On Demand — is it just “one damned thing after another?”

The struggles of on demand make that old Churchill chestnut seem appropriate.  Especially since they’ve made it to Business Week (here), which should be a buy signal according to my “Business Week Reverse Lock” theory.  It is a Sarah Lacy piece, so I figure that it has to be somewhat plugged-in to the Valley’s, ummm… wisdom.  And I sure have my doubts that on demand/SaaS will “immamentize the eschaton” as well (here, here, here). 

However, while this news isn’t “news”, there was one passage that struck me as telling:

Not every startup has the patience—or funding—to stick on demand out for 10 years and $100 million-plus in sales. Those mid-slog are feeling it acutely.  [Bruce} Richardson {of AMR] says he increasingly hears about “founder fatigue,” entrepreneurs being ground down by the endless travel and ever-ballooning marketing costs. It’s worse for the publicly traded companies constantly under Wall Street’s what-have-you-done-for-me-lately scrutiny.

An “aha” moment (for me at least).  How many entrepreneurs — never mind SV folks — have the patience for a ten year “Long March“?  On demand places such a premium on execution that it seems unlikely that the very same “swaggering, elephant hunter-style salesmen [who] would drive up in their gleaming BMWs” could wait out on demand’s growing pains.  No wonder they’re fatigued…

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