location based services
When Sam Morgan founded Trade Me seven years ago, he was eager to get publicity for his new venture in NZ InfoTech.
Then, there was little to distinguish Mr Morgan's enterprise from other dotcom ventures that were springing up in New Zealand.
Good execution, patience, fortunate timing and – yes – some mistakes by competitors helped set him on the road that ended with Fairfax chief executive David Kirk seeking him out and making an offer that no-one could refuse.
It has been suggested that the sale of Trade Me to Fairfax for $700 million represents "the coming of age" of the Internet economy in New Zealand.
There's something in that, in the sense that Sam Morgan's success will no doubt inspire budding e-entrepreneurs. That's even if the dominant sentiment among wannabes on New Zealand bulletin boards last week was one of having missed the boat.
But the price Fairfax paid for the company is probably best viewed as recognition of a reality created five or six years ago, when Trade Me became New Zealand's most-visited Internet shopping site and passed the point of no return.
This occurred at a time when newspaper publishers were still divided about the significance of the Net.
The Internet economy has moved on in the interim. Staking a claim still requires hard work and patience. But the gaps and rewards for those embarking on a similar entrepreneurial journey today are probably fewer, and smaller.
Most pundits reckon that if there are big untapped opportunities today, they may lie in the convergence of established technologies.
Location-based services being developed in New Zealand by US firm GeoVector that combine the power of GPS, Internet and mobile phone technology to let people interact with their environment and the people around them in new ways hold tremendous potential.
Watch, too, the opportunities thrown up by the convergence of the Internet and satellite TV transmission, as Sky and Telecom tinker with set-top boxes equipped with ADSL2 broadband connectivity.
But there is no virgin territory. Become sufficiently successful and – if nothing else – someone will at least claim to have been there first with a business process patent.
The flip side is the market is large and diverse and there are legions of entrepreneurs happily earning a living in the Internet content and advertising industry, in New Zealand and overseas, who haven't had to do anything particularly original, or even timely.
For them, the bumper windfall is probably as much a distraction as an inspiration.
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