At the event, Nobuyuki Hayashi will brief attendees on the state of the iPhone market in Japan while also taking questions from the audience. Nobuyuki, aka "Nobi," will present along with twelve other leading iPhone app developers including Ryo Shimizu, the CEO of UEI, creators of Zeptopad (video).

Of course, we couldn't wait for Macworld to find out what those other apps were, so thankfully, Nobi posted some more details. According to his post, the developers attending are the creators of numerous apps including those that let you watch TV on your iPhone, draw on your screen, play MahJong and Samurai Chess, enjoy a private geisha dance, or see real-time 3D animation.

Specifically, some of the developers and apps are as follows:

• Conit (Samurai Chess)
• GClue (iKoto, iGeisha)
• HIcorp (Mascot Capsule)
• Hudson Software
• J's Avenue (Realtime 3D animation library)
• JYProduct (FingerPiano)
• Royal Gadget - Teru Teru Bozu
• PokeDía (PokeDía)
• SunSoft (Mahjong Solitaire)
• UEI (aka Zeptotools / ZeptoPad 2.0, ZeptoLiner, iShodo)

To see videos of these apps, check out Nobi's blog post where he links to several Japanese YouTube video demos. Or to see the developers introduce each of their apps individually, check out this video instead.

Note: Some of these apps are available in the U.S. iTunes app store, but your country may be different.

First a bit of scope. This post is NOT about politics or what to do with your investments. Please do not comment on that, go to a site that deals with those subjects. This is about getting enough mental clarity to get back to the real job of building your business.

Second, a personal note. I came out of college in the UK in 1978 and that was a brutal downturn - there was a reason why the Sex Pistols sang "No Future!". I arrived in America bootstrapping a business in 1991, a relatively mild downturn. I helped a Korean software firm navigate the Asian Financial Crisis in 1998. I worked through the Technology Nuclear Winter of 2002 as an entrepreneur. Been there, done that as they say!

10 Point Executive Summary

1. Nobody knows what will happen next. If anybody tells you that they know, ask him if she or he also has a bridge to sell. Look at Paulson and Bernanke. You think they know?

2. None of the historical parallels work. This is not 1929, 1933, 1977, 1987, 1991, 1998 or 2001. This is 2008. You can find some parallels from many earlier crises and downturns, but a simplistic view that it is exactly like one of the earlier periods is usually accompanied by a sales pitch for a bridge.

3. Don't let Mr Market jerk you around. "Mr. Market" is a Warren Buffet term. He uses it to contrast the reality of a company's earning potential with the wild swings of the market. The two are totally unconnected. Don't go crazy trying to connect them. If you want to be a trader, understand the day to day mood swings of the market and bet on them. If you want to build a business, ignore them.

4. Avoid the obvious bomb craters. We don't know what will happen, but we do know that it is not a good time to sell stuff to banks or to consumers in the US. You may have a really good contrarian play to sell to these problem markets, but if your plan has any shred of "business as usual" then forget about it.

5. Focus on today and the big picture, ignore the rest. Today is about the immediate stuff you have to get done to stay in business, to deliver to clients, collect cash and so on. The big picture is looking at how the world might look like 10 years from now and build towards that. We cannot know what will happen next week, month or year. This medium term view is totally unknown. However it is extremely likely that what is happening today will change the world in fundamental ways. We might see the possibility for a very valuable business in that changed world. Most of these will be trends that were visible before the Great Credit Crisis, but which become massively amplified and accelerated by the crisis.

6. The normal startup failure rate will apply again. Yes 80% of start-ups will fail. They always do and always will. This rule is occasionally suspended during highly optimistic times, such as those we have just gone through. But it is only suspended temporarily during those times. Start-up failure is normal. That is the creative destruction that makes for a dynamic economy. If it is your start-up that fails, pick yourself up and try again (or decide that you really don't want to be an entrepreneur). If it is your competitors failing, stick with it and be the "last man standing".

7. This not a good time for new financing or exits. As an entrepreneur, raising money and selling are the two times when Mr. Market matters to you. Valuation does matter at these times and only at these times.The reality today is that nobody will raise money or sell out, who does not need to. So any deals are likely to be fire-sales. That may be your reality, in which case get it done and move on. If you don't have to raise money or sell, don't spend another nanosecond thinking about it.

8. Start your most audacious venture now. This is counter intuitive but real. No VC will back a small plan. They never have in the past and won't now. When the world changes in big and fundamental ways, big and fundamental opportunities arise. Ten years from now it will be obvious what those fundamental changes are. Great entrepreneurs spot one of those trends before it is obvious. The beauty of a big and audacious plan is the next few years won't matter to you. Build in tough times, launch when the worst is over, exit when it is boom time again.

9. There are fewer safe havens. The natural instinct is a flight to safety, but in a severe downturn many previously safe havens may vanish. The old line "this start-up looks too risky, I think I will stick with the safety of a big old bank that's been around for ages" has a hollow ring today. In this environment, betting on something you can actually see and understand - you, your partners and your plan - may be a lot less risky than getting onto that really safe ocean liner just before it hits an iceberg.

10. If you believed the 'fun and easy' myth, get out now. During the last few years, there have been many stories of apparently effortless success, with beaming young just-cashed-in entrepreneurs on the front cover. In some cases people are really lucky and luck may be on your side. But most businesses are a tough struggle followed by that "overnight sensation" period when you are suddenly "hot". Building a business can be fun and rewarding along the way, but they are almost never easy.

One final note of optimism. Tough times create great music. In boom times, music tends towards saccharine and bland blah. Delta Blues, Punk and Motown did not come out of easy times.

Image credit: tantegert

- One big negative impact of the market mayhem on the start-up world.
- One big positive impact of the market mayhem on the start-up world.
- One trend that seemed to be everywhere.

In other words, like Twitter and 37 Signals, I was deliberately reducing, cutting out, eliminating, restricting to ONE thing in each case. So here goes...

One big positive impact of the market mayhem on the start-up world - this is like the Boston area when DEC and Wang imploded. Thousands of really smart people were left without a paycheck. Many of them started great companies. You heard this vividly at the Conference. The phrase "refugee" was common as in "I am Bear Stearns refugee". And then they went on to pitch their start-up. You cannot possibly say it feels good now, there were some bruised people walking around, but it may well be that we will look back on this moment as the genuine transformational moment in the New York start-up economy. Did I mention that I am an optimist?

The one trend that seemed to be everywhere - a focus on near term revenue. There were exceptions, of two types: firstly, the fortunate entrepreneur who had closed a big enough "fund me through the downturn round" and, sadly, a few ostriches with their heads in the sand.

The ones I enjoyed meeting were the "true grit entrepreneurs" who had hustled their way to profitability over many years. They will do great. In the last downturn in 2002, one VC remarked to me that they were only interested in two types of venture. One had been started well before the boom - that makes the ideal birth date today in the 2001 to 2003 era, perhaps 2004. The other was something starting up right now as everything was imploding. Everything in the middle was likely to be riddled with overoptimistic assumptions, expectations of instant wealth without effort. That means start-ups born from 2005 to 2007 had better either have enough capital to sustain their burn for a couple of years, or are profitable or very nearly so.

Oh and one final takeaway. The food at Javits is awful and expensive. You have to walk a few blocks, but on the corner of 38th and Ninth is a really good Italian restaurant and it's really not much more expensive than the Javits chow. Cannot remember the name but 3 blocks west on 38th and you are there. How is that for useful advice on ReadWriteWeb?

Dot Coms 2.0? Say it Ain't So...

Maybe we are all just fooling ourselves. When the Internet bubble started to burst in March 2000, most people were saying "that's them crazy Dot Coms, not us". Gradually, it was all of us who were in any way associated with technology.

After 18 months, in the summer of 2002, everybody had capitulated. You could buy shares of Rational Corp (the leading supplier of software tools after Microsoft, bought by IBM) for a valuation of $1 billion when they had $1 billion in the bank and $1 billion in revenues (oh, yes, and a couple of bad quarters which made it obvious that nobody would buy software ever again). You could walk into a VC with a patented machine to turn mud into gold and be greeted with a sceptical "but what if gold falls in value?". You could prove that your $50k software would have $500k savings to a company within 6 months and the response was still "we will get back to you". The technology nuclear winter was very, very cold.

So maybe it is coming again in the technology business. No more funding, no more deals, no more parties. Maybe the hangover is coming.

Innovation Economy Still Thriving

But it does not look that way from what I am seeing. VCs are saying that their companies are doing well (and not all are hyping their portfolio). It also coincides with what I am seeing from companies that I know well. Companies are either growing revenues or getting more funding or doing both. I have interviewed two founders at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York that have broken into profitability. Even if VCs run for the hills they will be fine. These upstarts are taking business from higher cost alternatives.

I have also heard first hand of big deals from large companies awarded to small, young ventures. And I have seen large enterprises that are working on large social media rollouts.

This is not good for big tech companies. But it does look good for small, low cost, agile upstarts. The smart companies have worked out how to reduce risk for clients. What's the risk of implementing Basecamp or Zoho?

I call this the "innovation economy" and that is a tad worrying. It sounds like "New Economy" and we all know where that ended up. I did not want to say the "technology industry" as huge parts of the tech industry now simply follow economic cycles. The fortunes of Microsoft, Oracle, Dell, HP, IBM, Cisco tend to rise and fall in line with global GDP. Bigco is not the heart of the innovation economy.

Shift in Power to Smallcos

It is more likely to do with a fundamental secular shift in power from large business to small business. The Internet and Coase's law would be the theoretical underpinning for that. Something dramatic may have quietly happened, making the playing field not just level for start-ups vs incumbents, but tilted in their favor. It might have something to do with the tools that enable you to run a global business with all virtual operations and almost no infrastructure cost. You can simply scale faster and cheaper than your incumbents.

Conclusion

The market mayhem this week has been unprecedented, far worse than even my worst imaginings and I was thinking it was going to be bad. So this is bad. It will spill over into everything. Many parts of the Web 2.0 industry will be in trouble, specifically those with dependency on consumer advertising or financial services.

But the gritty entrepreneurs are building value and getting profitable and have better opportunities than ever before to get their case heard. VCs who keep their nerve will do enormously well, just as they did from deals done in the 2002/2003 era.

What do you think? Is it tough times for all? Or tough times for the slow and good times for the fast?

Image credit: Thomas Hawk