Thoughts on a startup that can make obvious money
From a Read Write Web article I had in my archives, here is a quote from a speech given by Chris Shipley back in July of 2011 at Startup Festival.
Aiming to build something that will last was the key takeaway from Shipley’s talk. “Exits these days aren’t very good,” she said, “so why don’t you take your eye off the door and focus on building your business.”
It certainly seems like the Startup Bubble has only become worse since her speech last year. How cliche is it to hear about an investment in a company that says: ‘we have eyeballs, we’ll figure out the revenue thing later’.
Building a service or network with a lot of users is important. Turning users into money is not just about eyeballs. The money should be obvious.
Look at the way Skype, Evernote, or Dropbox have grown. They’re not just creating something that people flock to, they’re creating something that increases in value over time.
These are businesses with obvious revenue models from the start. There was nothing tricky about it.
Skype: ‘If you want to make normal calls, we’ll charge you’.
Evernote: ‘If you want to move more notes, we’ll charge you’.
Dropbox: ‘If you want to store more files, we’ll charge you’.
No one was surprised when they reached the pay point.
There seem to be quite a few startups with very high valuations and a lack of such obvious models. Eventually the investment money runs out. Such startups may get to that point, and then fail to figure out a good way to make money.
Mick Hagen's blog
Only two posts and already some wise observations.
It's Time For Quality Apps
I wrote a post over on Apps by Lift’s blog:
The app store gold rush is over. If you want to be successful you really have to take care of your users. Focus on the experience, and make it the kind of app that they will want to keep using.
If you want to have success in the app store it isn’t enough just to throw an app together, and launch it onto the store. There is competition, and it is fierce.
It is important to ship, and make sure that your product actually gets to market. However, I think that you have to take the time to build a high quality app.
LDS Word Search Weekly has been in the works for over a year.
We decided this was going to be the best word search app possible, or we weren’t going to deliver it. It took a lot longer than we’d hoped, but we really think we’ve done it.
The Good Side of Curation - Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook
It’s not curation that’s bad.
Curating content gets us to listen too.
The more we listen, the more we know. The more we know, the more we notice. The more we notice the more we can use to figure out what we need to know next.
Curation isn’t about trying to take credit. It’s about learning, and sharing what you’re learning. Curation is about giving credit to the source of your learning.
It’s about adding value.
Netflix knows what you want
The company says that its customers are so confident in the system at this point that 75 percent of all movies watched by members come from recommendations.
A company that knows what people want. Here’s to hoping they never die.
Is the genius of Steve Jobs depressing you?
“So many people are sitting at home going, ‘Oh, I’d love to be an entrepreneur, but I’m not Steve Jobs. I’m not Bill Gates. I can’t go do something like that.’ And so, they don’t do anything because they’re afraid that they’re not creative, that they don’t have a super idea yet,” Beach said.
The important thing is to find what inspires you, not what dissuades you.
There is a formula to build a successful company. If you try to learn how you can rather than figure out why you can’t, you’ll finally get stuff done.
