After spending 3 days out at the Web 2.0 Conference I think I probably saw about 50 early stage Web 2.0 companies.
Like most at the conference, I generally was more struck by how many of these startups were really “features” as opposed to real business opportunities.
One company, though, did get me excited — Clearspring Technologies. Led on the technology side by one of the WebMethods founders, these guys are a “widgetizer.” In other words, they make it very easy for content owners and web developers to create widgets so that others can incorporate this content or application into their own sites, blogs, spaces, etc.
As I’ve posted before, I think the whole notion of syndicating/distributing web content is one of the more important trends we’ll see over the next couple years, and I think there is a great opportunity for someone to make a lot of hay out of being a horizontal value added enabler in this value equation.
Unfortunately for me, VCs were flocking all over these guys at the show. In fact, at one point I was chatting with Clearspring CEO Chris Marentis at the show when Vinod Khosla comes up and, with nary a word to me, drags Chris off into a separate room. Funny, I thought Vinod was out of the web and into energy investing these days??
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