DouglasCrets
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I want one of these, just to play with, honestly.
Great thought piece.
Interesting quibble: I don't see Taskrabbit as being a rich white guy problem startup. It is in the same category as Zirtual, which is putting underemployed and out of work people to work, and, one would hope, putting the world back to work.
I think she builds Tumblr into the contextual ad engine for user generated ads. Wait until we see an "I Can Haz Cheezburger" type advertisement on a billboard or subway sign near you.
Not sure you can buy a market by buying a leading company in that market that has not yet secured a way to extract value from that market in a meaningful way. You run the risk of losing that market by taking away the independent company that was meaning to make that effort. But, if they do as you say, all credit to Yahoo!
Erin, great article. I question whether Foursquare was meant to be an advertising business. I think it's a contextual selling business, which is not advertising. I could be wrong. I have an interview with him on Thursday. This article would make for a great context for some questions. Thanks!
@mcarney @DouglasCrets Great points, but remember, Fred Wilson did say at Disrupt NY that his fund is actively investing in monetary systems, currencies, payment systems. Maybe foursquare doesn't grow its own, but it may well want to import.
I was at a Microsoft-hosted event at the Mountain View campus (disclosure: I work at Microsoft as their BizSpark social media strategist), and the VP from Hadoop was there saying that he thought in the future ,we wouldn't need data scientists in order to lift a small or medium business off the ground (I felt startups were in that, too). I think it's right.
I wonder if the card format is a stage and if they will be building out more digital currency and smartphone enabled linking. I feel like this is where Foursquare's next big play is, but I can't be sure. Would you see them as competition with Marqeta?
i would totally go to this. NYC is a critical storyline in the startup story.
I should add to my previous comment by saying, I think this is a window of opportunity for Yelp, Foursquare, Square and other "recommendation engines."
This blog post makes a great point. Customers are loyal, however, to the offline shops that they go to regularly for staple goods and lifestyle choices. The problem is that the deal-side of the equation is rarely consistent enough for those particular places. It's not just that customers are disloyal; it's that daily deal sites HAVE to be disloyal. They can only feed on one kind of food.
Whoa. What happened to Par Avion, Alex?
This bit of focus on LA has been really interesting. I do question, though, whether (or what he means by) startups need to build deeper tech companies. and should they? I mean, the fragmentation that really causes the most problems is not the existence of devices, its the way people use those devices, which in the end comes down to using media, or data, not technology so much.
This was a good article.
Probably in order not to offend and to avoid losing any possible golden ticket, your titles and names and pictures for these are so off the mark that I can't really relate this to anyone I know in the industry. I was kind of hoping I would be able to, though.
this is really interesting, because I just talked to an unemployed, and searching, marketing person and we were saying the real problem she is facing is that she's seeking work from startups who are headed by people who don't seem to be emotionally interested in their customers, so it makes her feel uncomfortable to work with them. I think this is something really important, because at the heart of startup success is a really profound understanding of the emotional successes that customers will feel from experiencing and enjoying the product.
I took away something interesting from our talk, and that was that if she feels the CEO is not emotionally curious, she won't feel emotionally validated or interested in being in the work relationship. I wonder how many CEOs think about that. Or, how many CEOs are only thinking about product, product, product, and not about emotional choices. I think the presence of emotional choices, or their absence, in the framework of product and customer marketing is a symptom of a bigger disease. Market apathy. Who would want to work in an environment with people who truly don't care about whomever they serve?
If we were really being honest, teachers that protest against ed tech (which is not all teachers) protest because they believe it threatens their jobs. The test online breaking is not the reason they don't trust it, but they will use it as the reason why they don't like ed tech. The bigger picture is the true trends in software eating the world and a misunderstanding of how education technology will help teachers. Ed tech is really meant to enhance a teacher's ability to focus on more of the students who need the most help. An online test isn't even where true groundbreaking work is happening in education. It's just a vendor delivered solution that in many cases didn't go through proper iteration and testing. The real breakthroughs are happening in blended learning design and online collaboration.
The future for journalists is in marketing, not journalism.
You are actually right on with this somewhat speculative and rhetorical framework. If you can scale up the real dialogue that can occur between a few thousand customers and the employees who can manage that dialogue, you are doing well more for your branding and marketing than any spotty advertising campaign. I think that if you can pivot from spending 100k in marketing through content and ads, to spending only 20k on those things, while spending the remaining 80k on two customer service people working part time, you are doing wonders for your customer base and your potential growth.
I love what Paul Carr has done. Least of all, he's made me feel by buying a lot at NSFWCORP's Conflict Towers, that I can own a piece of the public space that might herald in great reporting, community growth, etc. I can't buy till pay day, but I've got my eyes on it. Best of luck.
One of the things I think journalism is missing is public space, or the public square. It's mostly just rabble and confusion in comments sections as no real innovation exists inside mainstay organizations. Or, if it does exist, it's not easy to iterate and see results.