Very interesting statistics were published on the World Internet Usage Statistics and Population. From this table it shows that only 15%! of the world uses the internet which is surprisingly low. When you consider Asia alone has over 50% of world’s population it starts to make more sense given their low adoption rate. This combined with Africa which has an expected low adoption rate of less than 3% really lowers the world average.

Taken from Read/Write Web -Worldwide Internet Penetration is just 15%

From a business perspective I can see a lot of business plans referencing to the strong growth in Asia and companies expanding their services and language versions to accommodate these countries. There appears to be an opportunity to focus on this market with a long term view to grab the huge population yet to embrace the internet the way we have in the west. Surely the likes of China and India will eventually have internet adoption closer to 50% of the population. Japan for example has a very good internet adoption to match the US and some countries in Europe.

I didn’t spot any exact figures for Ireland but maybe someone can point me to another resource so we can compare and contrast with the rest of the world. From a personal point of view I wonder how closely those percentage adoption rates correlate with business internet adoption rates in those countries.

I recently attended the Enterprise Ireland Web 2.0 event hosted in the Helix, DCU. Thankfully the 200 yards I had to travel from the office meant I didn’t get caught in much traffic.

Very interesting speakers in particular; Jeff Clavier, the very entertaining Marc Canter and Judy Gibbons.

The event was strongly represented by venture capital people with some great advice for anyone trying to raise money for the next big web 2.0 show stopper. I’ve sumized some of my notes below:

• Have a sustained Differentiation i.e. the difference between your product and the next guy isn’t a feature they can have as part of there’s in a week or month.
• Build end user value. Ask yourself what is the value of your software to the end user or ROI for enterprise 2.0 applications.
• You need to build an image of trust.
• Show a steady 30- 35% monthly growth in sign ups, a huge frenzy of sign ups all at once is not always considered a good thing.
• A business plan is important but a VC will only be interested in your presentation and executive summary so make it stand out.
• Be sure when presenting your product to introduce yourself. Don’t just go off explaining how great your product is. They will want to know as much about you as they will about the product.
• They will also want to see what you’re personal ambitions are not just having a business road-map but a personal one as well. If you plan to sell early and get a quick few bucks and retire they more than likely won’t be interested.
• The management team is very important, a venture capital company are more likely to go with a smart person with a dumb idea than the other way around.
• Think Big
• It is often good to have a product where it is difficult for the customer to change horses because they feel tied to your product or service.
• Have a solid business model.

As a general rule these VC companies and people were looking for more B2C style web 2.0 ventures like facebook, delicious, flickr etc instead of the B2B apps i’d be interested in like basecamp, blinksale and salesforce but still most of it was very relevant and informative.

UPDATE:

Jeff has uploaded his slides from the event, highly recomended.

Just to quick post to let you know that blog.1time.ie is now alive and kicking. Check out the latest post on the “general state of play” of 1time.