Hot answers tagged business-model
13
The first generation of "internet hard drive" companies (xdrive, idrive, etc) were based on the old LAN model of a file share that happens to live on the Internet. Accessing every file over the internet was slow, creating a ton of friction.
Dropbox provided true synchronization technology, so performance was fast and you could continue to work on files ...
11
Don't send the proposal with your first message. It will shut the door close into your face and any following attempts will be perceived as stalking.
Why are you sending it to this person? I got it that you don't know him/her, but do you know anyone that may have an access to this individual. If not, don't be too aggressive. Send a letter, email or text ...
11
You're looking in the wrong place. The answer to whether you should start a startup or not is not found in the business plan -- it is in you.
I think my issue is that I have a really good job, and the prospect of bootstrapping a startup and potentially not bringing in enough money is hard to accept.
If you start a startup you will have anxiety and you ...
11
It's actually less profitable that you state. You forget to factor in churn rate and the cost of acquiring each user.
However - the question doesn't really make sense. SAAS isn't a market - it's a particular kind of product/channel to a market.
Customers don't go "I want a SAAS system" :-) They go "I want to manage my finances". Some of them go for free ...
9
Consider:
Use $1 CPM as a benchmark for a banner ad rate on your site. (Obviously lots of variables, industry you're in, whether you do Google AdSense or display banner ads, etc.) So for an ad you display, every 1,000 times that ad is displayed on a page, you get $1.
So to make $1,000, you need to have 1,000,000 ad views.
Let's say each page has two ads. ...
9
Opinions vary, but I think one of the key ingredients in their success was the "it just works" factor.
Dropbox took a seemingly simple issue that people had struggled with forever (easy sharing of files over a network) and made it a transparent process.
I think it also helped that the service didn't also co-market itself as a shady way to share copyright ...
9
I'm not sure it answers your question, but one "framework" that I use to analyse business positions is the Five Forces model of Michael Porter.
The five forces specifically give you a framework for deciding whether the business you're looking has some ability to be successful.
As with any framework, it has downsides, but I find any order you can put on an ...
8
Well "conducted through the internet" ... is pretty broad statement.
Google is all about the number of times they can get people to click on an ad link.
Facebook are similar but their success metric is the amount of time they hold peoples attention (google only have you a few mins at a time, facebook is hours at a time).
Evernote have subscribers volume ...
7
I would probably go with the PDF - I'm just learning now how hard HTML email is!
Having said that, I don't think I would respond well to receving a 'business proposal' that is unsolicitied and completely cold.
Maybe try to build a bit of a relationship with your contact first?
Maybe just introduce yourself via a mail or a call, explain that you have a ...
7
I don't think there's any single answer that makes sense. This is sort of like asking, "What is the temperature?" Well, somewhere between -50 and 50 degrees celsius, in most places. Startups need somewhere between 1 and 10,000 employees.
Developers per manager = about 5. Less than that if the manager also codes. More than that if the developers are very ...
7
Yes it can work, but here are a couple of issues to consider when using this approach:
You are not taking your costs/expenses into account. Will your solution involve recurring costs? Since you are targeting large companies, it seems unlikely, but it's possible that you may end up in a situation where your expenses are greater than your income from a ...
7
In most cases you would charge the employers a fee for listing their job openings, or for searching resumes and CVs. (See Monster.com, HotJobs, careers.stackoverflow.com, etc.) Most companies who place job listings are used to having to pay for them, especially in cases where the job seeker has special skills or is hard to find.
You might also consider ...
6
Hey Will, It did take a bit for me to figure out what what your interesting site was about. I think a slogan and short, well defined enunciation of your purpose would be helpful. I'm not a marketeer, but here are a few ideas that might get you pointed in the right direction:
Expose Yourself! (Provocative)
See, Show and Sell your Creative Works
The ...
6
This isn't so much about short-term money as about generating long-term value.
Some startups will gain funding because they are disruptive, can gain a solid market position, have some competitive advantage and for other reasons not directly associated with short-term revenue generation.
These things are often a long-game, whereby investors know that with ...
6
It will depend on the terms of the End User License Agreements (EULA) for the applications in question.
Generally speaking, the answer is no. You would be violating the terms of the license agreements; several large software providers have default license terms to prohibit this. For example with Microsoft products you need a Service Provider License ...
6
Solve a problem - Either your own or someone else's.
Our Virtual TimeClock software was created more than a decade ago after a consulting customer asked me to look into the availability of employee time clock software for his computer. Well over a hundred thousand employees in over 50 countries now use Virtual TimeClock every day.
6
Some revenue models that I have seen:
Sell the license to the DLL for end users
Give away the component and sell consulting and services
Sell or give away the DLL and header files to developers and then they pay royalties for redistribution
OEM/license the software component for others to package
Sell/license the source code
If we knew more about the ...
6
Consider adding some premium features that people can pay for, some ideas might be:
- SMS Alerts (they cost you money, so is a justifiable premium feature)
- iPhone App
- Ability to see average statistics from other users
- Include support
Basically it would turn you towards a freemium model, but it sounds like it could be successful for your type of ...
5
That's a good question, as in, it's hard to come up with great answers. I don't mean to deflate your enthusiasm, but keep the below in mind as you develop your strategy:
In general, the wiki market is quite crowded, both as self-hosted and hosted solutions.
Your wiki started as open source, i.e. at a price of zero. This 'anchors' the users expectations for ...
5
Well I can tell you exactly what the deal is for THIS site!
You can only make ad revenue with tons of traffic. We hope to get that amount of traffic but it's not the goal. The goal is to create something of genuine value for as many people as possible, but the value is the goal, not the number of people.
(@fabien7474) By my calculations StackOverflow ...
5
It's called MLM. (see pyramid scheme, avon, etc. There are lots of examples of this kind of thing)
The idea is not bad in itself, but I think what you want to provide is a different kind of reward - not just money. Like Stack overflow has provided - give badges, hit points, etc - things that are rewards for ego and pride - but that are not money.
You ...
5
It depends on both your endgame and the people you're describing your venture to. Part of being a startup is that you're aiming to grow into something much more substantial down the road. If you're intending to take outside funding, hire on employees down the road, have some sort of liquidity event (IPO, acquisition), then, yeah, I'd say you're a startup. If ...
5
I personally believe the <name>app.com (e.g. lighthouseapp.com) and get<name>.com (e.g. getclicky.com) pattern will become the most common replacement in the near future. The namespace is much larger than misspelled words (e.g. flickr.com) and nonsense words that don't look like spam (e.g. wufoo.com). Funky TLDs (e.g. bit.ly) are a contender but
...
5
The primary way: Find an itch and scratch it for them.
Said differently, the traditional way I've seen ideas happen is by making yourself exposed to people who have problems. Sales people, in consultative domains, are a good example. By selling one thing, you often hear of other peripheral problems. Many of those are often the start of a niche product. ...
5
In my mind, a startup differs from a small business as follows:
Small Business follows a defined business model, with previous examples of success in the same area with the same model to rely on. As an example, a service provider that founds a business using established practices would be a small business, not a start up.
Start up is defined by its ...
5
Usability companies can and are succeeding. I know dozens. From consulting organisations to services like loop11. I run a business myself where a chunk of what we do is related to usability testing.
Concept Feedback isn't a usability testing company. It's a company revolving around providing expert- and heuristic- reviews. In fact - they don't provide them. ...
5
Most people will tell you "ideas are a dime a dozen", or "share it with the world and get feedback", or "it's not about the idea, it's all about the execution". I totally disagree with these perspectives; these are just dogmas, things that people believe and repeat because that's what everybody else is saying and who wants to take the risk of going against ...
4
I'm a techie-type so the first thing I do is make sure I have an API in place, then use the same API to build the front-face of the service (without exposing it publicly). I agree with Alain that you don't need to expose it until much later, but if your own app is hitting the same API from the start it gets stress-tested and you can then open it up later ...
4
The big issue is figuring out to connect with the person. If they are at a high-level in the company they probably get dozens of unsolicited emails a week and you need to get through the initial deletion of your email.
As others have said you need to figure out how to build a relationship with them before you have any chance of them even reading your ...
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