It seems that the rise of social networking and open source technology has helped level the playing field for startups outside Silicon Valley. As noticed by Jeremy Liew from Lightspeed Venture Partners, majority of the current fastest growth web companies, which have grown revenues over US$1 million per month within 12-18 months of launch, are from outside the bay area and many of them are focus on creative business model rather than technology innovation.

Some of these “hot” companies are:

• Playfish (London)
• Gilt (NY)
• HauteLook (LA)
• RueLaLa (Boston)
• Groupon (Chicago)
• Living Social (DC)
• Lifelock (AZ)
• Cash4Gold (FL)
• Shoedazzle (LA)
• TheLadders (NY)

Most of these companies represent what Josh Kopelman called “the future of eCommerce” (e.g. flash sales, local deals, group buying & subscription businesses). They have invested a lot of resources in marketing, sales, customer services and merchandizing. While technology is an important part, it is not the core to the success of their companies.

Lesson: technology is only part of the equation to be successful on the web.

In future posts, we will find out how some of these companies achieve such a tremendous growth.

Related posts:

1. How Gilt Grew Sales from $25 million to $170 million in 2 years
2. Why did so many successful entrepreneurs and startups come out of PayPal? Answered by Insiders
3. Ask Startups: Is Employee Retention Overrated?
4. What's the Secret Success of Groupon?

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