Sounding Off: Why startups should be careful with their roadmaps

Each Friday, PhocusWire dissects and debates an industry trend or new development covered by PhocusWire that week.

Maybe the rhetoric in the world of startups is changing, perhaps as a result of expectations being reined in as the pandemic continues to leave its mark on the ability of businesses to operate.

Or perhaps this is just a seasoned, large company CEO telling it how it is for new businesses (and perhaps protecting his own turf from young upstarts).

Either way, if 2020 has forever or temporarily altered how startups think about their strategic roadmap, or Anand Krishnan is worried about challengers to IBS Software's own position, there should some comfort gained from newbies being a little more realistic about their prospects.

The sector has (mostly) moved on from the days of the "travel is totally broken - we're going to fix it" messaging from startups that often appeared to be omnipresent in the startup scene between 2008 and, say, 2015.

This is perhaps in part due to many of the problems that apparently needed solving being, well, not broken in the first place.

Or maybe it's the emergence of extraordinarily powerful brands at the head of almost every area of the industry.

Realism should not be considered a lack of ambition - in fact, a touch of authenticity about what is possible for a new businesses is, in these more discerning times, a more welcome trait within a startup than ridiculous aspirations with little prospect of coming to fruition.

Perhaps this watering down of ambition (or rhetoric that surrounds it) will change once more, as startups regain their former bravado and the industry picks up.

But a little realism can go a long way - so long may it continue.