly humble beginnings of startups they have risen to become corporations, which has added layers of bureaucracy as well as having to deal with the pressures of investors. While this makes business sense, it means that the once nimble, fast moving tech firms begin to lose their agility.
The startup scene from Silicon Valley across to London and Berlin has caught fire, fading new media companies such as Yahoo led by Mayer have been on an acquisition spree to hire talent, and VC’s continue to spur the technology startups forward.
The price of scaling, launching and the ability to target a global audience has never been lower. These factors have played a crucial role in allowing the startup culture to gain traction. Kickstarter and crowd funding has given access to capital with hardware startups like Oculus Rift being the big winners in the technology space. As the cost of building and deploying has come down, and the ubiquity of devices has boomed it’s led to a golden age of startups. Although it may be loathed, the word ‘bubble’ sits not too far from the mind of not only Silicon Valley startups but also technology companies across the globe as nobody wants to be Pets.com all over again.
The power of technology continues to drive progress forward, new opportunities are coming out of the mix and old enterprises are finding themselves put under increasing pressure to keep up. Innovative solutions to issues are now seen as business potential as business becomes aware of the implications of the benefits of software creation.
Ultimately, whether it’s seen as a race or not, the biggest winners will be the tech companies that come out from the mix as the leaders, such as Salesforce, as long as they regain their ability to stay nimble and keep pace with technology. Only recently Marc Andreessen has said that technology is currently still ‘recovering from a depression’ and that there are ‘decades of growth ahead of us.’ – Let’s just wait and see if he’s right.
via Business 2 Community http://ift.tt/1clmJdK
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