But a business model that depends on having enough users to support the business is a gamble as well. What's the difference between a company hoping for one more user before the end of the month and one more penny to keep them in business versus a company hoping for that buyout offer before the end of the month, that $300m that would pay off their investors and be enough to start the next business? I guess it's the difference between starting a business versus starting a company. But any business is a gamble at first.
"Starting a startup is so hard that it's a close call even for the ones that succeed. However high a startup may be flying now, it probably has a few leaves stuck in the landing gear from those trees it barely cleared at the end of the runway."
You have two questions in argument if I understand you correctly.
1) What's the difference between a business model based on having enough users vs. having buyout offer?
I don't differentiate a business from a company in that way. Business and company in the real world are pretty much the same thing. In the tech world, large number of users may bring a business into profitable stage because they have a huge pool of leads. Even if the conversion rate is low, there is still many chances to earn, especially due to the trust level. This model is similar to the traditional business.
High tech startups rely on the second way a lot because once they catch some investors, they made money no matter if the business is really profitable or not. That's why it's like gambling, you don't need to have a real business, as long as you make somebody believe you can make money, you win.
2) Is every business a gamble?
Not quite. The odds are a lot higher if you follow the typical business rules in the real world to provide true values to your customers. Now, a lot of people believe in that money can make money, so no real product is necessary. That's completely wrong. This belief puts everybody into gambling. At the end of the day, you will find that only the product/service values being realized can make money. So business is not gambling. We consumers are living on it everyday. If there is no product/service value but money trading, we will be running out of the fuel so quickly.
but alot of business value is on the cost side. being the low cost producer. alot of internet business are about finding a low cost substitute for an existing business usually with somekind of scale to it. Google computer index of billions of pages versus hand index. amazon listing milions of products, customer reviews versus retail stores and service reps. it's not hard to find a product/service sell it for cheaper. it's hard to find a product/service product it cheaper that the customer values as much as the original.
Good point. Now we are back to discuss about the valid business model. Making cost effective products and services is one of the value proposition for a new business. But Google and Amazon's contribution are not only to make the services cheaper, they also make the information available easier for online users to retrieve. This is a big step in our information era. Without them, we are still living in a slow and small world.
However we need to move further. People know that the web is messy. So we need to organize it to improve the efficiency finding relevant information. So quality should be over quantity. And instead of sorting out from the large amount of information from time to time, we need some way to keep the useful information and share it easily. This is the goal that I'm working on.
"Starting a startup is so hard that it's a close call even for the ones that succeed. However high a startup may be flying now, it probably has a few leaves stuck in the landing gear from those trees it barely cleared at the end of the runway."
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