The web industry is very young and very immature. Bad ideas are still coming and going as the barrier of entry remains low and the bargaining power of customers is very strong. The churn in this industry is astonishing.

A result of this churn is a whole sub-industry in analysing start-ups, their culture, tracking launches and giving entrepreneurs a shot at getting some publicity. The problem with this sub-industry is it places companies into the wrong frame of mind, and as recent events have shown things can get a little bit ugly as players compete not by asking what is best for the sector, but by complaining about each other.

In recent weeks the public dialogue has been the rivalry between Arrington’s “Techcrunch 50” event and Shipley’s “DEMO” conference. The difference between them fundamentally comes down to this: DEMO charges companies $18,500 to attend, and if you have the money you might get the invitation to show up (they’re over-subscribed). TC50 shows off 50 companies who have been picked by industry “leaders” and don’t pay – the event makes money by charging the audience to turn up and see new products and services before anybody else.

Arrington charges that DEMO is “unethical”. Cue cat-fight. I don’t really care who said what to who, why, when and whatever. All I know is that the posts I have read concerning all this coming from Arrington and Shipley themselves have been the most navel-gazing, but for good measure I have to agree with Shipley’s point that on this occasion Scoble is a dick for determining a company’s entire worth in less than a minute based on their website.

All of this is distracting and silly, because guess what start-ups do not need in any way shape or form? Events that focus entirely on their launch or providing a PR opportunity to those already in the tech industry.

Running a business is a marathon, not a sprint. The launch means absolutely nothing other than the fact you’ve taken the first step. You don’t spend weeks, months or even years preparing for a marathon run by concentrating on what you’re going to do at the start line: you focus on how you’re going to pace yourself and deliver a result over the full distance. As you run, you listen to your body and you adapt – you take on fluids when you need them, you keep track of your time as each mile disappears underneath you and if it’s not working you give up before you kill yourself.

You don’t prepare for a marathon by training for 100 metre sprints either. You’ll tone your muscles all wrong, and exhaust yourself too quickly.

Arrington and Shipley are inadvertently creating a structure that breaks companies. It makes them prepare for completely the wrong thing, and the blog echo chamber is building and supporting this culture of “Oh, shiny-shiny! Next?”. They don’t mean to, they’re not being vindictive here, it’s just their audience is geared to launch analysis and they’re catching companies in the dragnet behind them who don’t understand this isn’t the way to execute.

Techcrunch does, to be fair, continue to do industry analysis as companies evolve, but to build an event around a launch rather than an event that helps companies grow and develop over the long term is to my mind a mistake. I hope one day they fix it.

What’s my answer? What do I know that is better? I’ve thought about this a lot. Condensing down my 15 years of experience in the software industry down into as little space as possible, I realise it’s no different to any other industry. I think I have at least one very basic insight that can replace this launch-hype-focus. I’ve said it before elsewhere, and I’ll repeat it again. Sit down and ask this question several times over with different emphasis: What does your customer want?

What does your customer want? Don’t hawk over your competitors picking them apart piece-by-piece. Sure, do some industry analysis, understand how the sector works and good ways to develop the business, but think about what you are going to do that is unique. This is something you are going to have to be passionate about for a long time, so think and choose carefully.

What does your customer want? Have you actually asked some customers whether what you’re offering is what they want? Do you know for certain there is a market for what you’re doing? Is your delivery strategy suitable? Is it profitable? Do you know how to work out whether what you’re about to do even has a chance of profitability? Also remember for most businesses, it’s very unlikely your customers will ever read Techcrunch or watch DEMO pitches.

What does your customer want? Can you exceed expectations, time after time, reliably? Can you deliver beyond a mere need and do something spectacular? If so, you’re differentiating yourself from your competition and raising the bar for entrants and competitors, but make sure it’s what your customer wants, not what you think they want.

What does your customer want? Now you have some answers to the above, make a list. Turn them into actions, projects, whatever you need to do. Put the ones involving people giving you money as close to the top as you can. Now, deliver them. Tick each one off as you go. Well done, you’ve started the marathon – remember, pace yourself, listen to what is happening to you, take on board what you need as you go, try and avoid a heart attack.

Arrington’s opinion of you is nothing compared to your customers’ opinions. Your DEMO pitch is nothing to your customers compared to their experience of your product. It’s you and your customers and that’s it, concentrate on that and you’ll be fine.

It’s not rocket science, but it is far more useful to a startup than the obsession over launch or PR within the tech industry echo chamber.

The impact so far today for edocr appears to be a little less dramatic, but Manoj was still pleased to be shown some love by the guys at TC. I’m pleased that I know somebody who finally made it onto Techcrunch – those of us outside of the valley and London tend to struggle.

It’s just a shame really that they didn’t really quite get what it is he’s trying to do with it, which he discussed at tonight’s mashup* event. It’s not just about sharing documents, but about building data around them and helping people understand businesses and services better together in a collaborative way.

I’ll write up tonight’s event properly in the morning – I’m a bit dead on my feet right now – but it was definitely worth attending for me, and I’ve met some really interesting people tonight.

We know this.

Some people though, aren’t quite as smart as us. They think that you have more control over how Google sees you than you do. They think that if you link to a picture you are ‘trying to take it over’. They don’t understand hypertext, they don’t understand indexing algorithms and they certainly don’t understand how this all applies in terms of copyright. Don’t believe me?

TechCrunch is currently dealing with perhaps the most technically inept man on Earth representing a photographer in an argument over online copyright and image distribution.

The problem is that he has a little knowledge – pictures can drive traffic, and that drives revenue – but not enough knowledge to understand what TechCrunch’s role is in this instance.

Even worse, he’s decided to act in a way I would consider unethical by phoning advertisers and threatening to name them in a lawsuit explaining he “just wanted to let [them] know”, in that I’m-doing-you-a-favour-don’t-look-at-me-like-I’m-a-leech kind of way.

This makes me come to the following conclusions:

1. If I ever need to hire a photographer, I’m never going to hire Beth Boldt as she clearly hires idiots to represent her legally (although he doesn’t appear to be a lawyer), and I really don’t want to deal with idiots working on her behalf
2. If you’re ever going to threaten to sue somebody, maybe you shouldn’t threaten Mike Arrington who is, you know, a lawyer, and knows what he’s doing… (top tip Mike learned at law school: use spell check before hitting ‘send’).
3. All of us have a responsibility to make sure the people acting on our behalf – personally, or within our companies – understand the issues as they really are.

If you’re working in a corporate environment in the UK, you should make sure at least some of your directors or somebody over at legal checks out Out-Law.com once in a while, and if you’re freelancing or a SME, its RSS feed should be part of your morning coffee ritual.

The problem is, somebody somewhere has to stay rich.

Since Napster, it would seem that people have wanted to download music without paying it, and the industry has tried to convince the World this is theft. It’s not theft – they still have their copy of the music – and it’s not a criminal offence in the UK at least. What was really strange is that all the official sales figures showed that when Napster was in operation, sales of albums actually increased.

It seems counter-intuitive, but the simple truth was that only a selection of the most popular tracks were ever really available online at any one time. What would happen is a user would come along, download something they’d never heard before – something they would not have bought in a shop – and discover something new. Finding it difficult to quench the thirst for this new taste in an artist, they would then pretty much buy the artist’s entire back catalogue. I know this myself, because I was glad when Napster shut down – I would save about £200/month in buying CDs of obscure artists. I’ve not bought anything since that I haven’t downloaded some of first.

In other words, the music industry was so embroiled with anti-piracy that they weren’t prepared to adjust their model of the World to fit with what consumers were actually doing. If they had some vision, they would have made the most popular download tracks legal to download and share for free, and make an absolute bundle off the phenomenon that we now call The Long Tail instead of going around suing teenagers.

So, when Universal steps up to the plate, it’s time to get excited, right?

Techcrunch carries a story that gives more background on what is actually going on, and it’s grim reading. DRM-crippled downloads from the start, with a requirement to go and watch ads you’re not interested in to keep your music. It’s Windows-only and you can’t transfer the music onto a portable device. The thing about the ads of course is that you could log in, let them pop up and go and make a coffee and there is nothing Universal, SpiralFrog or anybody else can do about it. If they force you to commit some action to show you are paying attention, a new industry will emerge in India or China whereby you can pay somebody in a sweatshop to log in and do it all for you. It’ll still be cheaper than buying the music, and as a result SpiralFrog will see their ad rates plummet.

TechCrunch are right to call them on this – it’s a lame business model that will backfire on them badly. The oppurtunity to do something genuinely innovative seems to have passed them by. I predict SpiralFrog will hit the deadpool within 18 months of launching their new service, and I also expect that in the process, will convince a much wider audience of the disadvantages of Digital Rights Management – when DRM as bad as this is slapping you in the face, it is hard to not conclude that you don’t want or need it in your life.

A new business model will, however, emerge when Universal realise that users reward “free”.