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On the internet, there are few barriers to entry. It's incredibly cheap and easy to build most startups these days. That's not where the value is. The value is that you think you can do it bigger and better than anyone else.

Except for maybe Google search, I can't think of a product that I couldn't build tomorrow if i wanted to enter that space.

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The fact that there are fewer barriers to entry also make startups where there are barriers to entry more valuable. Some of the big successes this time around are e-commerce operations which require a lot of capital for the parts of the business associated with moving physical inventory.

I don't know about this, if you're a new business trying to do something similar to an existing competitor that's well known and well liked, that's a big competitive advantage and barrier to entry for newcomers.

Mindshare isn't very easily quantifiable, but it's very real. But maybe the barriers to entry you're talking about that VCs fret over are more traditional things that just don't really apply to the internet.

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