Eric Friedman – Marketing.fm

It is now cheaper than ever before to build and launch a web application.

If you are not savvy enough to build something yourself you can turn a spec project into a reality with a number of outsourced development providers such as rentacoder, guru, getafreelancer, and many more.

If you do take the time, you can learn a framework and basics of a language and quickly get up to speed on deploying something quite easily.

Everyone I talk to seems to be building, creating, writing a spec, or working on a small project to get launched – all this year.

The reasons why it has become so easy in hindsight are of course obvious.  We now have services such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Engine Yard, Heroku, and the like to enable low cost solutions that can immediate scale up to your needs.  Broadly speaking cloud computing has enabled this trend.  The cloud computing platforms coupled with the ease of creating and launching a project using found skills or outsourced development mean that you no longer have to take 18 months to go from presentations and documents to user #1.

You can now prototype something in a weekend, launch to your friends the following week, and iterate again to a real web app status in no time.

The more people I discuss this idea with the more I hear about “side projects” they are working on.  The more that people work on these “side projects” I think the better job they do in whatever their focus is (read: day job).  I call these sandbox projects.

For the reasons outlined above I think we will see more people launching more services and getting more traction than ever before.  This means more startups (although not in the traditional sense), more entrepreneurs (as they dabble and experiment), and more individual workers who are essentially not working for a big corporation.  The more of these things that see the light of day, the more potential support this ecosystem will need.

I know there is a general aversion away from adding more venture capital dollars to the mix, and based on heavy debate there are two sides to that story, but I am speaking specifically about early stage opportunities.

In conclusion this means that the dollars invested become lower, but the value add from partners and advisors becomes that much more important.  If people and companies no longer need millions of dollars to get started, but rather need large investments to step on the gas, then the initial relationships, introductions, and overall relationship you have with current and potential investors becomes that much more important.

As I think about my own projects that will see and are already seeing the light of day in 2010, I wonder what the landscape will look like 1 year from now – many more applications, hopefully bringing utility, in a hyper evolving atmosphere that inspires innovation.

Like many things having this much activity means that users win as the best experience and value proposition wins.