GigaOM

Last month’s cover story on Business 2.0, New Road to Riches was all about, bite-sized start-ups. Prior to that, I had written a piece on Rise of the Insta Company, aka how commoditization was actually helping innovation. Many, especially in the VC community disagreed with the facts - since that was happening right in front of us - and some downright dismissed the concept. Now one of their own, Ram Shriram, who is know for being one of the early backers of Google is preaching the same mantra.

Launching a company is easy. The great thing about the Internet is you can launch and test an idea easily, and cheaply. If it doesn’t work, you can go back to the drawing board. “If you build your field of dreams, and no one comes, you can shut it down,” he said. The trick is small engineering teams. “Bite-sized engineering projects,” as Shriram calls them, where you can “know and measure each person’s output on a project.” That allows you to remain innovative and to launch and scrap projects quickly.