Philco
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I'd be curious to hear what you think of newhive.com, Kevin
@josh45 - I may very well eat my words in a few years. I hope I do, I'd love for this nut to get cracked. The key will be to provide enough value for both merchants and subscribers, such that it spreads virally amongst both. (Otherwise, you're either spending money to acquire buyers, or spending money to acquire merchants, and those are the costs that drive your margins to zero). Not sure you can provide enough value on both sides of the equation to such a degree that it's viral on both sides, but I may thinking about it wrong. We'll see!
@josh45 - I'm arguing that the problems GroupOn faced are market problems, not product problems. I don't think there is a way to reach all local businesses in a way that makes economical sense.
Not sure I agree - the achilles heel to this market is the prohibitive costs associated with reaching local merchants, while there are diminishing returns.
At the time of their IPO, GroupOn had the following metrics:
Revenue/Groupon had plateaued at $24
Revenue/Merchant: Falling.
Revenue/Subscriber: Falling. (From $17 to $14 in one year. Additionally, fewer subscribers were purchasing groupons)
Market Costs: Skyrocketing. The cost to acquiring each additional merchant rose over time, as they needed a massive sales force and marketing budget to reach each additional merchant.
Their costs skyrocketed to capture the long tail of merchants and subscribers, while they suffered diminishing revenues at each additional subscriber and merchant.
For more details on metrics: http://philipcortes.com/philcosblog/2011/6/4/collapsing-revenue-metrics-skyrocketing-costs-groupons-disas.html
Love that there are groups forming to help us get the feedback we need, and quickly.
I would love for there to be a way to gather all qualitative feedback (either written or in audio/video form) in one place, and make it easily searchable. Probably my number 1 pain point as a founder.
@DickHardt Would love to hear more about what you think is a user-centric identity model. Found this interesting: http://dickhardt.org/2010/12/oidf-2010/
@DickHardt What's your vision?
@entrepreneurSF You're right - the search and discovery model on Facebook is broken. (If it's studied from the professional discovery sense). That having been said, I have seen, and hear from our users, exactly what Al is saying. Your friends on Facebook are most likely to help you find your next job, or make an introduction for you, than the random connection you added on LinkedIn, that you met at a conference. Mark Granovetter, a sociologist at Stanford, wrote a paper studying the "Power of Weak Ties". He concluded that you're most likely to find your next job via "weaker" ties in your social graph. I would argue that Facebook contains the best mix of "strong" and "weak" ties, and that LinkedIn has ties that are too weak to matter. Additionally, the average Facebook graph is larger - by definition it must have a broader reach. LAast, but not least, this is also somehwat demographic specific. People 18-35 tend to have a greater degree of overlap between professional and personal graphs. The people we speak to who are 35 and older, seem to have a much better segregated group of connections (their professional connections are purely on LinkedIn), and they generally find that they have decent relationships on LinkedIn. That older demographic, however, is also evolving and skewing towards a blend of both networks.
Al -
Awesome post. I share your vision and conclusions on the space, completely. As the co-founder of Meeteor.com, a networking service that leverages data from all your networks, we've seen similar trends in our data. That having been said, in user feedback discussions, we continue to hear from users that their Facebook IDENTITY isn't necesarily a professional one. This is why people hesitate to share their Facebook data, and the struggle they face when they start mixing their professional and personal connections on the site. The only reason LinkedIn continues to exist (in my opinion), is because it's the only place where I can keep a separate professional identity and brand. I think that in order for Facebook to truly square off with linkedIn in the professional space it needs to handle the identity issue. One potential solution could be for people to be able to create professional identities on the service. That identity crisis, if it isn't faced, may lead to people sharing less, which Mark Z. won't like. If I'm friends with my boss on Facebook and I know that he'll see whatever my friends see, I'll share very different things on the service than if it were just my closest friends.
Roping in @adaugelli to see if he has any other ideas.
@LuciaDemasi hah, I know, if only it were that easy. The problem is that within a nanosecond of Facebook putting up a pay wall, 3 people in a garage (like my team) put up a "new" facebook with a "cooler" UI, for "free". Then the cycle continues.....Their 1 billion users becomes zero, I get a billion users and the same revenue hurdles.
Interesting trend of male focused e-commerce style plays. I wonder if men (even in this demographic) have as high of a propensity to share as women do. The trend is an interesting one to follow, for sure.
haha, love the conclusion. My biggest frustration with Art.sy so far is the content. I get that they have 20,000 images, but ultimately the long tail of my (an other people's) interests is so long, that they'll need a larger inventory database to truly get momentum. Taste is so subjective, as is a person's ability/willingness to pay. Love the UX, UI, and ability to preview items on a wall. Really well put together - let's hope they get more content!!
I always thought that the business model question was a good way to reframe the "how important is the pain point you're solving" question. If you're solving a really important PAIN point, then chances are you'll have a very natural business model to connect it with.
So much talent at UPenn, really happy to see more of it go into innovation.Congratulations to Lauren, Josh on the launch, and for getting Eric as an investor. He's sharp!
@retired blogger dude I unfortunately am not very familiar with the Bleacher Report, so I defer to you on expertise there.What I do know is that what they've created still carried a valuation that is 10x TechCrunch's, with the same number of pageviews. Either markets are irrational (and they very well may be), or Sarah's onto something.
TechCrunch has opened their gates up to guest blogging, and that seems to be doing decently for them. Ultimately, however, I think it would be more interesting to have PandoDaily come up with a list of topics they want covered, and have them approach the very best potential authors for each subject.
One is a complacent model: it relies on authors writing articles proactively, and pitching different news outlets to publish them. That seems to be working ok, but it leads to dozens of sporadic articles written on unrelated subjects. A better approach would be to have PandoDaily come up with topics and themes they'd like to see covered, and have them approach who they think would make great authors for those specific articles. That would create a more cohesive story, and would likely increase the quality of postings.
More importantly, I liked Sarah's main takeaway: There are other markets that are well suited for a similar model, namely "specs on gadgets, and features and UI on apps and websites." I think she's dead on.
NIce piece Erin - love what the Vizify team is up to. I really like your point about Vizify intelligently picking out the right things from each graph: I don't want to be stuck curating my own identify. That work should be done for me, and they've made a lot of right decisions to get there. Of the three services in this space, my bet is on Vizify. and their team.
Hey Intro team - really cool service!! Congrats on the write up :-)
Thanks for the mention @eringriffith!