Srcasm’s Posterous Site

A decade ago Marc Benioff declared that software was dead. In 1999, while on leave from his job at Oracle, he convened a group of developers in his downtown San Francisco apartment building to build Salesforce.com. Soon thereafter he paid the quirky rockers the B-52's $250,000 to perform at a bash where he distributed buttons with the word "software" crossed out, Ghostbusters-style. And that was all before he had signed up a single customer.

Benioff's audacious goal: to take down enterprise software's stalwarts (including Benioff's employer) with a new business that let companies rent the software they use instead of buying it.

It was outrageous! It was brazen! And it worked. Salesforce (CRM), now a public company with a market capitalization of about $3.5 billion, generates revenue of more than $1 billion a year - a 60% five-year annual growth rate - all from providing software subscriptions to businesses. "We've always believed everything's going into the cloud," Benioff says triumphantly.

A great article through Fortune Magazine at CNNMoney.com about how Salesforce is not only a great product (with the SaaS model) but also how quickly it is rising through the ranks of small, mid-sized and Fortune 100 companies.

Not only do they talk about Salesforce but also the SaaS (renting software in the "cloud") model and why many companies are jumping ship from the big guys (at over $1mil for licensing alone) to companies like Salesforce, Google and other great SaaS products.

While SaaS has a long way to go before it's trusted everywhere, it's definitely a trend on the rise and I foresee it continuing to grow very quickly over the next 5-10 years.

TracFone Wireless has launched a government-supported program to provide free mobile telephone service to low income households throughout Pennsylvania. Individuals qualifying for TracFone’s SafeLink Wireless service will receive a free cell phone, emergency mobile access and 68 minutes of air time monthly for one year. The service is currently being tested in Philadelphia and Delaware counties.

I love the idea of a wireless company providing free service to low-income families. There is a dire need for this in every major city and TracFone is playing their part. Many people can't afford a cell phone or a home phone for that matter and there are emergency situations where making a phone call could mean the difference between life or death.

I say kudos to TracFone and anyone else playing their part to help keep families safe no matter where they live or how much they make.

Rather than trying to be a Venture Capitalist, I was looking for an idea that hopefully could inspire people to create businesses that could quickly become self funding. Businesses that just needed a jump start to get the ball rolling and create jobs. Im a big believer that entrepreneurs will lead us out of this mess. I just needed a way to help.

Care to share your great idea with the world? Mark Cuban wants to help. Check out his blog post and maybe share an idea or two that could become your next full time project. I might post an idea or two of my own on there.