is it a feature or a business?

May 24th, 2012 § Comments Off on is it a feature or a business? § permalink

YouTube business model canvas sketch by Alexan...

YouTube business model canvas sketch by Alexander Osterwalder (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

this article hits on a very important distinction but their point so short-sighted:

The new business reality: a feature as a business model

It’s almost comical to say there is a new business reality at play. This is because there are so many forces at work lately, that it seems as though new realities are created and killed almost every quarter. Opportunistic turbulence is probably the best term for it. I’d like to call one out for review Features can be business models.

via: www.cruc.es

‘feature’ is just a different way of calling the product’, or maybe, a ‘small product’. but to make it a business, you have to build the business infrastructure around the ‘feature’ – user acquisition, sales, financial controlling, hr, etc…

the only thing that changes is, that you can start with a ‘feature’ and build the rest later. but you better be prepared to do that, or you’ll miss your opportunity.

 

ceo must read: bill gates’s memo from ’95

February 22nd, 2012 § 1 comment § permalink

 

This image was selected as a picture of the we...

Image via Wikipedia

this is really amazing document. at first i meant to quote bits and pieces, but there’s just too many. so i will rather summarize high level takeaways without specific connections to each other:

  1. to paraphrase my great teacher: “learn enough strategy to be able to lead like this” – specially first time founders/ceos face great challenges trying to figure out what ‘leading’ and ‘strategy’ really mean, and separating the operational hat from the insightful one. in this letter, we can see just how much is possible to infere from a handfull of data – internet was 3 years old at that point, and Bill was able to predict accurately next 15. Strive to become a business thinker like him.
  2. reading this letter feels like we have not entirely left the era it describes. IP telephony still doesn’t work as good as landlines, streaming media is slowly becoming standardized, 3d is hoping to have a comeback, cross-web collaboration is still painful. i’d say we are in the final years of the first version of the internet.
  3. mobile and social currently seem to be in the same explosive growth stage as internet was back then. if they actually prove to be as transformative for the society as the web was, i’m not very optimistic. as Bill noted in this memo, internet was built heavily on open values. the mobile is being built based on values of telcos and apple, and social networking is taking us back to the primeval societies, where everyone knows everything about everyone else. next era might bring de-urbanization of our minds.
  4. i love this site – Letters of note – absolutely best way to learn is by observing great people doing / explaining what they’ve learned.
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