Try-everything competition among job boards?

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you know that competition is one of my obsessions...  so, I couldn't pass up talking about Jason Calacanis' ideas on the future of the startup.

I really like two things Jason says - first he calls this the 'try everything' era and truly I believe in hyperactivity as a new requirement for success on the Internet. It is happening as we speak in the job board industry.

Second, he calls longevity a type of innovation - which is funny, as if it were so rare it could be considered something brand-new! In reality, patience and longevity have always been key tools of the trade for most entrepreneurs. But there was a period of time on the Internet when get-rich-quick thinking seemed to dominate. Competition has fixed that!

From Calacanis.com:

4. The “Try Everything” Era

If the marginal cost of a business is people’s time, a lot more ideas
are going to be tested. There are a lot of technical people out there
who either have some free time after their day job, or who live on
Ramen noodles, having already quit their day job. The result of
everything being tried will be that every startup with any level of
traction will be copied. I’ve seen dozens of folks “riff off”–as
opposed to “rip off”–ideas from Twitter, digg, Mahalo and FriendFeed.

[snip]

Bottom line: Everything will be tried, everything will be “riffed
off.” In this environment, your job as a startup founder is to monitor
as many products and feature sets in the marketplace as possible, in
order to figure out what is working–or could work.

5. Longevity is Innovative

Since everything will be tried, and everything tried will be riffed
off, then how will the market select a winner? The main factors in the
success of companies riffing on a common goal will be longevity and
innovation. Yammer will only win the “enterprise Twitter” race if they
exist for five years, innovating all the way.

If launching a microstartup is a sprint, building a business around a
brand is a marathon.

You’re going to see most of the “riff offs” get off to a big, splashy
start–typically with a Robert Scoble and TechCrunch post–then fizzle
out as they run out of steam. Steam in this metaphor is the passion
and interest of their founders–not just capital.

Bottom line: Longevity will be, perhaps, the biggest innovation a
startup can have over the next five years.