Connect the dots business plan

Greg Yardley makes an interesting observation about the Y Combinator-funded start-up, Wufoo, an online form creator that makes creating a form “easy and painless”:

“I see Wufoo as part of a broader trend – the gradual outsourcing of all routine development and administration to more efficient plug-together-and-play solutions. In a year or two, all the little start-ups run by two developers and no business types will start to get eclipsed by little start-ups run by two business types and no developers.”

This is the missing business piece behind all the trendy “web 2.0” ajax/whatever apps. Their success depends on an ecology of data access. Pretty tools like Wufoo make getting the data attractive and fun. Other tools and services, like my old boss Paul Martino’s Aggregate Knowledge, adds intelligence and value to the data.