Vol 13 (2012) Some more thoughts on innovation in eCommerce. I had the chance to speak on a panel about Online Shopping at a NextNY event this week. And after a great discussion, I started talking with some folks about my last blog post (which commented on how little has changed in online shopping since I founded Half.com back in 1999 -- especially given the vast amount of change that has occurred on the web outside of shopping). And I wanted to put a little more specifics/numbers to my thinking. So I did a little digging on Alexa today -- and found some data that appears to confirm my perspective: More than half of today's top 15 most trafficked websites today did not exist back in 1999.
And if you compare today's top 15 list of eCommerce websites to this list from 2005, you'll see it's almost identical. Anyone want to bet whether, in the five years from now, the top 15 eCommerce sites will look pretty different than they look today? Managing Startups: Best Posts of 2011. Free Market-Research Tools -- A Sampler. Small businesses can tap a variety of free resources for insights about customers, competitors and trends. Before Darlene Tenes, founder of CasaQ in San Jose, Calif., sinks a lot of money into new designs for Christmas ornaments, she sends sketches to retail and wholesale clients. They report back through questionnaires she creates on the online research service SurveyMonkey, and their reactions influence which designs become decorations.
"If you have four choices and there's a strong reaction [like] 'I love it. I would absolutely buy it,' then you know it's a seller," says Tenes, whose ornaments and other products reflect Hispanic culture. SurveyMonkey is only one of a wealth of free tools and resources that can help you gather valuable market-research information. Survey Monkey Basic Survey Monkey Portland, Ore.www.surveymonkey.comCost: Free. BizStats Brandow Co. Related: Five Affordable Consumer Research Tools Related: A New Way to Crowdsource Customer Feedback Census.gov U.S. The Power of News and Recommendation : Cnn veut plus de pub sur son site #Pownar.
CNN a décidé, mondialement, d’avoir plus de publicité sur ses sites. Et souhaite le faire savoir. Mais les annonceurs connaissent-ils sur le bout des doigts les méandres de la pub online? Investissent-ils assez? La pub est-elle assez chère? Les internautes d’hier copiaient-collaient des url dans des emails, postaient des messages dans des forums de news. Invité par Eric Mettout à venir écouter Lila King, « producer », manager de la communauté de [wikipop]iReport[/wikipop] (le site participatif de CNN) au CFJ l’autre jour, j’y croise la Directrice Marketing et Communication de CNN International, qui m’invite à venir à la présentation de l’étude Pownar : « L’information partagée a plus de valeur … » : CNN dévoile aujourd’hui les résultats de POWNAR, sa première étude du phénomène de la recommandation dans les médias sociaux Je remercie CNNFrancePR qui m’a permis de publier – en exclusivité – quelques slides de la présentation.
Social media is the new inbox Poursuivons. Sans blague :-) Accompagnement des Startups en France Feb2010.pdf (Objet application/pdf) The Founder Institute: Helping Founders to Build Great Companies. Microsoft BizSpark - Microsoft BizSpark is a global program that helps software startups succeed by giving them access to Microsoft software development tools, connecting them with key industry players, including investors, and providing marketing visibility to help entrepreneurs starting a business. Microsoft BizSpark is a worldwide partner of the Founder Institute, providing software, support, facilities, and mentoring to many entrprenuers within the Fouder Insitute network. Learn more about our partnership here, and sign-up for BizSpark here. Créée en 1989, Brunswick Société d’Avocats accompagne ses clients - investisseurs financiers et PME françaises et internationales et leurs dirigeants - dans leur quotidien et dans leur développement.
Cap Digital est le pôle de compétitivité de la filière des contenus et services numériques. Q&A on Micro-VC Funds, With Someone Who Actually Invests In Them. We’ve spent a lot of time lately discussing micro-VCs, including last week’s news on Floodgate ($73m fund close) and 500 Startups (new $30m fund being raised). So I spent some time discussing the phenomenon with Chris Douvos, who invests in mico-VC funds through his role as a managing director with The Investment Fund for Foundations: How long have you been investing in micro-VC funds, or super-angel, funds??
We’ve been active in this space since around 2005, and have invested over time in several of the archetypal managers. Who are those archetypical managers? Well, the main one is someone we actually haven’t given money to: Ron Conway. He’s created a fantastic ecosystem. But we’ve backed some of the people who have taken types of things he does and refined them a bit. I love the O’Reilly AlphaTech guys, whose differential is that they’re leveraging the larger O’Reilly ecosystem.
How do you define a micro-VC fund? So where do you come down on the “micro-VC bubble” argument? Lee Hower - Blog - The Institutionalization of Social Games... Get Used to It. The Institutionalization of Social Games… Get Used to It July 29, 2010 The social games market has exploded onto the startup scene in the last three years. We all know about the remarkable growth of companies in this space, yet we tend to forget that Zynga was founded in July 2007.
But the social games business has clearly entered a new phase of institutionalization. I don’t mean just consolidation via EA acquisition of Playfish, Disney acquisition of Playdom, huge strategic investments from Google & SOFTBANK in Zynga, and plus countless smaller consolidations. I mean there are secular shifts going on in the industry which mean the land grab of the recent past is beginning to wane, and the near future of social games may start to mirror other gaming waves (PC, console, handheld, etc). 1) Production Values Going Up – Every social game developer I speak to agrees that production values are increasing. 6a011570120273970b013485252319970c-pi (Image PNG, 2457x2467 pixels) The Board Of Innovation. Non-Linear VC. The Collapse of Complex Business Models. I gave a talk last year to a group of TV executives gathered for an annual conference.
From the Q&A after, it was clear that for them, the question wasn’t whether the internet was going to alter their business, but about the mode and tempo of that alteration. Against that background, though, they were worried about a much more practical matter: When, they asked, would online video generate enough money to cover their current costs? That kind of question comes up a lot. It’s a tough one to answer, not just because the answer is unlikely to make anybody happy, but because the premise is more important than the question itself. There are two essential bits of background here. The first is that most TV is made by for-profit companies, and there are two ways to generate a profit: raise revenues above expenses, or cut expenses below revenues.
Here’s why. In 1988, Joseph Tainter wrote a chilling book called The Collapse of Complex Societies. The ‘and them some’ is what causes the trouble. Dr. 7 business models for linked data. Now that major companies are implementing linked data, and more marketing thought leaders are championing data as an outward-facing competitive advantage, the question I’m hearing more frequently is: How do you turn data into revenue? Creating, publishing, and maintaining data takes work.
What are the economic incentives for companies to put in the effort? Here’s my take on 7 business models for data web initiatives: I’ve organized these by how revenue is generated, from direct money-for-data to indirect branding programs. Within each of these revenue models, there’s also a secondary dimension of how the data is delivered, whether in raw form for others to leverage in their own applications or embedded into a pre-packaged application provided directly to end-users. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Of course, there will be hybrid models that combine several of these approaches. But don’t underestimate the importance of data branding. For the entrepreneurs in this space, however, everything is fair game. Thoughts on Linked Data Business Models. Scott Brinker recently published a great blog post covering 7 business models for Linked Data. The post is well worth a read and reviews the potential for both direct and indirect revenue generation from a range of different business models. I’ve been thinking about these same issues myself recently so I’m pleased to see that others are doing similar analysis.
Scott’s conclusion that, currently, Linked Data is more likely to drive indirection revenue is sound, and reflects where we are with the deployment of the technology. The time is ripe though for organizations to begin exploring direct revenue generation models and it’s there that I wanted to add some thoughts and commentary to Scott’s posting. Traffic The traffic model, with its indirect revenue generation by driving traffic to existing content and services, is well understood. Advertising Adverts embedded into data is are not a useful way to distribute them to end-users. Subscriptions Sponsorship Closing Thoughts Like this: Financial modeling for startups. Social web business models.
Web finance & business models. Freemium. VC et BA français bloggers. The Lean Start-Up. Why Startups Need Capital Discipline – GigaOM. While reading through Seth Godin’s free e-book recently, I noticed that Fred Wilson had dedicated an entire page of his blog to the concept of “slow capital.” I like the notion of slow capital; it strikes me as the other side of the coin of agile, capitally disciplined startups. Since more often than not, a startup’s model and/or product will change from the point of founding and funding, early-stage startups need to have the ability to make informed progress in the face of all challenges. How capital flows into and out of a startup in order to enable such progress is absolutely critical and yet very difficult to manage.
And execution in the presence of too much capital, too little capital, or poorly applied capital defines both the health of the business and the relationship between a startup and its investors. Together, the concepts of slow capital and capital discipline provide a framework for managing this relationship. A startup has capital discipline when it: 1. 2. 3. 1. Why? 2. 3. Slow Capital. Last friday my partner Brad attended a company offsite for our portfolio company Meetup.com. On monday of this week during our regular weekly meeting, he gave our firm (all five of us) a report on the day which he said was excellent.
One thing that stuck in my mind all week was his description of the lunch talk by one of the leaders of the "slow movement" (whose name escapes me now). I'm familiar with the slow food movement and I would say that our family, led by the Gotham Gal, are active participants in it. I'm less familiar with the broader slow movement. This quote from Guttorm Fløistad via Wikipedia explains: The only thing for certain is that everything changes. The rate of change increases. There are now sub-movements like slow travel, slow parenting, slow art, slow sex, etc. I'm not much for any orthodoxy but I do appreciate the sentiment behind the slow movement and I've been thinking all week about what "slow capital" would be. 50 Free Sources for Business Plans, Templates and Models.
Small business owners and entrepreneurs often shy away from business plans, because they may seem too complicated. But, without a business plan, you may not be able to receive financing and you may lose sight of your goals. That said, you may learn that you do not need a plan or that your plan does not need to be complicated. How do you learn what’s best for you? The following links are categorized by sample plans, articles, business sites and sites for entrepreneurs, and they all offer free resources for business plans, templates and models. They also offer reasons to build a business plan (or not), and some sites even offer free advice in person or by phone. The links within each category are listed alphabetically by article title or by website name. Sample Plans Build Your Business Plan: Offered by Grand Valley State University, this Word document can provide a template for your business plan. Articles Business Sites For Entrepreneurs Did you enjoy this article?
Free Sample Business Plans and Business Plan Software. Business Models Beyond Profit - Social Entrepreneurship Lecture. The End Of Big Website Builds | Six Pixels of Separation - Marke. If you thought fragmentation was changing the way a brand buys media, just wait until you see what it's going to do to the Digital Marketing space. Are the days of big websites and long website builds numbered? It could well be. If you think about how people find and connect to most brands, it's not just through a search engine anymore. In fact, more and more people are having their first brand interaction on their mobile device. There are many people who are also connecting to brands for the first time in spaces like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Does this mean that the website is going the way of the dodo bird? Not exactly, but it does mean that the overall Digital Marketing strategy is going to change dramatically in the next little while.
Imagine a world... It becomes a more complex Digital Marketing play. This is just further proof that the conversations are everywhere (and maybe not where we always want them to be). By Mitch Joel. Cdixon.org – chris dixon's blog. Western Europe Dominates E-Commerce. Western Europe leads the world in retail e-commerce sales. The UK is the most mature market, but other countries increasingly contribute to the region’s online buying clout. Europe’s dominance will continue through 2012, according to Collins Stewart, when online retail sales will cross the $200 billion threshold. “The population of online shoppers and buyers in the region is rising steadily,” said Karin von Abrams, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report “Retail E-Commerce in Western Europe.” “But there are key differences in these markets.” This is chiefly the result of long-standing differences between Northern and Southern infrastructures and buying habits. “The recent economic downturn has compounded national differences,” said Ms. von Abrams.
Online retailers may gain incremental revenue by appealing to buyers in the smaller European markets. Check out today’s other article, “Stepping Up to ROI Measurement.” To purchase the report, click here.