January 4, 2008

Small Companies That Are Making It Big

The New York Times blog Bits has run down of the small businesses that have made a big name for themselves. They list Wikipedia, Mozilla (Firefox), Craigslist and Twitter. The NYT says:

There is an interesting discussion on the blogosphere about the business prospects of Twitter, the microblogging service. Another discussion is brewing over whether Mozilla, the organization behind the Firefox browser, should go public.

Behind both of these is the presumption that the highest form of organization is a company valued at billions of dollars. The Internet now creates so much leverage for certain activities, that it is possible to create services that are incredibly useful, widespread and economically self-sustaining, yet involve very few people and not many dollars. This can sometimes be better for customers, business partners, and even founders, than trying to turn every good idea into a giant company.

Of course this isn’t a very new observation. Seth Godin made a similar observation in his book, “Small is the New Big”.

Twitter, Firefox and Big Ideas That Are Small Companies - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

Article categories: Web & Technology