The term “startup” became very popular during the whole dot-com bubble/crash, but there seems to have been a rather remarkable shift since then in what a startup actually is. Technology companies aren’t exactly a new idea, but this concept of the “startup”, as it is now, seems very different.

When someone mentions a technology “startup”, I’m drawn to thinking of two guys slaving away over lines of code, ending up with something pretty and usable that just catches on. I think this seems to be the basis for many of the recent - and not so recent - success stories: Twitter, last.fm, Facebook - going back to LiveJournal and even Google. There’s a difference from the old companies - Apple and Microsoft, for example - because all the ‘new’ companies seem to be moving with the changing times, and are providing web services; a realisation that simply wasn’t available ten years ago (okay, Google were and will be ahead of the times, but it was a long time before they started moving away from just search).

The difference seems to be that the so-called ‘new’ companies don’t appear to be started by people who have a particular fundamental element of business sense, but rather those who see something that can be done - and then just do it. Paul Graham, who runs a VC firm for startups, says:

There’s nothing wrong with being unsure. If you’re a hacker thinking about starting a startup and hesitating before taking the leap, you’re part of a grand tradition. Larry and Sergey seem to have felt the same before they started Google, and so did Jerry and Filo before they started Yahoo. In fact, I’d guess the most successful startups are the ones started by uncertain hackers rather than gung-ho business guys.

All the startup companies these days, with the focus on “web 2.0″, are interested in user-centric services, and they’re all social networking focused. I went to an IT conference last year and asked one of the speakers (from iCrossing) if he felt “web 2.0″ would ever… fade out. After clarifying that I meant social networking in general, he commented that while he felt the current websites would fade out (and I agree, longlevity of a website takes a lot to be established) the entire idea of social networking was user-centric, to do with people interacting and talking to each other - which they would always continue doing.

The technology industry, especially anything to do with the web, seems to be focused on getting people to interact. That, for me, is the only real difference between the “web” and “web 2.0″ (although I’m starting to dislike the usage of the terms, there needs to be a divide) - is that the original web provided content, the “new” web allows people to interact.

And all that takes for a new company (and, to be realistic, the potential to create something that catches on very quickly) is a little idea. The technical expertise isn’t a barrier anymore - many people I know would have the ability to make something at the level of Facebook, or Twitter, (or lest I say more reliable than MySpace, as it’s written in ColdFusion…) All it takes is an idea, and to be in the right place at the right time.

If that’s all that’s standing between me and you and being the next big thing, then something’s changed. You don’t need to know how big companies work anymore to run a business. You need to know what users - what people just like you - want, and then you need to do it.