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The evolution of the web (and standing on the shoulders of others)

February 19, 2010

Max Ventilla, co-founder of Aardvark, has some great insight into building new web businesses today.

He argues that not every web business needs to be a destination site and you're actually better off building on top of the shoulders of existing incumbents first.

Aardvark was the sixth idea that we tried, following a string of failed prototypes. But all our ideas were subject to the restriction that they could not be a destination site. Any candidate idea had to be useful from within some other online application. Aardvark is designed to be a contact that is accessible from anywhere that contacts go (email, phone, IM…). It wasn’t until we were about eighteen months into the company that we finally built a full-fledged website. That seemed pretty remarkable for a *web* company but I think it will increasingly be there norm.

It's worth reading the entire post from Max.

As everyone has been flocking to the web to have "a presence" over the last twelve years, the paradigm has shifted. It's not about getting on the web now, it's about getting in front of the consumers where they are already congregating.

It's equivalent to the challenges of selling dog biscuits. Do you open the shop in the neighborhood strip mall, or do put all your effort into getting inside Target?

Filed under  //   startups  

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Vince Lombardi was wrong

January 31, 2010

I just finished reading Seth Godin's "The Dip". A fast and potentially inspiring read to help you understand what is keeping you from becoming great in whatever you choose to do.

I had a couple of takeaways...

1. Vince Lombardi was wrong

One of Vince's famous quotes is, "Quitters never win and winners never quit." Godin does a nice job of squashing this mantra. Not only is quitting a perfectly viable option. But many times it is the smartest option. You can be a fool for not taking it.

The smartest people recognize when quitting is the right decision and when it's the wrong one (when it's just a matter of pushing through a dip). Ironically, by not quitting, you've set yourself up for failure. Smart people quit all the time and go on to win big.

2. Success happens in strange places

Godin argues that, "the dip is where success happens". I love this, and I think it's important to be aware of before venturing into anything new.

If you want to be the best, you are guaranteed to go through a dip. After all, if you there were no dip, everyone would come out on top.

3. The Dip is a dip itself!

I began to find it ironic that I was ready to put the book down half way through. It's short, but it's incredibly repetitive with the underlying messages.

Did Godin intentionally create a dip inside the book? :)

4. There needs to be a startup version of this book

One of the flaws with the book is that it comes from a marketers perspective. There is an underlying assumption that your idea/skill/product has a market fit, and a dip falls into one of eight categories (manufacturing, sales, education, risk, relationship, conceptual, ego, and distribution).

Startups are never that easy if you have not already established a fit in the respective market. It would be nice to see an analysis of dips for startups while they strive to find a market/product/price fit.

Filed under  //   books   startups  

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Reflecting on Mint's $170M exit

September 15, 2009

Mint, a web based solution for personal money management, was sold to Intuit for $170M this week. A remarkable feat for a company that is just three years old.
 
In a blog post discussing the acquisition, Mint CEO and founder Aaron Patzer, reflects on how Mint was started, and poignantly highlights what might be considered the obvious in hindsight. That is, Mint set out to fix a very specific problem.

So that’s the Mint story. $0 to $170m in three years flat. While everyone else was doing social media, music, video or the startup de jour, we tried to ground ourselves in what any business should be doing: solve a real problem for people. Make something that is faster, more efficient, cheaper (in this case free), and innovate on technology or business model to make a healthy revenue stream doing it.

The trap for most is coming up with an idea first, and building the case for the problem being solved second. Order matters.
 
You can read the full post here.

Filed under  //   software   startups  

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