Reality check: How the maha deal affects you?

By now media, across the world, has covered all aspects of the AOL-Time
Warner deal, its global ramifications on technology, economy and stock markets…….
But what about you? Are you affected? Do such deals of sizes beyond our
comprehension affect our mundane lives or do they just make good breaking news.

Firstly, look carefully near you. Can’t you already see your laptop and TV
looking lovingly at each other? Their old rivalry for your time seems to have
vanished. Soon you’ll see them co-promoting each other and exchanging
commercial breaks with banner ads. In the coming days and months you should not
be surprised if the next movie in town is also being featured at your own local
ISP. That’s convergence for real.

Then of course your promised salary hike is realized. Every TV company worth
its salt would want to become a portal site. Every radio station will netcast
its programs, every newspaper and magazine in the world will join the Internet
bandwagon. Its all converging into the need for more and more programmers to
work out this transformation of every bit of tape and paper into digital content
to be delivered online. Remember to ask for the stock options as well. They
could pay for your personal jet.

Your shares in an unknown software company, which was till recently a defunct
finance company, suddenly goes into a tizzy. The company reported that it now
has an online magazine which features political news from Sikkim, and the stock
markets call it convergence, a software company going into content creation and
media, that is, its in the same growth path as AOL-Time Warner. You wonder what
happened to the good old client-server companies. That’s passé.

You still wonder if it’s the right time to start your own portal site.
Right now, your grocer is evaluating an investment proposal of funding a Net
start up. Infact, anyone who isn’t a Web entrepreneur is right now an angel
investor and if the person does not have cash, don’t worry, he can do a sweat
equity deal with you. Take a crash course in spreadsheets, muster up your
writing skills and create a killer business plan. Remember to casually mention
that you are planning a venture at your son’s birthday party and VC or no VC
you shall get funded. Next you need to start a newspaper to promote your site,
that’s second round of funding and of course for the third round you will
start a TV company. You are creating a business that will operate in right
across the value chain of content creation and distribution. Of course, before
you create value, someone would have acquired you for a fifty-percent stake of
another company in the opposite situation as yours. That’s a deal where there
are no overlaps.

The way the dotcom world is moving, there is an opportunity for everyone with
an innovative mind. So look around yourself and if you search hard enough there
will be something that will fit your bill.

(Sushanto Mitra is the founder of Technology Capital Partners.)