business - Joel Liu on Diigo

Jul

8

2011

CardFlick Debuts Location-Based Mobile Professional Contact Sharing App

techcrunch.com/...ofessional-contact-sharing-app

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Business card Sharing Location

Digital business card sharing isn’t really new but the idea of sharing your professional contact information with those who are in close proximity could be a compelling addition to any networking or business event. CardFlick could partner with event organizers to create a branded app for event participants to share their contact info.

Jul

3

2011

(12) What would make sense for Apple to use its $51+ billion in cash for a strategic acquisition? - Quora

www.quora.com/sh-for-a-strategic-acquisition

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Business Strategy

Oct

18

2010

Lessons Learned At Business of Software 2010: MicroISV on a Shoestring

www.kalzumeus.com/...d-at-business-of-software-2010

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Startup business

Jun

18

2010

How I Almost Got Acquired By Apple And Then Snubbed

news.ycombinator.com/item

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Business acquisition

May

20

2010

Hacker News | Google Wave Available for Everyone

news.ycombinator.com/item

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wave Business

This is how http://BraintrustHQ.com works. It also has a simpler user experience focused on making conversations productive and organized.
reply

May

17

2010

HP bought Palm after a five-company bidding war -- Engadget

www.engadget.com/...ter-a-five-company-bidding-war

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Business HP Palm WebOS deal

While that was going on, on April 24th Jon Rubinstein and his advisors directly told HP that its offer wasn't competitive and that it had to "significantly and immediately" improve its offer in order to remain in the game. HP responded by raising its offer to $5.70 per share (the winning bid) later that day, and Jon Rubinstein told Company C that he had a better offer on April 25th.

Apr

10

2010

The Twitter Platform's Inflection Point

www.avc.com/...the-twitter-platform.html

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twitter Business

iPad’s fate depends on entrepreneurs inventing new kinds of killer apps. (remember how desktop publishing saved Mac?)
I got out of college in the early 80s when the desktop revolution was upon us. A bunch of my friends from MIT were piling into startups in Cambridge building products on top of this new desktop computing platform. One of them was a company called General Computer that made external hard drives for the original Macintosh, which you might recall came with only a floppy drive. General Computer did fantastic for a while but its business eventually faded away as Apple filled in the holes in the Macintosh product.
6 more annotation(s)...
- Much of the early work on the Twitter Platform has been filling holes in the Twitter product. It is the kind of work General Computer was doing in Cambridge in the early 80s. Some of the most popular third party services on Twitter are like that. Mobile clients come to mind. Photo sharing services come to mind. URL shorteners come to mind. Search comes to mind. Twitter really should have had all of that when it launched or it should have built those services right into the Twitter experience.
  
  When you talk to a new user, they want to know how to post a photo to Twitter, they want to know "what is this bit.ly thing?", they want to know how to get Twitter on their iPhone. Names like Summize, Twitpic, Tweetie make no sense to them. Of course, without Summize, Twitpic, and Tweetie we would not have the Twitter we have today. They and many other third party products and services filled out the holes in the Twitter product and made it work better.
- What are the products and services that create something entirely new on top of Twitter? I'll come back to that question, but one more history lesson, this one recent history.
- As Facebook closed up those holes and enhanced their own feature set, those apps fell to the wayside. But there was one entirely new business that got created on top of the Facebook platform and that is social gaming, which industry analysts project will be a $1.6bn market this year and I think that number is low.
  
  Facebook (and Twitter) have also spawned the social media agency business, helping businesses and brands market themselves in social nets, which may be even bigger than social gaming when you add up all the companies in it. That business opportunity is directly analogous to the search agency business that got built on the back of Google as it scaled into the business it is today.
- * Social Gaming - There have been a number of attempts to build social game experiences on Twitter. But I'm not aware of any successes of scale like we've had on the Facebook platform. I think we will see it emerge soon.
- * Analytics - While Twitter will obviously be delivering better analytics to its users, particularly its marketing and business users, I believe that there is always a market for third party analytics. Google Analytics is available for free and yet none of the large analytics providers have seen their businesses suffer. There is simply a voracious appetite for information on the Internet. So companies like bit.ly, Radian6, HubSpot, Scout Labs, and others have a bright future.
- And that's what I'd like to challenge entrepreneurs and developers out there to focus on. I think the time for filling the holes in the Twitter service has come and gone. It was a great period for Twitter and its third party developers.

Twitter, Apple, Facebook: The perils of building on top of someone else’s platform. - Uncompiled Thoughts

www.stevenwei.com/...-top-of-someone-elses-platform

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twitter facebook apple Business

This isn’t to say that building for someone else’s platform can’t be very profitable. Over the past few years we’ve seen some very successful iPhone apps, Twitter apps, and Facebook apps. And that success is what has driven more and more developers to continue building new apps for these platforms.

But you’d better have an exit strategy that involves becoming independent from your parent platform. Be aware that at any time, the rug can be pulled out from under you. We’ve seen it repeatedly in the past, and several times just this past week. Have a contingency plan in place, other platforms to target, other ways to distribute your product. Don’t want until Apple/Twitter/Facebook decides that they want to take over your core business: by then it will be too late.
Should you be annoyed that your URL shortener or photo upload service might become irrelevant once Twitter integrates those core features? Sure.
1 more annotation(s)...
- Another example just announced: Twitter acquires the Tweetie iPhone client, effectively turning it into the official Twitter iPhone app. Good for them, too bad for the other iPhone Twitter clients that weren’t chosen. The Twitter <-> developer ecosystem is shifting.
  
  Seesmic founder Loic Le Muer says it has become “extremely dangerous to be a Twitter-only application”.

Nov

30

2009

Startups.com Becomes a Q&A Site For Business Questions

www.techcrunch.com/...qa-site-for-business-questions

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startups business Q&A

Sep

15

2009

Yext Offers Local Businesses A Smart Inbox For Phone Calls

www.techcrunch.com/...-a-smart-inbox-for-phone-calls

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phone business local

Marc Andreessen: is there adverse selection? are the merchants who are most likely to want phone calls least likely to get the web to get them?

Jul

23

2009

The Bump app for iPhone makes swapping contact information as simple as bumping two phones together | Bump Technologies, Inc.

bumptechnologies.com

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contact business card

Jul

15

2009

5 Business Models for Social Media Startups

mashable.com/...social-media-business-models

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Business Models

3. How long did it take to get your first customer?
Depends on your definition of customer – we had sign ups immediately and grew by 30-35% a month. What we had built was core features, so as we spoke with customers we began asking what would they pay for on our UserVoice page. Once we had some premium features in place, we went back to those customers and began doing paid pilots to test out the service. The first paid customer arrived in November.

4. How many users do you have right now?
16,652 as of June 5, 2009.

5. What percentage of users are paying members?
Since moving to paid plans, our conversion rate is around 5%.
3 more annotation(s)...
- Description: This is a model in which a business makes money by driving traffic, leads, or sales to another, affiliated company’s website. Businesses that sell a product, meanwhile, rely on affiliated sites to send them the traffic or leads they need to make sales.

Jul

9

2009

Y Combinator Endorses Bump Technologies In The Quest To Destroy The Business Card

www.techcrunch.com/...t-to-destroy-the-business-card

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Business Card

Jul

8

2009

evhead: Ten Rules for Web Startups

evhead.com/...ten-rules-for-web-startups.asp

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startup business web tips entrepreneurship

May

29

2009

How to put invite codes on business cards -- Solutious, The Performance Company.

solutious.com/...invite-codes-on-business-cards

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Business card idea

May

14

2009

Solving the problems of early stage me-too product startups « Entrepreneur Corner

venturebeat.com/...-stage-me-too-product-startups

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startup business

Nov

12

2008

12 Universities Offering Free Business Courses Online | Educhoices.org

educhoices.org/...e_Business_Courses_Online.html

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business Education course

Oct

28

2008

Technical Revenue: The Young Man's Business Model

paultyma.blogspot.com/...young-mans-business-model.html

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startup business

The old guy on the other hand never went this route. He merely looked at it a moment, then immediately started taking off the neighboring easy-to-remove piece of the engine. Once that was off, he then effortlessly put his screwdriver in to remove the now exposed screw. Now mind you, the old-guy's way was my back-up plan - but I was betting that my brash exuberance would payoff in a slightly quicker result. Sometimes it did - sometimes it didn't - and sometimes I broke screwdrivers.
I should have structured the deal as a contracting agreement. Charging on a per-hour basis to develop their product using what we already had as a base. Then, give them a discount rate on the hourly rate in exchange for full-rights to further develop and sell the product as our own. This would have been a 6-figure deal which would have meant a lot at that time. What's worse is you might be thinking that I missed an opportunity to fleece a customer - but I argue you're wrong. In fact, that arrangement would have actually brought more value to the Adobe.

In the old-guy's arrangement, Adobe would have then had a hand in guiding the project and making sure all the features they wanted were in the soup. Not to mention, if I didn't build this for them, they simply would have had to hire someone else to do it - probably spending lots more.
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- Visions of sugar-plums and multi-million dollar deals immediately started dancing in my head. As he talked, the rolodex in my mind quickly flipped from person to person. I thought of potential customers, potential partners and even maybe people appropriate to join his team. His product was good, and not that he asked me to, but I couldn't help forming a deal network in my head.
- He was basically building a (good) product, then laying it out on the web for all to see and hoping to get a million eyeballs. The viewpoint of the business is to get eyeballs, often from things like Digg or Techcrunch, and then figure out how to keep them. And then amazingly often, this really is the step where entrepreneurs have no clue what happens except they are sure the next step is "and then Profit!".
  
  This is an extremely innocent look at business - and in some sense, its the most logical one if you simply have no other avenues.
- This model isn't wrong but now to me (who has of course only recently come to rather shocking self-realization that I am... an "old-man" at how I view business) it seems like a business model without considering connections. Deciding to make connections for your business of course isn't conscious. When something happens, the first thing that pops in your head is "Boy, Fred needs to hear about this". And depending on how many Freds you know dictates how often that idea pops in your head. (and of course, the more Freds you know, the more Freds you will know).
- It wasn't so long ago that saying your new startup was monetized by ads wasn't scary. Some companies go right from eyeballs to ads and to sell-out. Thats great work if you can get it. But the number of eyeballs is limited. Its scary to think that, but on the web, we tend to give value away and "make it up on volume". The only problem is you need a hell of a lot of volume to make up for free. And 6 billion people isn't all that many when it comes down to it.
- I have plenty of opinions about business models, but to me, the best business model is one that makes your customer money. I didn't say "saves" them money - big difference. Also, its better yet if that customer is a business. You need less businesses as customers to be successful than if you had individuals as customers. A common sweet-spot is BtoBtoC. Supply to businesses that supply to consumers (and of course, make them money).
- Your real business model might be hiding like that last screw holding on part of the engine. Despite you stubbornly breaking screwdrivers, you might not get to what you need. It might just be worth asking yourself, "WWTOMD" - What would the old man do?
- Good Post, I am a soon to be 30 year old who has been self employed for most of his 20's. I have been a partner in businesses with multi million dollar potential and seen them fail because the "Old Men" I was involved with had completely misunderstood how to run a successful technology company. I think that there is this allure of the web and of technology and some experienced businessmen fail to see technology projects as something that needs more than a virtual presence to become a successful venture. I have found that traditional businessmen frequently have either a complete misunderstanding of how to profit though technology or they have an "If you build it they will come" attitude where they think you flip the switch on your web app and all of a sudden you have customers. With that said, I will admit that I am starting to also feel like the old man myself. I learned a lot of hard lessons early in business and I'm now finally starting to see them pay off.
- After two years I've seen a couple sucessful ventures. However, most of the time things simply don't work out. It is either a people thing, money thing, or we build it and --Surprise-- people don't come. In all this time my sticking to my guns and getting paid for my work at the time has always worked for me.
  
  Maybe someday when I hear and idea not based off of "The Young Man's Business Model" I will jump in and work for the big payoff at the end. However, nobody I encounter thinks about how they will make money off the Internet wihtout trying to attract as many eyeballs as they can and hope that somehow they will make a profit. As if, as you suggest, things will somehow take care of themselves at that point.
- At one extreme I had one company who we contracted with. This was great when their business was booming but it hurt us when they slowed down.
  
  At the other extreme I had all end consumers which meant higher margins but also a lot of expense and running around to manage all the accounts.
  
  Of course the best situation is to have a blend.
  Some large companies to cover your overhead with their lower margins and slower pay cycles.
  Some smaller companies where you get a bit more profit and a bit quicker pay.
  And end customers.
  
  Visualize it as pouring rocks in a container; big rocks and then smaller rocks to fill in the gaps and then gravel to fill in the smaller gaps.
- Page and Brin had or still have this in mind in a sense that the only important point is to create a great product and everything else will come, not sure if this is true in the Enterprise space.
  
  Old man cases are very very common and the Google ones (and how much they are resisting) are new and breakthrough.
- The young man model is totally why my startup company is out of money and looking to sell. We focused on developing a cool product and showing it to the college kids, while our competitors focused on recruiting musicians, who in turn publicized and made money for both themselves and the competition. We never worried about marketing, just thinking, it'll explode once we give it to a few thousand people. Now we have over 10K users and a meager income each month, but no tipping point has yet occurred. We haven't tapped into the market of money making customers and now it's too late for us to invest more into doing so.

Oct

6

2008

Free Vs Paid

www.avc.com/...free-vs-paid.html

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startup business revenue monetization

There's a movement afoot by investors to back web services with a real business model instead of the pervasive "give it away for free and hope for the best" approach that's been in favor for the past four years. Don't count me in that camp, but the movement is happening with or without me.
As I noted in the comments to Roger's post, we've struggled with early stage investments in enterprise oriented web services. Sales to enterprises often require expensive sales teams and it's much harder to know if you've nailed the product/service with feedback from a limited number of enterprise customers.

It's much better, in my opinion, to go with the freemium model, give a version of the service away for free to all comers, get a lot of users, get good market feedback, then develop a premium version of the product/service for sale to enterprise customers. If your free version is popular with a lot of users, your customer base is the target for the upsell and you might be able to live without an expensive sales force initially. And, of course, keep your costs really low until you start to get revenues.
7 more annotation(s)...
- I have been monetizing software for over 10 years (I specialize in the consumer space not enterprise, but it makes no difference), though back we simply called the model shareware.
- There should ALWAYS be a free version of your product. Especially when it’s not a mature product, and there are lots of competitors - GET YOURS out there as much as possible. And if you absolutely insist you should use Trialware it should never be *time based* (most get this wrong), they should be usage based.
- About number of years ago I was selling an enterprise solution into a large firm >1000 employees. The then IT manager and I were talking about why they selected MS Outlook for an email client. His answer was that Outlook was free, it came with every computer. Of course it is not free and it creates lockin and the company had to buy an Exchange Server, etc... MS perfected using the freemium model 20 years ago selling into the enterprise. They were competing with IBM so they had to.
- The standard enterprise model is expensive and time consuming. It requires that you stuff as much as you can down the channel once you've carved it out. The natural ecosystem is a few companies with strong sales relationships buying up lots of smaller companies with strong products. The big guys need more product for the channel. Most of the small guys are focused on technology, not sales. They don't have the time, money, inclination, or talent to get big on their own with mainstream enterprise sales.
- Our portfolio company Tumblr built and launched the service with two people working part time. They now work full time on it. It reaches 30mm uvs/month. And it's free. And it costs them almost nothing to support and improve it.
  
  Same is true of disqus, delicious (pre yahoo), etc, etc
  
  Freemium is alive and well if you keep your costs down
- It helps underfunded early stage startups focus on bettering their product rather than spend a lot of time trying to sell something not always not ready for prime time to a handful of customers.
- We have Freemium version that is fully functional and has no expiration. It is limited to a certain amount of data you can acquire.
  The purpose of Freemium is twofold, IMHO: To build an active user-community and to generate solid, qualified leads. We are converting a significant number of Freemium users into customers and our service is not cheap (starts at $500/month). The reason is that it is a professional tool, not a widget or aggregator.
  The community aspect is invaluable in product development and utilizing collective wisdom for QA. This is a definite value add.

Feb

29

2008

FREE LOVE

www.trendwatching.com/...freelove.htm

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business free

in list: Free economics debates

Joel Liu's Library tagged business → View Popular, Search in Google

CardFlick Debuts Location-Based Mobile Professional Contact Sharing App

(12) What would make sense for Apple to use its $51+ billion in cash for a strategic acquisition? - Quora

Lessons Learned At Business of Software 2010: MicroISV on a Shoestring

How I Almost Got Acquired By Apple And Then Snubbed

Hacker News | Google Wave Available for Everyone

HP bought Palm after a five-company bidding war -- Engadget

The Twitter Platform's Inflection Point

Twitter, Apple, Facebook: The perils of building on top of someone else’s platform. - Uncompiled Thoughts

Startups.com Becomes a Q&A Site For Business Questions

Yext Offers Local Businesses A Smart Inbox For Phone Calls

The Bump app for iPhone makes swapping contact information as simple as bumping two phones together | Bump Technologies, Inc.

5 Business Models for Social Media Startups

Y Combinator Endorses Bump Technologies In The Quest To Destroy The Business Card

evhead: Ten Rules for Web Startups

How to put invite codes on business cards -- Solutious, The Performance Company.

Solving the problems of early stage me-too product startups « Entrepreneur Corner

12 Universities Offering Free Business Courses Online | Educhoices.org

Technical Revenue: The Young Man's Business Model

Free Vs Paid

FREE LOVE

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