Internet Summit 08

I just got home from Internet Summit 08 at the Friday Center in Chapel Hill. I have to admit I was very pleasantly surprised.

The speakers and panels I attended were al both worthwhile and kept me awake. That's a good thing.

Lunch logistics did not work so well, but I did not go for the free feed.

The software as a service was very interesting in talking about the sales and marketing model. Apparently most Saas companies have an extremely high customer acquisition cost. That made me feel a little better about my two Sass companies. The first has almost no customer acquisition. It makes a profit from day one. The second has an as yet unknown customer acquisition cost. But it is known that it is it almost nothing. We sell into several different segments of a vertical. Some of the segments have a very high customer acquisition cost. I probably saved myself a lot of money and time on different sales channels by attending that session.

The session on Social Networks was the best of the day. The panelist were great. The topics were timely. The comments were deeply insightful. The big take away was that social networks have to find a way to charge for applications there members need - not want. Still, no one was willing to venture what those apps are.

The session on Search taught me how to - and why to - protect my business on Google maps from being hijacked. I will do some reading on this tonight and comment on it later.

I definitely plan to attend in the future if the event is held again.