There is a notion of a new growth area in our economy with the advent of a new business model - the microISV - as developed by Bob Walsh in his book aptly titled Micro-ISV.
The idea is rather simple.
The Internet, the increased availability of bandwidth in homes and in public places, that robustness of development toolkits and delivery mechanisms for delivering software over the Internet becoming more ubiquitous, has opened the way for a new type of business startup. The one or two person operation, writing software at nights and on weekends outside of their normal jobs, can launch a new business with little to no risk. The costs are tremendously low enabling most if not all of these businesses to retain full ownership and direction rights through bootstrapping their way to growing revenues.
While the ISV acronym stands for Independent Solution Vendor and implies the use of software or other technology to create business value in solving some domain problem, the idea of the small business launching in the spare time of an individual or a few, will start expanding into other types of otherwise traditional businesses, such as different retail channels. This is especially true with the advent of services like Amazon’s newly released Fulfillment Service.
I think we are in the cusp of seeing some interesting business models develop as a result of these kind of mass enterprise scale services delivered cheaply at a micro-level. I think there is a lot in store for our economy as a whole as 2nd and 3rd income streams start becoming a reality for more and more people.
At worst, people quit their day job and do their side business full time or visa versa, but this won’t happen without yielding some great innovation that would not have otherwise happened. And just this innovation will not only be interesting and entertaining, but should be very good for our economy.
Tags: micro isv, microisv, micro- isv, amazon, fulfillment, amazon services, amazon fulfillment service, new economy, economy