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Business Models Generation Business Model Canvas
Minder Chen, Ph.D. Professor of Management Information Systems Martin V. Smith School of Business and Economics CSU Channel Islands Web site:
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Resources Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur, Business Model Generation, Wiley, (preview edition ) **Business Model Canvas Poster (pdf file) Johnson, Mark W.; Christensen, Clayton M.; Kagermann, Henning, "Reinventing Your Business Model," Harvard Business Review, Dec2008, Vol. 86 Issue 12, p50-59. Four Paths to Business Model Innovation
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Videos **Business Model Canvas Explained (video, 2.22m)
Osterwalder explaining the Business Model Canvas (video 45 minutes) **Alexander Osterwalder: Tools for Business Model Generation (video 53m ) Learn how to use Business Model Canvas to pitch your business idea and prototype (video). See the rest in the series Business Model Canvas (video series) Webinar #4: Ways To Present The Business Model Canvas (video) HILTI Case using BMC started at 25m; Tool Fleet Management
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A Starting Point of Innovation
A customer friction is a (re)discovered of relevant and often unmet needs in a recognizable situation from a target group. Adapted form
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eBay Starting Myth If business creation myths have their own creation story, it was penned by Mary Lou Song. One of eBay's first employees, Song grew frustrated trying to get the attention of dot-com-weary reporters. She hit on the notion of telling them that founder Pierre Omidyar had started the site to help his fiancée, Pam Wesley, find more of the Pez dispensers she collected. "Nobody wants to hear about a thirty-year-old genius who wanted to create a perfect market," she reasoned, according to Adam Cohen's book The Perfect Store: Inside eBay. "They want to hear that he did it for his fiancée." The myth stuck, and soon became popular legend. The real story, according to Cohen, is that Omidyar decided to turn his part-time hobby into a full-fledged business after he posted a broken laser pointer for sale on a whim and saw it go for $14. (video)
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Business Model Innovation
“The key to sustained success is business model innovation.” Clay Christensen, Harvard Business School Johnson, Mark W.; Christensen, Clayton M.; Kagermann, Henning, "Reinventing Your Business Model," Harvard Business Review, Dec2008, Vol. 86 Issue 12, p50-59.
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(link)
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Johnson, Mark W. ; Christensen, Clayton M
Johnson, Mark W.; Christensen, Clayton M.; Kagermann, Henning, "Reinventing Your Business Model," Harvard Business Review, Dec2008, Vol. 86 Issue 12, p50-59.
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Hilti Case
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Dow Corning Embraces the Low End
Traditionally high-margin Dow Corning found new opportunities in low-margin offerings by setting up a separate business unit (brand) that operates in an entirely different way. By fundamentally differentiating its low-end and high-end offerings, the company avoided cannibalizing its traditional business even as it found new profits at the low end.
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What Rules, Norms, and Metrics Are Standing in Your Way?
Financial Gross margins Opportunity size Unit pricing Unit margin Time to breakeven Net present value calculations Fixed cost investment Credit items Basis for individuals’ rewards and incentives R&D Performance demands Product-development life cycles Operational Owned versus outsourced manufacturing End-product quality Supplier quality Lead times Throughput Marketing/Sales Brand parameters Channels Pricing Customer service In any business, a fundamental understanding of the core model often fades into the mists of institutional memory, but it lives on in rules, norms, and metrics put in place to protect the status quo (for example, “Gross margins must be at 40%”). They are the first line of defense against any new model’s taking root in an existing enterprise.
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Elevator Pitch Who is the target customer? What is the customer need?
What is the product name? What is its market category? What is its key benefit? Who or what is the competition? What is the product’s unique differentiator? Who is the target customer? What is the customer need? What is the product name? What is its market category? What is its key benefit? Who or what is the competition? What is the product’s unique differentiator?
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Create Possibilities Quickly with “Ad-Libs”
OBJECTIVE: Quickly shape potential value proposition directions OUTCOME: Alternative prototypes in the form of “pitchable” sentences
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Elevator Pitch Template
An elevator pitch can help communicate your vision clearly, quickly and easily to potential investors, employees, and across the organization. For: Target Customers/Users Who: Monetizable pain, Need, Opportunity or Problem The: Product/Service Name Is a: Product/service Category That: Key User Benefits Unlike: Competitors & Their Competing Product/Service We (our solution): Solution and Primary Differentiation Example: “For taxpayers who are getting audited, our new audit assistance program is a free online service that helps them understand and navigate the process. Unlike today’s audit process where commercial tax advisors are the only support, the audit assistance program is provided to all audited taxpayers to increase compliance and reduce resentment towards government.”
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Elevator Pitch Our business/product [name] will deliver [deliverables] to [target customers] to enable them to [benefits]. The business is headed by [list founder and key executives, investors, and advisors] that have [list key background and qualifications]. The business [will launch/was launched] on [date] and we [will begin/began] delivering [first product or service] on [date]. We expect to prove our business model and achieve profitable growth on [date] and anticipate that the terminal value of the business will be [list anticipated value], which represents a [list return] to investors. The total cost to achieve this goal will be [total cost], which includes the following key cost categories [list]. We have currently received [list dollars of funding secured to date] from the following sources [list]. We anticipate receiving the remainder of the funding by [date] from [list sources]. The key risks for the project are [list risks]. These risks will be managed by [list key approached to managing each risk]. Adapted from: Applegate and Saltrick, “Developing an Elevator Pitch for a New Venture.” Elevator Pitch Builder
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Elevator Pitch Examples
Free coffee cups Shark Tank Best Pitches: Grinds Coffee Pouches Best Pitches on Shark Tank: Pitch 1: Nasal Screens Pitch 4: Toygaroo Exercise: Find your (elevator) pitch elevator video and share it. Good and bad, and what you learn from its success and failure.
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Six Steps to Successful Elevator Pitch
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10 Things to Include in Your Startup Pitch Presentation
1. Cover Page: The cover page should have your logo, business name and a tagline. Your tagline should give insight into your company and be easy to remember, for example, “We are the Groupon for X." Remember to include your contact information — you would be surprised how many people forget it. Especially if your deck was forwarded, it should be easy for a person to track you down. 2. Summary: Summarize all of the information before you present it, and use this opportunity to get your audience interested in your company. Talk up the most interesting facts about your business, as well as any huge milestones you may have hit. 3. Team: Investors are not only putting money toward your idea, they’re investing in your team. It’s important they know the people who are going to make the concept successful. Make sure to include your background too, and how it relates to your new company. Highlight any of your team's successful exits. Investors like to see that you can take a company to acquisition. If applicable, emphasize that your team has worked together in the past or for a long period of time. It shows you can and like to work together. If you have any important advisors, list them, but make sure they know you’re using their name.
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4. Problem: You need to be able to explain the problem your concept is going to solve. Further, you need to prove why investors should care about solving it with your product or service. 5. Solution: This is the value proposition you are bringing to the table. It should solve the problem you just mentioned. If you have a demo of your product, this is the time to show it. Include any case studies to show that your product has worked for existing customers. 6. Marketing/Sales: You'll want to show the market size for your product. This can include profiles of target customers, but be prepared to answer questions about the cost of acquiring these customers. Not knowing this information is a red flag to investors. If you already have sales, you can discuss your growth and forecast future revenue. 7. Projections or Milestones: It is difficult to create financial projections for a startup. If you don’t have a long financial history, your forecast is really just an educated guess. Instead, you should present the milestones that you've already reached. For instance, include that you acquired 1,000 customers by X date, that you have a partnership with company Y, that you signed a major customer or that you will be cash flow positive by Q3.
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8. Competition: Every business has competition even if you think you're offering something new and unique. List your competition and why your product/service is different from their model. If your competitors have been acquired, list acquisition prices and who acquired them. 9. Business Model: Every investor wants to get his money back, so it's important to tell them how you plan on generating revenue. Show a list of the various revenue streams for your model and the timeline for each of them. How will you price your product and what does your competition charge? You should also discuss the lifetime value of your customer and how you will keep him engaged. 10. Financing: If you have already raised money, you will want to talk about how much, who invested and what you did with it. If you have not raised money yet, talk about what you have accomplished with minimal funding. If you have personally funded your startup, make it known. Investors like to see entrepreneurs who have invested their own money. If you’re pitching to raise capital, list how much you're looking to raise and how you intend to use the funds.
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Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur, Business Model Generation, Wiley, 2010.
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The Business Model Canvas
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Definition A business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value. A business model can best be described through 9 basic building blocks that show the logic of how a company intends to make money. The nine blocks cover the 4 main areas of a business: customers, offer, infrastructure, and financial viability. The business model is like a blueprint for a strategy to be implemented through organizational structures, processes, and systems.
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Building Blocks
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Building Blocks
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The Use of the Business Model Canvas
Describe Discuss Design Challenge Improve Innovate Invent Pivot Choose Your Business Model 2 minutes Alex Osterwalder - From Business Plan to Business Model Summer of Startups 2011. 1 hr long
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Describe a Business Model: 9 Building Blocks
Why How What Who Partner Network Customer Relationships CLIENT SEGMENTS CLIENT SEGMENTS CLIENT SEGMENTS CLIENT SEGMENTS CLIENT SEGMENTS Key Issues To Solve Offer CLIENT SEGMENTS CLIENTS Customer Segments CLIENT SEGMENTS CLIENT SEGMENTS CLIENT SEGMENTS Competencies, Activities, Resources Distribution Channels CLIENT SEGMENTS CLIENT SEGMENTS CLIENT SEGMENTS CLIENT SEGMENTS Cost Structure CLIENT SEGMENTS Revenue Streams CLIENT SEGMENTS CLIENT SEGMENTS CLIENT SEGMENTS How Much? Source: adapted from Describe and Improve your Business Model
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Efficiency vs. Value Offer Customer Value Infrastructure Efficiency
Financial Viability
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Reverse Engineering Facebook’s Business Model with Ballpark Figures
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Create a Business Model Canvas for RTR
Exercise Watch the video *Rent the Runway: An inside look at the tech startup's success Visit Create the Business Model Canvas based on what you learn from the video and the visit of the company’s site. Use the BMC template in the next slide.
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BMC Template What Key Activities do we require?
Manufacturing? Software? Supply chain? How will we Get, Keep and Grow Customers? Who are our Key Partners? Who are our key suppliers? What are we getting from them? Giving them? Which of our customer’s problems are we helping to solve? Which customer needs are we satisfying What are the Key Features of our product that match customers problem/need? Who are our most important customers? What are their archetypes? What Job do they want us to get done for them? What Key Resources we require? Financial, physical, IP, HR? Through which Channels do our Customer Segments want to be reached? What are the most important costs inherent in our business model? Fixed? Variable? How do we make money? What’s the revenue model? Pricing tactics?
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Customer Development and Pivoting
(Business Model)
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Make Business Model Canvas Actionable
No business plan survives its first contact with customers. -- Steve Blank Use BMC to generate ideas, de-risk guesses, and make sure they are solving the right problems for the right people. Business Model Canvas encapsulates and identifies a series of untested hypotheses/risks. Get out of the building and test the BMC. Revise your BMC based on reality check. Keep searching and creating a series of BMC versions until you find the find the right product/market fit.
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CS: Customer Segments
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How to Segment Customers
Customer groups represent separate segments if: Their needs require and justify a distinct offer They are reached through different Distribution Channels They require different types of relationships They have substantially different profitability They are willing to pay for different aspects of the offer.
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Market Types Mass market: consumer electronics sector??
Niche market: car part manufacturers Segmented: Wealth management, Industry type Multi-sided platforms (or multi-sided markets): Credit card company (consumers and vendors)
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Marketing Sizing: TAM, SAM, and SOM
TAM = Your Total Available or Addressable Market (everyone you wish to reach with your product) SAM = Your Segmented Addressable Market or Served Available Market (the portion of TAM you will target) SOM = Your Share of the Market (the subset of your SAM that you will realistically reach – particularly in the first few years of your business) or Target Market (TM) /Beachhead Market Zappos.com Case Study TAM, SAM and SOM – huh?? 2 Having viewed several business plans over the years, a common (and very important) item missing from most plans is a breakdown of the company’s TAM, SAM and SOM in the marketing section of their plan. Wondering what these acronyms mean? Well you’re not alone – many entrepreneurs are not familiar with these terms. Here’s a quick explanation of what they mean, followed by an example: TAM = Your Total Available or Addressable Market (everyone you wish to reach with your product) SAM = Your Segmented Addressable Market or Served Available Market (the portion of TAM you will target) SOM = Your Share of the Market (the subset of your SAM that you will realistically reach – particularly in the first few years of your business) Identifying your TAM, SAM and SOM requires some market research (levels of research vary depending on your product and market potential), but once you gather the research you’ll have a better of idea of the percentages that coincide with each area. Here’s an example: You’re starting a concierge service in your city that focuses on doing tasks/running errands for busy people, and people who need additional assistance (elderly, handicapped, etc.). Your TAM would be all busy people, elderly and handicapped people in your city. If your town has 150,000 people, you may find (through market research) that total possible demand for your business in your city is 15% (or 22,500 people). Note: If you have a competitor in your market, your TAM would be smaller since you will be sharing this market with another company. Your SAM would be the portion of that 22,500 whom your current business model is targeting (this will be outlined in your business plan). For example, your business model is being set-up to service 7500 people/year. This means your SAM would be 33% of your TAM (or 5% of your total city’s population). Your SOM would be the portion of your SAM that your business model can currently realistically serve. For example, you may only have 3 employees (yourself and two others), so realistically what percentage of SAM can you reach in the first two-to-three years? Let’s assume your company can effectively provide concierge services to 100 people/month or 1200 people/year. This means your SOM is about 16% of your SAM (or around 5% of your TAM, or a little under 1% of your total city’s population). If you’re seeking funding, savvy investors will ask you for these items in your business plan, and they’ll want you to be able to back-up your numbers. This is why conducting some market research up front is important – and even advisable before you begin writing your business plan. It gives you the validation of your market potential. Hopefully this clears up a bit of the market reach acronym soup! Read more: (SOM)
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Beachhead TAM
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OnDemand Korean determined that the accurate number of Koreans in the United States is about 2.5 million. Of this total, a sub-segment was in the correct age group that they were targeting, and of them only a smaller sub-segment was female and possibly fitting their target customer profile, bringing the potential market down to 1.2 million. They were also able to determine through some digging that the top three websites for Koreans where they watched this material today (Joonmedia, Bada, Dabdate) had 700K users in total. They figured that based on these numbers, there existed 400K end users in their beachhead market.
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Persona A persona is an archetype of an organization’s typical customer, and is defined primarily by a customer’s goals when interacting with the products. They are not real people, but are used to represent real users during the design process. Products generally have a “cast” of personas, ranging from 3 to 8, one of which is considered the primary persona. These are best presented as narratives. Providing a persona with real characteristics: Name Age Photo Candid quotes Personal information Work environment Computer proficiency Motivation for using the product Information-seeking habits Personal and professional goals Evokes a strong sense of empathy in the project team Eliminates the need to design for an abstract, elastic “user group” whose goals and needs are not fully understood Facilitates user-centered design – the focus is now on the goals of your typical customer rather than the project team Source: The ABCs of Personas: Design for People, Design for Success and (link)
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Design Thinking with Personas
Do Feel Personas are more then just demographic information, a persona needs to capture the person’s behaviour, belief and philosophy, and more importantly their motivation or intentions. Empathy Look, listen and try it out with our persona Insight Opportunities New business ideas Prototype (source: link)
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VP: Value Proposition
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Create Value Observe Customer
Create Value: The set of value proposition benefits that you design to attract customers. Observe Customers: The set of customer characteristics that you assume, observe, and verify in the market. VALUE PROPOSITION: Describes the benefits customers can expect from your products and services. Osterwalder, Alexander; Pigneur, Yves; Bernarda, Gregory; Smith, Alan ( ). Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want (Strategyzer) (Kindle Locations ). Wiley. Kindle Edition.
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Value Proposition Canvas
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Job To Be Done People don’t want quarter-inch of drills. They want quarter-inch of holes.
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Customer Jobs Job Contexts
Customer Jobs describe the things your customers are trying to get done in their work or in their life. A customer job could be the tasks they are trying to perform and complete, the problems they are trying to solve, or the needs they are trying to satisfy. Make sure you take the customer’s perspective when investigating jobs. Job Contexts 3 Main Job Types: Functional jobs Social Jobs Personal/ emotional jobs Supporting jobs Customers also perform supporting jobs in the context of purchasing and consuming value either as consumers or as professionals. Buyers of Value Co-Creator of Value Transferor of Value Job Importance
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Customer Pains Customer Pains describe anything that annoys your customers before, during, and after trying to get a job done or simply prevents them from getting a job done. Pains also describe risks, that is, potential bad outcomes, related to getting a job done badly or not at all. Seek to identify three types of customer pains and how severe customers find them: Undesired outcomes, problems, and characteristics Obstacles Risks (undesired potential outcomes) Pain Severity To clearly differentiate jobs, pains, and gains, describe them as concretely as possible.
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Value Proposition New Effective Customized All-in-one Better Design
Brand/Positioning Price Lower cost Lower risk Accessible Convenience Easy to use
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Customer Value Creation
Newness Performance Customization: customer co-creation “Getting the job done”: All-in-one Design (better design) Brand/Status Price Cost reduction Risk reduction: service guarantee Accessibility Convenience/usability (link)
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Push vs. Pull Start from an invention, innovation, or (technological) resource for which you develop a value proposition that addresses a customer job, pain, and gain. In simple terms, this is a solution in search of a problem. Technology Push Market Pull Start from a manifest customer job, pain, or gain for which you design a value proposition. In simple terms, this is a problem in search of a solution.
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Facilitate Customer’s Procurement Process
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Chanel Classifcation
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Customer Relationship Types
Personal assistance Dedicated personal assistance Self-service Automated service Communities Co-creation
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Revenue Streams Asset (product) sale: Transaction Usage fee
Subscription fees Lending/Renting/Leasing Licensing Brokerage fees Advertising Two different types of Revenue Streams: Transaction revenues resulting from one-time customer payments Recurring revenues resulting from ongoing payments to either deliver a Value Proposition to customers or provide post-purchase customer support Pricing mechanism: fixed and dynamic pricing.
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xxxxxx
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Free? 是做慈善?還是賠錢賺吆喝? Free pajamas still make money 羊毛出在狗身上,让猪来埋单
(新快报记者 黄雪萍)互联网浪潮的席卷,把网络塑造成为了“掘金地”,于是应运而生了诸多的造富神话。最近,一则名为“羊毛出在狗身上,让猪来埋单”的微信,在朋友圈里广为流传:尤其是在各种打着网络营销、新商业模式、创富等名头的公众号推转之下,“4个人+免费送衣=7000万元利润”的商业模式更是被不少人奉为“互联网思维”的典范。 说到这,你动心了吗?说实话,编辑部里的各位同仁早已躁动不安了千百遍,只是在递交辞职报告之前,我们决定还是先抽点时间研究下这“羊、狗、猪”之间的逻辑。开始这个话题之前,我们不妨来看下几个小故事。 有几个大学生毕业后,花了6个月时间做了一个电子秤。与一般的秤比较,这种电子秤比较高级,能够测出你身体里水分含多少、肌肉多少、脂肪多少。为了能让自己的女性顾客更好地测出身体指标,他们接着开发了一个APP,可以记录自己的饮食和每日的身体变化,由于APP带有社交属性,因此他聚集了一帮女性粉丝并带动了秤的销售。慢慢地,许多卖营养品的厂家和减肥用品开始找他们投广告,由于有了这部份收入,他可以把秤的售价做得更低,最终在淘宝上没人能和他PK了。 国内杀毒软件金山毒霸,产品刚出来的时候,做杀毒软件其实并不怎么赚钱,况且还受到市场上卡巴斯基、瑞星的竞争。后来由于市场竞争的缘故,金山毒霸宣布免费供用户使用,才发现从旁边赚钱比在传统杀毒市场赚得更多,免费之后带来的收入比收费杀毒软件整整上涨了4倍。而通过提供免费的服务抢占用户桌面后,其盈利方向多了更多可能性。 于是,很多人总结,互联网就是通过用户的规模经济来解决商业模式的问题。那如何把用户规模做起来呢?最有效的方法就是让用户占便宜,比如新奇但代价低廉甚至是免费的产品与体验,一旦有了粉丝,钱也就在不远处了。 这段“羊、狗、猪”的故事,也是由免费而起:一件售价188元的睡衣,通过免费方式派送,客户只需要付出23元的快递费和帮助在网络上口碑宣传。这个模式其实并不复杂,赚钱的根基在于要聚集1000万的用户,巨额的订单量压缩了睡衣成本、物流费用和传统商业中所需要的中介费用,令每份23元快递费中可以剩余7元的利润,而操作这一切只需要一个4人团队。 简单吧?嗯。 利润高吧?嗯。 可行吗? 一件免费睡衣+23元快递费=7000万元利润?不太靠谱 “羊毛出在狗身上,猪来埋单”,这是营销专家们口中的一句名言:在互联网上,你总是能听到各类与财富有关的事迹,而这一次是关于4个营销奇才通过免费送睡衣赚了7000万元的发财故事,成为“羊、狗、猪”逻辑的代表作在微信朋友圈里广为流传。 看如何让羊毛出在狗身上,由猪来埋单 “中国市场上出现过一个品牌叫梦露,它只做一个女式睡衣产品,销售价格为188元一件,只有两种款式,吊带的和齐肩的,也只有两种颜色,橙色和紫色。他们用了一个不一样的销售方式——送。怎么送呢?免费。如果你穿了感觉很好,就请你帮做口碑宣传。 如果这件睡衣送给你,你会要吗?当然会。 但是他提了另外一个要求,我们送给你是可以的,快递费你出可以吗?快递费是每件23元,支持货到付款和退货。消费者是零风险,也就意味着你花23元快递费可以拿到一件价值188元的睡衣,你愿意吗?也许第一次看到你可能不会动心,但是如果你发现同一时段竟然有157家网站都在为它打广告,您会不会点开看一看?相信至少有80%的人都会订上一件。 那么送多少呢?第一阶段就送1000万件,计算一下,188元一件,1000万件,等于多少钱?18.8亿元,这家公司愿意拿18.8亿元砸一个市场,这样的公司应该没有,或者很少,到底它想做什么? 于是,你好奇了,和很多人一样会留下名字、电话、手机、地址,快递真的送到你家了,你打开信封一看,这个睡衣质量不错。那你要不要付这23元快递费?” 故事说到这,高潮要来了,它怎么赚钱? 可以算一笔账,1000万件睡衣免费送,首先需要解决货源问题。做生意的人都知道,中国义乌小商品批发市场世界闻名,在那有很多小型的服装加工厂,所以制作起来,成本可以很低。 而且有1000万件,那么你给别人做10元,给我做8元可不可以。注意,是夏天的女式睡衣,第一,款式简单,第二,省布料。 为什么8元成本的睡衣在商场里面可以卖到188元?今天如果买双鞋子,市面成本是50元,可是到商场里面不是名牌的卖300元,是名牌的卖500元。请问50元到300元中间的钱去哪儿了?没错,商场收了27%到33%,营业员分了12%。梦露睡衣生产成本只有8元,但是到消费者手中没有任何商场环节,所以8元的睡衣拿到商场里卖188元。 这样消费者真正得到了实惠,开心不开心? 接下来就是快递的问题了,平时快递一样最小的东西,至少需要10元,但如果我一年有1000万件快递要在你的公司运送,可不可以便宜?最后敲定5元,因为夏天的女式睡衣一个信封就可以装下。 下面就剩下广告了,本来网上做这种免费送东西的广告是不需要花钱的,因为网站要的是浏览量。不信你试试看,如果产品免费送,我保证N多网站帮你送东西。但是,为了让我的睡衣送得更疯狂,只要在你家的网站上送出去一件,我就给你3元的提成,你是不是会把广告打得更疯狂?于是,所有的网站都帮着打广告。 好,再算一笔账: 23元-8元-3元-5元=?7元。就是说,他们实际上送一件睡衣只付出了16元的成本,但是,消费者却付了23元,只要送一件睡衣就赚了7元,中国有13亿人口,一年免费送1000万件可不可以送出去?答案是,当然可以。最后,他们送睡衣一年就赚了7000万元。 各位,这家公司有多少人呢?这家公司从总裁、设计总监、销售总监到会计,全公司加在一起4个人。4个人分这7000万元是不是怎么都有得赚,最关键的是他们什么都没做。这就是商业模式的厉害之处。” 免费的“梦露”有很多 故事结束了,你看懂了吗?而凭借帖子最后这句“这就是商业模式的厉害之处”,其在微信朋友圈里也自然如病毒般传播,引发众人顶礼膜拜。但它真的有这么神奇?它真的可以复制吗? 为了寻根溯源,新快报记者在网络上百度,确实可以找到名为“梦露”的女士内衣品牌,但致电联系后被告知此“梦露”并非彼“梦露”。而经过挖掘,记者也发现,这则帖子早在几年前已经以各种面目出现在网络中,如今被重新贴上“互联网思维”标签重出江湖并再度引发热议。寻找“梦露”真身以正其真伪遇到困难,那么“羊、狗、猪”之间的逻辑又是否行得通呢? “这个模式并不稀奇,甚至不新鲜,它在互联网时代和移动互联网时代的营销中屡有出现。”深圳营销协会副会长马庆军告诉新快报记者,许多人在淘宝购物时,经常能发现有9.9元包邮的商品,很多商品的利润空间其实比我们想象中的要大,其营销团队也做过护手霜、手机壳这样的小件商品包邮送的活动。 “以护手霜为例,它的生产成本包括塑料外壳、原材料的包装,成本整合起来仅仅在1元多,每天我可以做3万单,(如果是9.9元包邮)那我也是有利润空间的。”马庆军介绍说,而且快递成本还会低于5元。而对移动互联网营销颇有心得的上海乘亿信息科技执行董事张劲松告诉记者,比起PC端,送东西赚运费在移动互联网端的应用更加火热。“最典型的还不是睡衣,是面膜,名义上免费赚快递费的方式,已经用得很多了。这个模式来说我认为还是可行的,在微信销售方面,尤其是在化妆品方面,已经非常多了。” “梦露”们的确不少,但这盘生意真能赚得盆满钵满吗? 1、快递费 每天300个以上包裹就能实现每单5元 正如马庆军所言,记者搜索淘宝网上也发现了不少类似“梦露”的产品。记者致电国内某快递公司在广州市荔湾区的一个网点,对方表示,如果是做电商,每天能发到300个以上的包裹,在国内范围内发送的价格可以实现每单5元,而如果快递数量是千万级别的话,价格还有进一步的商量空间。可见,快递费用不是问题。 2、睡衣成本 8元纯棉睡衣网上批发一大把 故事中还提到了睡衣的成本问题,8元左右成本的睡衣能达到一个怎样的质量?记者登录阿里巴巴线上批发市场,可以发现8元左右的睡衣不少,而且也宣称是纯棉。这种千万数量级别的采购在整个睡衣产业里已经有了不小的议价权,而且可以略去实体批发市场拿货这一过程,直接到睡衣的上游链与面料厂商直接谈判,然后选择面料加工,这一些列中间省去的成本也非常的可观。 “从理论上说,8元是没问题的,除了量大之外,还有一个模式就是帮助加工厂清库存,随便贴一个牌子,议价空间可以更低。我觉得,可能这个品牌本身就是做睡衣加工或者有这方面资源的,以一个低价一次性买断。”从事服装采购的黄女士对新快报记者解释。 3、消费者埋单 网络推广转化成实际购买率极低 经过上面的拆解,似乎“羊、狗、猪”故事的逻辑很容易成立,但4个人净赚7000万元的生意真如此简单吗? 事实上,如果要卖1000万件睡衣,至少要让足够的人知道这件事,这就需要在互联网上你可以得到足够的流量,让人发现你。 张劲松告诉记者,做电商,如果能把打开销售页面的人转化为实际购买的人群的比例做到10%就已经很了不起了,1000万件的销量,就意味着至少要1亿的流量,而这个流量已经是相当的高了。新快报记者发现,淘宝网近一周日均IP流量3100多万而已。而马庆军也对1000万件的订单表示了质疑,“按照40%的城镇化率来算,2.5亿的女性人口中抛开老年和小孩,大概只有1.25亿人,这部分人中接受网购,又穿睡衣且接受这个价格档次的人,根本达不到这个数量。” 事实上,在目前已有的案例中,销量能冲到一两百万已是非常的可观。“完全没有品牌很难做,大家都要口碑的,你送大牌很多人都会要的,但是小牌子,大家不知道你这里面有什么花样,不一定会去拿这个东西。我们做过面膜的大额销售记录是100多万件,而且还是品牌面膜。”张劲松坦言。 4、营销成本 微博转发推广成本更低 网络推广费用现在水涨船高,网站一条广告帖的发布价格从数千到数万元不等,而涉及打包投放、利润分成等问题,测量一个平均数值确实不容易。不过,正如帖中所言,“因为网站要的是浏览量。不信你试试看,如果产品免费送,我保证N多网站帮你送东西”。相比数年前,现在通过微博、微信等移动社交平台进行转发营销的成本更低。比如,在微博上邀请大V转发广告微博,价格从20元到数万元不等。“几十元的一般都是僵尸粉,但价格在 元的一般都会有一定认证了,还可以尝试。此外还可以使用微博的一些推广方式,如推荐粉丝头条之类,一次最低只需要四五元。”经营美发用品网店的何小姐告诉记者。此外,除了转发广告之外,通过微信用户推广还可以选择利润分成,一般转发后形成购买可按单价的1%-10%分成。按帖子里提到的23元快递费可分成2-3元,也属于合理范畴。 5、4个人的团队 可能连退换货工作都无法支撑 在“羊、狗、猪”的逻辑中,不仅仅是订单数量无法实现,仅仅用4人来处理订单在各位电商资深人士眼中也被定义为“太天真”。马庆军对记者介绍,根据统计,在淘宝的聚划算活动中,有70%的买家都是事先不咨询直接下单购买,另外30%的人会去咨询“小二”。正常来说,一个客服每天能接受70-100人的咨询都已经是很厉害的了,而4个人显然应付不了买家的咨询事宜。 除了应付不了买家的咨询,和渠道商的结算,统计流量转换也是一个问题。最需要人力的过程是打包发货,即便是交给工厂去打包发货,也要每天给工厂发订单,每天的账务报表要核对,工厂发货也要核对,发货单号、快递公司均要记录。“发货成功后,买家签收后,如果看到不满意的话,还存在一个退换货的过程,而对于女性买家而言,起码有5%的一个退换货率,那你没有人力来支持这个情况。”马庆军说,广东本土的电商品牌七格格、裂帛女装退换货率能达到8%-10% ,知名品牌都是这样,小的品牌更面临这个问题。“我们一般要做活动都是9.9元包邮,19.9元包邮,一般超过20元的包邮,买家都会比较警惕了,因为现在的买家很清楚,你这就是赚快递费。” 免费送,还能玩多久? 免费送东西的实质其实是让消费者在看得见的地方免费,然后在消费者不敏感的成本环节赚钱。互联网这样一个天然的具有开放、免费的属性平台更使得商家的免费营销做得如鱼得水。 意不在商品盈利 以聚划算为例,作为淘宝在2010年9月推出的主要团购平台,其每隔一小时就会更新一次特卖商品,在这部分商品中,绝大多数是打着0.1元、9.9元包邮的标题,这个活动吸引了许多中小卖家,他们并不是抱着赔本赚吆喝的心态来参与这一活动。据一项调查显示,提高店铺曝光率、品牌推广、获取新客户是他们进行“免费赠送”活动最主要的原因。 马庆军告诉记者,从2010年开始,淘宝改变信用积累规则,参加活动所产生的交易量不算入信用记录里,也就是说即使成交10000笔交易,也不会换来一个皇冠店铺。而在以前,利用免费送东西提高店铺的交易量也是部分商家参与免费送的原因,在二手交易市场上,一个皇冠店铺的开价高达15万元。 如果说以前公司还能用“免费”的噱头来吸引用户,现今的消费者已经未必会对“免费”埋单,因为在注意力有限的时代,使用分享已经是一种稀缺资源。于是,便出现了公司追着用户送东西的活动。自媒体人罗振宇在去年推出会员制聚集10万会员后,乐视电视就曾追着他要求提供福利10台超级电视,总价约7万元。罗振宇表示“没有互联网精神的企业,根本看不懂我们在玩什么”,而这一切的前提便是逻辑思维微信公众号所拥有75万粉丝和微博的30万粉丝。“线下一次类似营销的公关活动至少需要20万元的推广费用。”一位营销界人士表示,而这个营销活动也是“羊毛出在猪身上,让狗埋单”的最好注解。 未来是小众化消费 免费送东西这种模式还有一个优点,如果你的产品是重复消费类产品,比如化妆品的小样,用户如果用得好,还会有再次消费的机会。不过如果指望免费送东西赚邮费这种模式能够长期持续或者赚大的一笔,则需要做落地的多方思考。 在欧洲,曾有一家风靡一时的小型网络商店,叫做“黑袜子”。它只靠卖一种型号的黑色袜子为生,花了10年时间卖出了1000万双。而支撑“黑袜子网站”成功的,是把袜子“定期送到家”的服务模式 ,只要买家提前支付预定一年所需的袜子钱,就能在每个月都定时收到袜子,对某些男士而言,这意味着再也不用担心去超市面临各色袜子的选择困难。这个成功的创业故事和我们的案例有相似之处,首先是卖的东西少,只卖睡衣,并且只有2种款式2个颜色。不过这两家公司的因为用户对象不同,袜子主要是以男性用户为主,而睡衣则只卖给女性,男性对袜子的需求是款式简单、方便、选择越少越好。而女性对睡衣的各式要求则我们的这个报道也无法完全概括。 一个不可忽略的趋势是在未来任何一个产品都不能满足所有人的要求。“现在越来越多的消费者会注重产品的差异化,希望跟别人不一样,我们已经进入了一个小众化的消费时代,不像以前是一个大众化的消费时代,大家一窝蜂都跟着买,买家有从众心理,但是已经没有以前那么严重。”马庆军说。不仅是小众化消费会不可逆地前进,免费送东西的成本与产品品质的问题仍是核心,不压缩成本就没法盈利,而成本的过度压缩会影响产品的体验和品质。“如果东西不好,没有人会愿意再接受一次,免费送东西不是商业模式,只是营销概念,可持续发展的经营才是商业模式。” 总结 1.利益相关者:梦露公司、OEM厂家、快递公司、网站、消费者 2.交易结构:未伤害到任何一方利益,所有利益相关者均享利益增值。
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Free Nest? 羊毛出在狗身上,让猪来埋单
1. 豬=電力公司:吸收了設備費用,但是獲得了使用者數據以及簽約用戶。 2. 羊=用戶:與以往一樣,每個月付電費,但免費得到超潮的智慧溫控。 3. 狗= Nest:不必特別教育「節能」的重要,不必宣傳產品有多好,直接以免費做為號召,賣出無數台智慧溫控。 (e.g., S. Cal Edison, you could earn up to $60 a year.) (新快报记者 黄雪萍)互联网浪潮的席卷,把网络塑造成为了“掘金地”,于是应运而生了诸多的造富神话。最近,一则名为“羊毛出在狗身上,让猪来埋单”的微信,在朋友圈里广为流传:尤其是在各种打着网络营销、新商业模式、创富等名头的公众号推转之下,“4个人+免费送衣=7000万元利润”的商业模式更是被不少人奉为“互联网思维”的典范。 说到这,你动心了吗?说实话,编辑部里的各位同仁早已躁动不安了千百遍,只是在递交辞职报告之前,我们决定还是先抽点时间研究下这“羊、狗、猪”之间的逻辑。开始这个话题之前,我们不妨来看下几个小故事。 有几个大学生毕业后,花了6个月时间做了一个电子秤。与一般的秤比较,这种电子秤比较高级,能够测出你身体里水分含多少、肌肉多少、脂肪多少。为了能让自己的女性顾客更好地测出身体指标,他们接着开发了一个APP,可以记录自己的饮食和每日的身体变化,由于APP带有社交属性,因此他聚集了一帮女性粉丝并带动了秤的销售。慢慢地,许多卖营养品的厂家和减肥用品开始找他们投广告,由于有了这部份收入,他可以把秤的售价做得更低,最终在淘宝上没人能和他PK了。 国内杀毒软件金山毒霸,产品刚出来的时候,做杀毒软件其实并不怎么赚钱,况且还受到市场上卡巴斯基、瑞星的竞争。后来由于市场竞争的缘故,金山毒霸宣布免费供用户使用,才发现从旁边赚钱比在传统杀毒市场赚得更多,免费之后带来的收入比收费杀毒软件整整上涨了4倍。而通过提供免费的服务抢占用户桌面后,其盈利方向多了更多可能性。 于是,很多人总结,互联网就是通过用户的规模经济来解决商业模式的问题。那如何把用户规模做起来呢?最有效的方法就是让用户占便宜,比如新奇但代价低廉甚至是免费的产品与体验,一旦有了粉丝,钱也就在不远处了。 这段“羊、狗、猪”的故事,也是由免费而起:一件售价188元的睡衣,通过免费方式派送,客户只需要付出23元的快递费和帮助在网络上口碑宣传。这个模式其实并不复杂,赚钱的根基在于要聚集1000万的用户,巨额的订单量压缩了睡衣成本、物流费用和传统商业中所需要的中介费用,令每份23元快递费中可以剩余7元的利润,而操作这一切只需要一个4人团队。 简单吧?嗯。 利润高吧?嗯。 可行吗? 一件免费睡衣+23元快递费=7000万元利润?不太靠谱 “羊毛出在狗身上,猪来埋单”,这是营销专家们口中的一句名言:在互联网上,你总是能听到各类与财富有关的事迹,而这一次是关于4个营销奇才通过免费送睡衣赚了7000万元的发财故事,成为“羊、狗、猪”逻辑的代表作在微信朋友圈里广为流传。 看如何让羊毛出在狗身上,由猪来埋单 “中国市场上出现过一个品牌叫梦露,它只做一个女式睡衣产品,销售价格为188元一件,只有两种款式,吊带的和齐肩的,也只有两种颜色,橙色和紫色。他们用了一个不一样的销售方式——送。怎么送呢?免费。如果你穿了感觉很好,就请你帮做口碑宣传。 如果这件睡衣送给你,你会要吗?当然会。 但是他提了另外一个要求,我们送给你是可以的,快递费你出可以吗?快递费是每件23元,支持货到付款和退货。消费者是零风险,也就意味着你花23元快递费可以拿到一件价值188元的睡衣,你愿意吗?也许第一次看到你可能不会动心,但是如果你发现同一时段竟然有157家网站都在为它打广告,您会不会点开看一看?相信至少有80%的人都会订上一件。 那么送多少呢?第一阶段就送1000万件,计算一下,188元一件,1000万件,等于多少钱?18.8亿元,这家公司愿意拿18.8亿元砸一个市场,这样的公司应该没有,或者很少,到底它想做什么? 于是,你好奇了,和很多人一样会留下名字、电话、手机、地址,快递真的送到你家了,你打开信封一看,这个睡衣质量不错。那你要不要付这23元快递费?” 故事说到这,高潮要来了,它怎么赚钱? 可以算一笔账,1000万件睡衣免费送,首先需要解决货源问题。做生意的人都知道,中国义乌小商品批发市场世界闻名,在那有很多小型的服装加工厂,所以制作起来,成本可以很低。 而且有1000万件,那么你给别人做10元,给我做8元可不可以。注意,是夏天的女式睡衣,第一,款式简单,第二,省布料。 为什么8元成本的睡衣在商场里面可以卖到188元?今天如果买双鞋子,市面成本是50元,可是到商场里面不是名牌的卖300元,是名牌的卖500元。请问50元到300元中间的钱去哪儿了?没错,商场收了27%到33%,营业员分了12%。梦露睡衣生产成本只有8元,但是到消费者手中没有任何商场环节,所以8元的睡衣拿到商场里卖188元。 这样消费者真正得到了实惠,开心不开心? 接下来就是快递的问题了,平时快递一样最小的东西,至少需要10元,但如果我一年有1000万件快递要在你的公司运送,可不可以便宜?最后敲定5元,因为夏天的女式睡衣一个信封就可以装下。 下面就剩下广告了,本来网上做这种免费送东西的广告是不需要花钱的,因为网站要的是浏览量。不信你试试看,如果产品免费送,我保证N多网站帮你送东西。但是,为了让我的睡衣送得更疯狂,只要在你家的网站上送出去一件,我就给你3元的提成,你是不是会把广告打得更疯狂?于是,所有的网站都帮着打广告。 好,再算一笔账: 23元-8元-3元-5元=?7元。就是说,他们实际上送一件睡衣只付出了16元的成本,但是,消费者却付了23元,只要送一件睡衣就赚了7元,中国有13亿人口,一年免费送1000万件可不可以送出去?答案是,当然可以。最后,他们送睡衣一年就赚了7000万元。 各位,这家公司有多少人呢?这家公司从总裁、设计总监、销售总监到会计,全公司加在一起4个人。4个人分这7000万元是不是怎么都有得赚,最关键的是他们什么都没做。这就是商业模式的厉害之处。” 免费的“梦露”有很多 故事结束了,你看懂了吗?而凭借帖子最后这句“这就是商业模式的厉害之处”,其在微信朋友圈里也自然如病毒般传播,引发众人顶礼膜拜。但它真的有这么神奇?它真的可以复制吗? 为了寻根溯源,新快报记者在网络上百度,确实可以找到名为“梦露”的女士内衣品牌,但致电联系后被告知此“梦露”并非彼“梦露”。而经过挖掘,记者也发现,这则帖子早在几年前已经以各种面目出现在网络中,如今被重新贴上“互联网思维”标签重出江湖并再度引发热议。寻找“梦露”真身以正其真伪遇到困难,那么“羊、狗、猪”之间的逻辑又是否行得通呢? “这个模式并不稀奇,甚至不新鲜,它在互联网时代和移动互联网时代的营销中屡有出现。”深圳营销协会副会长马庆军告诉新快报记者,许多人在淘宝购物时,经常能发现有9.9元包邮的商品,很多商品的利润空间其实比我们想象中的要大,其营销团队也做过护手霜、手机壳这样的小件商品包邮送的活动。 “以护手霜为例,它的生产成本包括塑料外壳、原材料的包装,成本整合起来仅仅在1元多,每天我可以做3万单,(如果是9.9元包邮)那我也是有利润空间的。”马庆军介绍说,而且快递成本还会低于5元。而对移动互联网营销颇有心得的上海乘亿信息科技执行董事张劲松告诉记者,比起PC端,送东西赚运费在移动互联网端的应用更加火热。“最典型的还不是睡衣,是面膜,名义上免费赚快递费的方式,已经用得很多了。这个模式来说我认为还是可行的,在微信销售方面,尤其是在化妆品方面,已经非常多了。” “梦露”们的确不少,但这盘生意真能赚得盆满钵满吗? 1、快递费 每天300个以上包裹就能实现每单5元 正如马庆军所言,记者搜索淘宝网上也发现了不少类似“梦露”的产品。记者致电国内某快递公司在广州市荔湾区的一个网点,对方表示,如果是做电商,每天能发到300个以上的包裹,在国内范围内发送的价格可以实现每单5元,而如果快递数量是千万级别的话,价格还有进一步的商量空间。可见,快递费用不是问题。 2、睡衣成本 8元纯棉睡衣网上批发一大把 故事中还提到了睡衣的成本问题,8元左右成本的睡衣能达到一个怎样的质量?记者登录阿里巴巴线上批发市场,可以发现8元左右的睡衣不少,而且也宣称是纯棉。这种千万数量级别的采购在整个睡衣产业里已经有了不小的议价权,而且可以略去实体批发市场拿货这一过程,直接到睡衣的上游链与面料厂商直接谈判,然后选择面料加工,这一些列中间省去的成本也非常的可观。 “从理论上说,8元是没问题的,除了量大之外,还有一个模式就是帮助加工厂清库存,随便贴一个牌子,议价空间可以更低。我觉得,可能这个品牌本身就是做睡衣加工或者有这方面资源的,以一个低价一次性买断。”从事服装采购的黄女士对新快报记者解释。 3、消费者埋单 网络推广转化成实际购买率极低 经过上面的拆解,似乎“羊、狗、猪”故事的逻辑很容易成立,但4个人净赚7000万元的生意真如此简单吗? 事实上,如果要卖1000万件睡衣,至少要让足够的人知道这件事,这就需要在互联网上你可以得到足够的流量,让人发现你。 张劲松告诉记者,做电商,如果能把打开销售页面的人转化为实际购买的人群的比例做到10%就已经很了不起了,1000万件的销量,就意味着至少要1亿的流量,而这个流量已经是相当的高了。新快报记者发现,淘宝网近一周日均IP流量3100多万而已。而马庆军也对1000万件的订单表示了质疑,“按照40%的城镇化率来算,2.5亿的女性人口中抛开老年和小孩,大概只有1.25亿人,这部分人中接受网购,又穿睡衣且接受这个价格档次的人,根本达不到这个数量。” 事实上,在目前已有的案例中,销量能冲到一两百万已是非常的可观。“完全没有品牌很难做,大家都要口碑的,你送大牌很多人都会要的,但是小牌子,大家不知道你这里面有什么花样,不一定会去拿这个东西。我们做过面膜的大额销售记录是100多万件,而且还是品牌面膜。”张劲松坦言。 4、营销成本 微博转发推广成本更低 网络推广费用现在水涨船高,网站一条广告帖的发布价格从数千到数万元不等,而涉及打包投放、利润分成等问题,测量一个平均数值确实不容易。不过,正如帖中所言,“因为网站要的是浏览量。不信你试试看,如果产品免费送,我保证N多网站帮你送东西”。相比数年前,现在通过微博、微信等移动社交平台进行转发营销的成本更低。比如,在微博上邀请大V转发广告微博,价格从20元到数万元不等。“几十元的一般都是僵尸粉,但价格在 元的一般都会有一定认证了,还可以尝试。此外还可以使用微博的一些推广方式,如推荐粉丝头条之类,一次最低只需要四五元。”经营美发用品网店的何小姐告诉记者。此外,除了转发广告之外,通过微信用户推广还可以选择利润分成,一般转发后形成购买可按单价的1%-10%分成。按帖子里提到的23元快递费可分成2-3元,也属于合理范畴。 5、4个人的团队 可能连退换货工作都无法支撑 在“羊、狗、猪”的逻辑中,不仅仅是订单数量无法实现,仅仅用4人来处理订单在各位电商资深人士眼中也被定义为“太天真”。马庆军对记者介绍,根据统计,在淘宝的聚划算活动中,有70%的买家都是事先不咨询直接下单购买,另外30%的人会去咨询“小二”。正常来说,一个客服每天能接受70-100人的咨询都已经是很厉害的了,而4个人显然应付不了买家的咨询事宜。 除了应付不了买家的咨询,和渠道商的结算,统计流量转换也是一个问题。最需要人力的过程是打包发货,即便是交给工厂去打包发货,也要每天给工厂发订单,每天的账务报表要核对,工厂发货也要核对,发货单号、快递公司均要记录。“发货成功后,买家签收后,如果看到不满意的话,还存在一个退换货的过程,而对于女性买家而言,起码有5%的一个退换货率,那你没有人力来支持这个情况。”马庆军说,广东本土的电商品牌七格格、裂帛女装退换货率能达到8%-10% ,知名品牌都是这样,小的品牌更面临这个问题。“我们一般要做活动都是9.9元包邮,19.9元包邮,一般超过20元的包邮,买家都会比较警惕了,因为现在的买家很清楚,你这就是赚快递费。” 免费送,还能玩多久? 免费送东西的实质其实是让消费者在看得见的地方免费,然后在消费者不敏感的成本环节赚钱。互联网这样一个天然的具有开放、免费的属性平台更使得商家的免费营销做得如鱼得水。 意不在商品盈利 以聚划算为例,作为淘宝在2010年9月推出的主要团购平台,其每隔一小时就会更新一次特卖商品,在这部分商品中,绝大多数是打着0.1元、9.9元包邮的标题,这个活动吸引了许多中小卖家,他们并不是抱着赔本赚吆喝的心态来参与这一活动。据一项调查显示,提高店铺曝光率、品牌推广、获取新客户是他们进行“免费赠送”活动最主要的原因。 马庆军告诉记者,从2010年开始,淘宝改变信用积累规则,参加活动所产生的交易量不算入信用记录里,也就是说即使成交10000笔交易,也不会换来一个皇冠店铺。而在以前,利用免费送东西提高店铺的交易量也是部分商家参与免费送的原因,在二手交易市场上,一个皇冠店铺的开价高达15万元。 如果说以前公司还能用“免费”的噱头来吸引用户,现今的消费者已经未必会对“免费”埋单,因为在注意力有限的时代,使用分享已经是一种稀缺资源。于是,便出现了公司追着用户送东西的活动。自媒体人罗振宇在去年推出会员制聚集10万会员后,乐视电视就曾追着他要求提供福利10台超级电视,总价约7万元。罗振宇表示“没有互联网精神的企业,根本看不懂我们在玩什么”,而这一切的前提便是逻辑思维微信公众号所拥有75万粉丝和微博的30万粉丝。“线下一次类似营销的公关活动至少需要20万元的推广费用。”一位营销界人士表示,而这个营销活动也是“羊毛出在猪身上,让狗埋单”的最好注解。 未来是小众化消费 免费送东西这种模式还有一个优点,如果你的产品是重复消费类产品,比如化妆品的小样,用户如果用得好,还会有再次消费的机会。不过如果指望免费送东西赚邮费这种模式能够长期持续或者赚大的一笔,则需要做落地的多方思考。 在欧洲,曾有一家风靡一时的小型网络商店,叫做“黑袜子”。它只靠卖一种型号的黑色袜子为生,花了10年时间卖出了1000万双。而支撑“黑袜子网站”成功的,是把袜子“定期送到家”的服务模式 ,只要买家提前支付预定一年所需的袜子钱,就能在每个月都定时收到袜子,对某些男士而言,这意味着再也不用担心去超市面临各色袜子的选择困难。这个成功的创业故事和我们的案例有相似之处,首先是卖的东西少,只卖睡衣,并且只有2种款式2个颜色。不过这两家公司的因为用户对象不同,袜子主要是以男性用户为主,而睡衣则只卖给女性,男性对袜子的需求是款式简单、方便、选择越少越好。而女性对睡衣的各式要求则我们的这个报道也无法完全概括。 一个不可忽略的趋势是在未来任何一个产品都不能满足所有人的要求。“现在越来越多的消费者会注重产品的差异化,希望跟别人不一样,我们已经进入了一个小众化的消费时代,不像以前是一个大众化的消费时代,大家一窝蜂都跟着买,买家有从众心理,但是已经没有以前那么严重。”马庆军说。不仅是小众化消费会不可逆地前进,免费送东西的成本与产品品质的问题仍是核心,不压缩成本就没法盈利,而成本的过度压缩会影响产品的体验和品质。“如果东西不好,没有人会愿意再接受一次,免费送东西不是商业模式,只是营销概念,可持续发展的经营才是商业模式。” 总结 1.利益相关者:梦露公司、OEM厂家、快递公司、网站、消费者 2.交易结构:未伤害到任何一方利益,所有利益相关者均享利益增值。
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Find Your Earlyvangelist
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Key Resources Categorization
Physical Intellectual: brands, proprietary knowledge, patents and copyrights, partnerships, and customer databases. Human – Members of Founding Team Financial
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Key Activities Production/Manufacturing Service operations
Platforms/systems development, even branding Marketing/Sales Startup’s by founders who should get out of the building Customer Development Process Product-Market Fit Searching Execution iteration Pivot the business model
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Startup Founders Do Things That Don’t Scale
Want to start a startup? Get funded by Y Combinator. July One of the most common types of advice we give at Y Combinator is to do things that don't scale. A lot of would-be founders believe that startups either take off or don't. You build something, make it available, and if you've made a better mousetrap, people beat a path to your door as promised. Or they don't, in which case the market must not exist. [1] Actually startups take off because the founders make them take off. There may be a handful that just grew by themselves, but usually it takes some sort of push to get them going. A good metaphor would be the cranks that car engines had before they got electric starters. Once the engine was going, it would keep going, but there was a separate and laborious process to get it going. Recruit The most common unscalable thing founders have to do at the start is to recruit users manually. Nearly all startups have to. You can't wait for users to come to you. You have to go out and get them. Stripe is one of the most successful startups we've funded, and the problem they solved was an urgent one. If anyone could have sat back and waited for users, it was Stripe. But in fact they're famous within YC for aggressive early user acquisition. Startups building things for other startups have a big pool of potential users in the other companies we've funded, and none took better advantage of it than Stripe. At YC we use the term "Collison installation" for the technique they invented. More diffident founders ask "Will you try our beta?" and if the answer is yes, they say "Great, we'll send you a link." But the Collison brothers weren't going to wait. When anyone agreed to try Stripe they'd say "Right then, give me your laptop" and set them up on the spot. There are two reasons founders resist going out and recruiting users individually. One is a combination of shyness and laziness. They'd rather sit at home writing code than go out and talk to a bunch of strangers and probably be rejected by most of them. But for a startup to succeed, at least one founder (usually the CEO) will have to spend a lot of time on sales and marketing. [2] The other reason founders ignore this path is that the absolute numbers seem so small at first. This can't be how the big, famous startups got started, they think. The mistake they make is to underestimate the power of compound growth. We encourage every startup to measure their progress by weeklygrowth rate. If you have 100 users, you need to get 10 more next week to grow 10% a week. And while 110 may not seem much better than 100, if you keep growing at 10% a week you'll be surprised how big the numbers get. After a year you'll have 14,000 users, and after 2 years you'll have 2 million. You'll be doing different things when you're acquiring users a thousand at a time, and growth has to slow down eventually. But if the market exists you can usually start by recruiting users manually and then gradually switch to less manual methods. [3] Airbnb is a classic example of this technique. Marketplaces are so hard to get rolling that you should expect to take heroic measures at first. In Airbnb's case, these consisted of going door to door in New York, recruiting new users and helping existing ones improve their listings. When I remember the Airbnbs during YC, I picture them with rolly bags, because when they showed up for tuesday dinners they'd always just flown back from somewhere. Fragile Airbnb now seems like an unstoppable juggernaut, but early on it was so fragile that about 30 days of going out and engaging in person with users made the difference between success and failure. That initial fragility was not a unique feature of Airbnb. Almost all startups are fragile initially. And that's one of the biggest things inexperienced founders and investors (and reporters and know-it-alls on forums) get wrong about them. They unconsciously judge larval startups by the standards of established ones. They're like someone looking at a newborn baby and concluding "there's no way this tiny creature could ever accomplish anything." It's harmless if reporters and know-it-alls dismiss your startup. They always get things wrong. It's even ok if investors dismiss your startup; they'll change their minds when they see growth. The big danger is that you'll dismiss your startup yourself. I've seen it happen. I often have to encourage founders who don't see the full potential of what they're building. Even Bill Gates made that mistake. He returned to Harvard for the fall semester after starting Microsoft. He didn't stay long, but he wouldn't have returned at all if he'd realized Microsoft was going to be even a fraction of the size it turned out to be. [4] The question to ask about an early stage startup is not "is this company taking over the world?" but "how big could this company get if the founders did the right things?" And the right things often seem both laborious and inconsequential at the time. Microsoft can't have seemed very impressive when it was just a couple guys in Albuquerque writing Basic interpreters for a market of a few thousand hobbyists (as they were then called), but in retrospect that was the optimal path to dominating microcomputer software. And I know Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia didn't feel like they were en route to the big time as they were taking "professional" photos of their first hosts' apartments. They were just trying to survive. But in retrospect that too was the optimal path to dominating a big market. How do you find users to recruit manually? If you build something to solve your own problems, then you only have to find your peers, which is usually straightforward. Otherwise you'll have to make a more deliberate effort to locate the most promising vein of users. The usual way to do that is to get some initial set of users by doing a comparatively untargeted launch, and then to observe which kind seem most enthusiastic, and seek out more like them. For example, Ben Silbermann noticed that a lot of the earliest Pinterest users were interested in design, so he went to a conference of design bloggers to recruit users, and that worked well. [5] Delight You should take extraordinary measures not just to acquire users, but also to make them happy. For as long as they could (which turned out to be surprisingly long), Wufoo sent each new user a hand-written thank you note. Your first users should feel that signing up with you was one of the best choices they ever made. And you in turn should be racking your brains to think of new ways to delight them. Why do we have to teach startups this? Why is it counterintuitive for founders? Three reasons, I think. One is that a lot of startup founders are trained as engineers, and customer service is not part of the training of engineers. You're supposed to build things that are robust and elegant, not be slavishly attentive to individual users like some kind of salesperson. Ironically, part of the reason engineering is traditionally averse to handholding is that its traditions date from a time when engineers were less powerful—when they were only in charge of their narrow domain of building things, rather than running the whole show. You can be ornery when you're Scotty, but not when you're Kirk. Another reason founders don't focus enough on individual customers is that they worry it won't scale. But when founders of larval startups worry about this, I point out that in their current state they have nothing to lose. Maybe if they go out of their way to make existing users super happy, they'll one day have too many to do so much for. That would be a great problem to have. See if you can make it happen. And incidentally, when it does, you'll find that delighting customers scales better than you expected. Partly because you can usually find ways to make anything scale more than you would have predicted, and partly because delighting customers will by then have permeated your culture. I have never once seen a startup lured down a blind alley by trying too hard to make their initial users happy. But perhaps the biggest thing preventing founders from realizing how attentive they could be to their users is that they've never experienced such attention themselves. Their standards for customer service have been set by the companies they've been customers of, which are mostly big ones. Tim Cook doesn't send you a hand-written note after you buy a laptop. He can't. But you can. That's one advantage of being small: you can provide a level of service no big company can. [6] Once you realize that existing conventions are not the upper bound on user experience, it's interesting in a very pleasant way to think about how far you could go to delight your users. Experience I was trying to think of a phrase to convey how extreme your attention to users should be, and I realized Steve Jobs had already done it: insanely great. Steve wasn't just using "insanely" as a synonym for "very." He meant it more literally—that one should focus on quality of execution to a degree that in everyday life would be considered pathological. All the most successful startups we've funded have, and that probably doesn't surprise would-be founders. What novice founders don't get is what insanely great translates to in a larval startup. When Steve Jobs started using that phrase, Apple was already an established company. He meant the Mac (and its documentation and even packaging—such is the nature of obsession) should be insanely well designed and manufactured. That's not hard for engineers to grasp. It's just a more extreme version of designing a robust and elegant product. What founders have a hard time grasping (and Steve himself might have had a hard time grasping) is what insanely great morphs into as you roll the time slider back to the first couple months of a startup's life. It's not the product that should be insanely great, but the experience of being your user. The product is just one component of that. For a big company it's necessarily the dominant one. But you can and should give users an insanely great experience with an early, incomplete, buggy product, if you make up the difference with attentiveness. Can, perhaps, but should? Yes. Over-engaging with early users is not just a permissible technique for getting growth rolling. For most successful startups it's a necessary part of the feedback loop that makes the product good. Making a better mousetrap is not an atomic operation. Even if you start the way most successful startups have, by building something you yourself need, the first thing you build is never quite right. And except in domains with big penalties for making mistakes, it's often better not to aim for perfection initially. In software, especially, it usually works best to get something in front of users as soon as it has a quantum of utility, and then see what they do with it. Perfectionism is often an excuse for procrastination, and in any case your initial model of users is always inaccurate, even if you're one of them. [7] The feedback you get from engaging directly with your earliest users will be the best you ever get. When you're so big you have to resort to focus groups, you'll wish you could go over to your users' homes and offices and watch them use your stuff like you did when there were only a handful of them. Fire Sometimes the right unscalable trick is to focus on a deliberately narrow market. It's like keeping a fire contained at first to get it really hot before adding more logs. That's what Facebook did. At first it was just for Harvard students. In that form it only had a potential market of a few thousand people, but because they felt it was really for them, a critical mass of them signed up. After Facebook stopped being for Harvard students, it remained for students at specific colleges for quite a while. When I interviewed Mark Zuckerberg at Startup School, he said that while it was a lot of work creating course lists for each school, doing that made students feel the site was their natural home. Any startup that could be described as a marketplace usually has to start in a subset of the market, but this can work for other startups as well. It's always worth asking if there's a subset of the market in which you can get a critical mass of users quickly. [8] Most startups that use the contained fire strategy do it unconsciously. They build something for themselves and their friends, who happen to be the early adopters, and only realize later that they could offer it to a broader market. The strategy works just as well if you do it unconsciously. The biggest danger of not being consciously aware of this pattern is for those who naively discard part of it. E.g. if you don't build something for yourself and your friends, or even if you do, but you come from the corporate world and your friends are not early adopters, you'll no longer have a perfect initial market handed to you on a platter. Among companies, the best early adopters are usually other startups. They're more open to new things both by nature and because, having just been started, they haven't made all their choices yet. Plus when they succeed they grow fast, and you with them. It was one of many unforeseen advantages of the YC model (and specifically of making YC big) that B2B startups now have an instant market of hundreds of other startups ready at hand. Meraki For hardware startups there's a variant of doing things that don't scale that we call "pulling a Meraki." Although we didn't fund Meraki, the founders were Robert Morris's grad students, so we know their history. They got started by doing something that really doesn't scale: assembling their routers themselves. Hardware startups face an obstacle that software startups don't. The minimum order for a factory production run is usually several hundred thousand dollars. Which can put you in a catch-22: without a product you can't generate the growth you need to raise the money to manufacture your product. Back when hardware startups had to rely on investors for money, you had to be pretty convincing to overcome this. The arrival of crowdfunding (or more precisely, preorders) has helped a lot. But even so I'd advise startups to pull a Meraki initially if they can. That's what Pebble did. The Pebbles assembled the first several hundred watches themselves. If they hadn't gone through that phase, they probably wouldn't have sold $10 million worth of watches when they did go on Kickstarter. Like paying excessive attention to early customers, fabricating things yourself turns out to be valuable for hardware startups. You can tweak the design faster when you're the factory, and you learn things you'd never have known otherwise. Eric Migicovsky of Pebble said one of things he learned was "how valuable it was to source good screws." Who knew? Consult Sometimes we advise founders of B2B startups to take over-engagement to an extreme, and to pick a single user and act as if they were consultants building something just for that one user. The initial user serves as the form for your mold; keep tweaking till you fit their needs perfectly, and you'll usually find you've made something other users want too. Even if there aren't many of them, there are probably adjacent territories that have more. As long as you can find just one user who really needs something and can act on that need, you've got a toehold in making something people want, and that's as much as any startup needs initially. [9] Consulting is the canonical example of work that doesn't scale. But (like other ways of bestowing one's favors liberally) it's safe to do it so long as you're not being paid to. That's where companies cross the line. So long as you're a product company that's merely being extra attentive to a customer, they're very grateful even if you don't solve all their problems. But when they start paying you specifically for that attentiveness—when they start paying you by the hour—they expect you to do everything. Another consulting-like technique for recruiting initially lukewarm users is to use your software yourselves on their behalf. We did that at Viaweb. When we approached merchants asking if they wanted to use our software to make online stores, some said no, but they'd let us make one for them. Since we would do anything to get users, we did. We felt pretty lame at the time. Instead of organizing big strategic e-commerce partnerships, we were trying to sell luggage and pens and men's shirts. But in retrospect it was exactly the right thing to do, because it taught us how it would feel to merchants to use our software. Sometimes the feedback loop was near instantaneous: in the middle of building some merchant's site I'd find I needed a feature we didn't have, so I'd spend a couple hours implementing it and then resume building the site. Manual There's a more extreme variant where you don't just use your software, but are your software. When you only have a small number of users, you can sometimes get away with doing by hand things that you plan to automate later. This lets you launch faster, and when you do finally automate yourself out of the loop, you'll know exactly what to build because you'll have muscle memory from doing it yourself. When manual components look to the user like software, this technique starts to have aspects of a practical joke. For example, the way Stripe delivered "instant" merchant accounts to its first users was that the founders manually signed them up for traditional merchant accounts behind the scenes. Some startups could be entirely manual at first. If you can find someone with a problem that needs solving and you can solve it manually, go ahead and do that for as long as you can, and then gradually automate the bottlenecks. It would be a little frightening to be solving users' problems in a way that wasn't yet automatic, but less frightening than the far more common case of having something automatic that doesn't yet solve anyone's problems. Big I should mention one sort of initial tactic that usually doesn't work: the Big Launch. I occasionally meet founders who seem to believe startups are projectiles rather than powered aircraft, and that they'll make it big if and only if they're launched with sufficient initial velocity. They want to launch simultaneously in 8 different publications, with embargoes. And on a tuesday, of course, since they read somewhere that's the optimum day to launch something. It's easy to see how little launches matter. Think of some successful startups. How many of their launches do you remember? All you need from a launch is some initial core of users. How well you're doing a few months later will depend more on how happy you made those users than how many there were of them. [10] So why do founders think launches matter? A combination of solipsism and laziness. They think what they're building is so great that everyone who hears about it will immediately sign up. Plus it would be so much less work if you could get users merely by broadcasting your existence, rather than recruiting them one at a time. But even if what you're building really is great, getting users will always be a gradual process—partly because great things are usually also novel, but mainly because users have other things to think about. Partnerships too usually don't work. They don't work for startups in general, but they especially don't work as a way to get growth started. It's a common mistake among inexperienced founders to believe that a partnership with a big company will be their big break. Six months later they're all saying the same thing: that was way more work than we expected, and we ended up getting practically nothing out of it. [11] It's not enough just to do something extraordinary initially. You have to make an extraordinary effort initially. Any strategy that omits the effort—whether it's expecting a big launch to get you users, or a big partner—is ipso facto suspect. Vector The need to do something unscalably laborious to get started is so nearly universal that it might be a good idea to stop thinking of startup ideas as scalars. Instead we should try thinking of them as pairs of what you're going to build, plus the unscalable thing(s) you're going to do initially to get the company going. It could be interesting to start viewing startup ideas this way, because now that there are two components you can try to be imaginative about the second as well as the first. But in most cases the second component will be what it usually is—recruit users manually and give them an overwhelmingly good experience—and the main benefit of treating startups as vectors will be to remind founders they need to work hard in two dimensions. [12] In the best case, both components of the vector contribute to your company's DNA: the unscalable things you have to do to get started are not merely a necessary evil, but change the company permanently for the better. If you have to be aggressive about user acquisition when you're small, you'll probably still be aggressive when you're big. If you have to manufacture your own hardware, or use your software on users's behalf, you'll learn things you couldn't have learned otherwise. And most importantly, if you have to work hard to delight users when you only have a handful of them, you'll keep doing it when you have a lot Notes [1] Actually Emerson never mentioned mousetraps specifically. He wrote "If a man has good corn or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods." [2] Thanks to Sam Altman for suggesting I make this explicit. And no, you can't avoid doing sales by hiring someone to do it for you. You have to do sales yourself initially. Later you can hire a real salesperson to replace you. [3] The reason this works is that as you get bigger, your size helps you grow. Patrick Collison wrote "At some point, there was a very noticeable change in how Stripe felt. It tipped from being this boulder we had to push to being a train car that in fact had its own momentum." [4] One of the more subtle ways in which YC can help founders is by calibrating their ambitions, because we know exactly how a lot of successful startups looked when they were just getting started. [5] If you're building something for which you can't easily get a small set of users to observe—e.g. enterprise software—and in a domain where you have no connections, you'll have to rely on cold calls and introductions. But should you even be working on such an idea? [6] Garry Tan pointed out an interesting trap founders fall into in the beginning. They want so much to seem big that they imitate even the flaws of big companies, like indifference to individual users. This seems to them more "professional." Actually it's better to embrace the fact that you're small and use whatever advantages that brings. [7] Your user model almost couldn't be perfectly accurate, because users' needs often change in response to what you build for them. Build them a microcomputer, and suddenly they need to run spreadsheets on it, because the arrival of your new microcomputer causes someone to invent the spreadsheet. [8] If you have to choose between the subset that will sign up quickest and those that will pay the most, it's usually best to pick the former, because those are probably the early adopters. They'll have a better influence on your product, and they won't make you expend as much effort on sales. And though they have less money, you don't need that much to maintain your target growth rate early on. [9] Yes, I can imagine cases where you could end up making something that was really only useful for one user. But those are usually obvious, even to inexperienced founders. So if it's not obvious you'd be making something for a market of one, don't worry about that danger. [10] There may even be an inverse correlation between launch magnitude and success. The only launches I remember are famous flops like the Segway and Google Wave. Wave is a particularly alarming example, because I think it was actually a great idea that was killed partly by its overdone launch. [11] Google grew big on the back of Yahoo, but that wasn't a partnership. Yahoo was their customer. [12] It will also remind founders that an idea where the second component is empty—an idea where there is nothing you can do to get going, e.g. because you have no way to find users to recruit manually—is probably a bad idea, at least for those founders. Thanks to Sam Altman, Paul Buchheit, Patrick Collison, Kevin Hale, Steven Levy, Jessica Livingston, Geoff Ralston, and Garry Tan for reading drafts of this. (link)
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Reasons for Partnership
Optimization and economy of scale Reduction of risk and uncertainty Acquisition of particular resources and activities Crowdsourcing
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What are the most important costs inherent in our business model?
Which Key Resources are most expensive? Which Key Activities are most expensive?
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Costs Structures Cost-driven vs. Value-driven
Fixed costs vs. Variable costs Economies of scale vs. Economies of scope
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Case Study: Business Model Competition Presentation
Owlet Baby Care: New Way to Work Final Pitch ** ** or pivot IBMC 2014: Veritas Medical - 1st Place Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology at BYU
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Business Model Canvas in Details
KP: Key Partners KA: Key Activities VP: Value Proposition CR: Customer Relationships Get Keep Grow WOM CS: Customer Segments - Marketing/ Sales - R&D - Operations Products/ service - Functional - Social - Emotional -Job-to-be-done -Customer journey -Persona -Pains/Gains -Unmet needs -Consumer/biz -Market size TAM/SAM/TM Activity outsourcer Product suppliers Resource providers KR: Key Resources CH: Channels Physical Virtual Offline to online Talents Technologies Cultures of Tolerance IPs C$: Costs Structures R$: Revenue Streams - Customer acquisition costs -Tech/product building costs - Distribution costs Revenue stream - Profit margin - CLTV Registered users - Freemium Active users - Retention rates by cohort
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Building A New Business
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Prioritize Where to start based on my relative assessment of:
Customer Pain Level (Problem) Ease of Reach (Channel) Price/Gross Margin (Revenue Stream/Cost Structure) Market Size (Customer Segment)
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3 Stages of Fit A scalable, profitable, and sustainable business model
Business Model Fit (In the Bank) Customers positively react to your product and it gets traction in the market. Product-Market Fit (In the Market) Identify relevant customer jobs, pains, and gains you believe you can address with your value proposition. Problem-Solution Fit (On Paper)
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Product Market Fit Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market. You can always feel when product/market fit isn't happening. The customers aren't quite getting value out of the product, word of mouth isn't spreading, usage isn't growing that fast, press reviews are kind of "blah", the sales cycle takes too long, and lots of deals never close. I believe that the life of any startup can be divided into two parts: before product/market fit (call this "BPMF") and after product/market fit("APMF"). Marc Andreessen ***(link) On product/market fit for startups Jan 10, ,374 views 2,094 Likes 287 Comments Share on LinkedIn Share on Facebook Share on Twitter [First published June 2007] This post is all about the only thing that matters for a new startup. But first, some theory: If you look at a broad cross-section of startups — say, 30 or 40 or more; enough to screen out the pure flukes and look for patterns — two obvious facts will jump out at you. First obvious fact: there is an incredibly wide divergence of success — some of those startups are insanely successful, some highly successful, many somewhat successful, and quite a few of course outright fail. Second obvious fact: there is an incredibly wide divergence of caliber and quality for the three core elements of each startup — team, product, and market. At any given startup, the team will range from outstanding to remarkably flawed; the product will range from a masterpiece of engineering to barely functional; and the market will range from booming to comatose. And so you start to wonder — what correlates the most to success — team, product, or market? Or, more bluntly, what causes success? And, for those of us who are students of startup failure — what's most dangerous: a bad team, a weak product, or a poor market? Let's start by defining terms. The caliber of a startup team can be defined as the suitability of the CEO, senior staff, engineers, and other key staff relative to the opportunity in front of them. You look at a startup and ask, will this team be able to optimally execute against their opportunity? I focus on effectiveness as opposed to experience, since the history of the tech industry is full of highly successful startups that were staffed primarily by people who had never "done it before". The quality of a startup's product can be defined as how impressive the product is to one customer or user who actually uses it: How easy is the product to use? How feature rich is it? How fast is it? How extensible is it? How polished is it? How many (or rather, how few) bugs does it have? The size of a startup's market is the number, and growth rate, of those customers or users for that product. (Let's assume for this discussion that you can make money at scale — that the cost of acquiring a customer isn't higher than the revenue that customer will generate.) Some people have been objecting to my classification as follows: "How great can a product be if nobody wants it?" In other words, isn't the quality of a product defined by how appealing it is to lots of customers? No. Product quality and market size are completely different. Here's the classic scenario: the world's best software application for an operating system nobody runs. Just ask any software developer targeting the market for BeOS, Amiga, OS/2, or NeXT applications what the difference is between great product and big market. So: If you ask entrepreneurs or VCs which of team, product, or market is most important, many will say team. This is the obvious answer, in part because in the beginning of a startup, you know a lot more about the team than you do the product, which hasn't been built yet, or the market, which hasn't been explored yet. Plus, we've all been raised on slogans like "people are our most important asset" — at least in the US, pro-people sentiments permeate our culture, ranging from high school self-esteem programs to the Declaration of Independence's inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — so the answer that team is the most important feels right. And who wants to take the position that people don't matter? On the other hand, if you ask engineers, many will say product. This is a product business, startups invent products, customers buy and use the products. Apple and Google are the best companies in the industry today because they build the best products. Without the product there is no company. Just try having a great team and no product, or a great market and no product. What's wrong with you? Now let me get back to work on the product. Personally, I'll take the third position — I'll assert that market is the most important factor in a startup's success or failure. Why? In a great market — a market with lots of real potential customers — the market pulls product out of the startup. The market needs to be fulfilled and the market will be fulfilled, by the first viable product that comes along. The product doesn't need to be great; it just has to basically work. And, the market doesn't care how good the team is, as long as the team can produce that viable product. In short, customers are knocking down your door to get the product; the main goal is to actually answer the phone and respond to all the s from people who want to buy. And when you have a great market, the team is remarkably easy to upgrade on the fly. This is the story of search keyword advertising, and Internet auctions, and TCP/IP routers. Conversely, in a terrible market, you can have the best product in the world and an absolutely killer team, and it doesn't matter — you're going to fail. You'll break your pick for years trying to find customers who don't exist for your marvelous product, and your wonderful team will eventually get demoralized and quit, and your startup will die. This is the story of videoconferencing, and workflow software, and micropayments. In honor of Andy Rachleff, formerly of Benchmark Capital, who crystallized this formulation for me, let me present Rachleff's Law of Startup Success: The #1 company-killer is lack of market.Andy puts it this way: When a great team meets a lousy market, market wins. When a lousy team meets a great market, market wins. When a great team meets a great market, something special happens. You can obviously screw up a great market — and that has been done, and not infrequently — but assuming the team is baseline competent and the product is fundamentally acceptable, a great market will tend to equal success and a poor market will tend to equal failure. Market matters most. And neither a stellar team nor a fantastic product will redeem a bad market. OK, so what? Well, first question: Since team is the thing you have the most control over at the start, and everyone wants to have a great team, what does a great team actually get you? Hopefully a great team gets you at least an OK product, and ideally a great product. However, I can name you a bunch of examples of great teams that totally screwed up their products. Great products are really, really hard to build. Hopefully a great team also gets you a great market — but I can also name you lots of examples of great teams that executed brilliantly against terrible markets and failed. Markets that don't exist don't care how smart you are. In my experience, the most frequent case of great team paired with bad product and/or terrible market is the second- or third-time entrepreneur whose first company was a huge success. People get cocky, and slip up. There is one high-profile, highly successful software entrepreneur right now who is burning through something like $80 million in venture funding in his latest startup and has practically nothing to show for it except for some great press clippings and a couple of beta customers — because there is virtually no market for what he is building. Conversely, I can name you any number of weak teams whose startups were highly successful due to explosively large markets for what they were doing. Finally, to quote Tim Shephard: "A great team is a team that will always beat a mediocre team, given the same market and product." Second question: Can't great products sometimes create huge new markets? Absolutely. This is a best-case scenario, though. VMWare is the most recent company to have done it — VMWare's product was so profoundly transformative out of the gate that it catalyzed a whole new movement toward operating system virtualization, which turns out to be a monster market. And of course, in this scenario, it also doesn't really matter how good your team is, as long as the team is good enough to develop the product to the baseline level of quality the market requires and get it fundamentally to market. Understand I'm not saying that you should shoot low in terms of quality of team, or that VMWare's team was not incredibly strong — it was, and is. I'm saying, bring a product as transformative as VMWare's to market and you're going to succeed, full stop. Short of that, I wouldn't count on your product creating a new market from scratch. Third question: as a startup founder, what should I do about all this? Let's introduce Rachleff's Corollary of Startup Success: The only thing that matters is getting to product/market fit.Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market. You can always feel when product/market fit isn't happening. The customers aren't quite getting value out of the product, word of mouth isn't spreading, usage isn't growing that fast, press reviews are kind of "blah", the sales cycle takes too long, and lots of deals never close. And you can always feel product/market fit when it's happening. The customers are buying the product just as fast as you can make it — or usage is growing just as fast as you can add more servers. Money from customers is piling up in your company checking account. You're hiring sales and customer support staff as fast as you can. Reporters are calling because they've heard about your hot new thing and they want to talk to you about it. You start getting entrepreneur of the year awards from Harvard Business School. Investment bankers are staking out your house. You could eat free for a year at Buck's. Lots of startups fail before product/market fit ever happens. My contention, in fact, is that they fail because they never get to product/market fit. Carried a step further, I believe that the life of any startup can be divided into two parts: before product/market fit (call this "BPMF") and after product/market fit("APMF"). When you are BPMF, focus obsessively on getting to product/market fit. Do whatever is required to get to product/market fit. Including changing out people, rewriting your product, moving into a different market, telling customers no when you don't want to, telling customers yes when you don't want to, raising that fourth round of highly dilutive venture capital — whatever is required. When you get right down to it, you can ignore almost everything else. I'm not suggesting that you do ignore everything else — just that judging from what I've seen in successful startups, you can. Whenever you see a successful startup, you see one that has reached product/market fit — and usually along the way screwed up all kinds of other things, from channel model to pipeline development strategy to marketing plan to press relations to compensation policies to the CEO sleeping with the venture capitalist. And the startup is still successful. Conversely, you see a surprising number of really well-run startups that have all aspects of operations completely buttoned down, HR policies in place, great sales model, thoroughly thought-through marketing plan, great interview processes, outstanding catered food, 30" monitors for all the programmers, top tier VCs on the board — heading straight off a cliff due to not ever finding product/market fit. Ironically, once a startup is successful, and you ask the founders what made it successful, they will usually cite all kinds of things that had nothing to do with it. People are terrible at understanding causation. But in almost every case, the cause was actually product/market fit. Because, really, what else could it possibly be? [This post obviously raises way more questions than it answers. How exactly do you go about getting to product/market fit if you don't hit it right out of the gate? How do you evaluate markets for size and quality, especially before they're fully formed? What actually makes a product "fit" a market? What role does timing play? How do you know when to change strategy and go after a different market or build a different product? When do you need to change out some or all of your team? And why can't you count on on a great team to build the right product and find the right market? All these topics will be discussed…] This post was published over 7 years ago, in June There’s now an ebook available of The Pmarca Blog Archives if you would like to read more anddownload it here.
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Three Stages of a Startup
Business-Model Fit The acid test to know where you are standing between stages is answering the following questions: Product/solution fit: Do I have a problem worth solving?, Do I have a feasible solution for it? Is my concept desirable for customers? Product/Market fit: Have I discovered and attracted my first customers? Are they already paying for my product? Scale: Have I found a repeatable business model? Do I have a plan to execute to accelerate growth?
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Design Pattern Unbundling Business Models The Long Tail
Multi-Sided Platforms FREE as a Business Model / Freemium / Bait & Hook Open Business Models (Open Innovation) “Pattern in architecture is the idea of capturing architectural design ideas as archetypal and reusable descriptions.” - Christopher Alexander, Architect
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Unbundling the Corporation
Three kinds of “businesses” in a company Value disciplines customer intimacy, product leadership, operational excellence
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Geneva-based Pictet, the largest Swiss private bank. Unbundling
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Multi-sided-platforms
The platform’s value for a particular user group depends substantially on the number of users on the platform’s “other sides.” A video game console will only attract buyers if enough games are available for the platform. On the other hand, game developers will develop games for a new video console only if a substantial number of gamers already use it. Hence multi-sided platforms often face a “chicken and egg” dilemma.
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Who Pay? One way multi-sided platforms solve this problem is by subsidizing a Customer Segment. Though a platform operator incurs costs by serving all customer groups, it often decides to lure one segment to the platform with an inexpensive or free Value Proposition in order to subsequently attract users of the platform’s “other side.” One difficulty multi-sided platform operators face is understanding which side to subsidize and how to price correctly to attract customers. Operators of multi-sided platforms must ask them- selves several key questions: Can we attract sufficient numbers of customers for each side of the platform? Which side is more price sensitive? Can that side be enticed by a subsidized offer? Will the other side of the platform generate sufficient revenues to cover the subsidies?
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LuLu.com
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RedHat
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Multiple Customer Segments
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Google Business Model: Multi-sided Platform
90 percent of the firm’s $66 billion in 2014 revenue came from advertising Google’s Mission: Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Google’s matchmaking capabilities may represent “the most successful business idea in history.”
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Google Expansion Google free services have propelled Google into a wide-ranging, multifront war that includes mobile, browsers, cloud infrastructure, , office apps, social media, maps, e-commerce, payments, and more. Google intends to extend the platform to PC, TV, car, home automation, and accessories such as Google Glass smart watches, virtual reality, more. The current list includes driverless cars, smart contact lenses, and world-wrapping satellite and balloon-delivered wireless networks. Google bought 11 robotics firms in a single year. Google is now organized under a holding company named Alphabet
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20% Time Google “encourage our employees, in addition to their regular projects, to spend 20% of their time working on what they think will most benefit Google,” …“This empowers them to be more creative and innovative. Many of our significant advances have happened in this manner.” In 2012 the firm began requiring engineers who wished to work on individual projects to run their proposals by their managers first. This was a significant change from the firm’s previous policy. This is more ‘top down’ framing of focus areas rather than the ‘bottom up’ ‘scattergun’ innovation approach that was epitomised by Google ‘20% time’. Google management will need to monitor its innovation metrics covering both ‘output’ (e.g. new products and new ways of working) and ‘pipeline’ (e.g. new ideas) of the firm’s innovation system. "If you're not failing enough, you're not trying hard enough…. If it doesn't work, move on.” (link)
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Google Market Cap Google’s market cap was greater than that of News Corp (which includes all of the Fox Networks, and the Wall Street Journal), Disney (including ABC, ESPN, theme parks, and Pixar), Time Warner (Fortune, Time, Sports Illustrated, CNN, and Warner Bros.), Viacom (MTV, VH1, and Nickelodeon), CBS, and the New York Times—combined! Just six years after its IPO, Google had become one of the twenty most profitable firms in the United States and was the youngest firm on the list—by far. Aug. 19, 2014, the stock has risen 1,294% since it went public on Aug. 19, 2004.
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Freemium Model In a freemium model, the key metrics to watch are (1) the average cost of serving a free user, and (2) the rate/ratio at which free users convert to premium (paying) customers.
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Skype
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Bait & Hook
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Open Innovation Source:
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Open Innovation InnoCentive provides connections between organizations with research problems to solve and researchers from around the world who are eager to solve challenging problems. Originally part of drug maker Eli Lilly, InnoCentive now functions as an independent intermediary listing non-profits, government agencies, and commercial organizations.
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Amazon’s Path Founded in 1994 with the U.S. book market in mind, Amazon has adopted many of the strategies in our framework over the years. 1996, Pass the decision risk to the party that can best manage the consequences: Cash-strapped, the company gets distributors and publishers to carry slow-moving inventory, rather than stocking the books itself. 1997, Integrate the incentives: Partners can’t keep up with Amazon’s growth and quick shipping promise, so the company reverses course and builds its own warehouses. 1998, Search for commonalities across products: (Scaling) Success with books leads to expansion into music, video, and games—where the company’s logistics competencies can be applied. 2001, Pass the decision risk to the party that can best manage the consequences: Amazon hosts the websites of Toys“R”Us, Borders, and Target and performs most site development, order fulfillment, and customer service.
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2005, Change the revenue stream:
Per-item shipping costs deter many customers, so Amazon offers Amazon Prime: Customers buy a shipping subscription rather than paying for individual shipments. This also encourages impulse purchases. Postpone the decision: The acquisition of BookSurge (on-demand book publishing) and CreateSpace (self-publishing of books, CDs, DVDs, and video) allows Amazon to delay publication decisions until customer tastes are known. 2006, Appoint a better-informed decision maker: Amazon takes over retailers’ A-to-Z fulfillment function—a logical extension of its third-party services. Create a hedged portfolio: Amazon expands into computing services including storage, simple queue service (SQS), cloud computing, and electronic data systems. 2008–2010, Focus narrowly: Amazon realizes efficiencies by acquiring focused verticals: Diapers.com (baby consumables) and Zappos (shoes). Acquired retailers operate independently to maintain these efficiencies.
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Taobao.com With a growing middle class and Internet connectivity, Taobao sees an opportunity to boost commerce by connecting Chinese consumers and sellers online. But lack of trust and a largely missing infrastructure create challenges… Taobao first focuses on creating trust and on building the missing infrastructure…
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Taobao.com 1.0
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Sellers discover an opportunity to create a business and become micro-entrepreneurs with a set of “business-like” jobs, pains and gains.
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Taobao.com 2.0
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Taobao.com 3.0 TMall.com Millions of consumers become a precious asset…Taobao leverages this asset for a new value proposition ……to a new lucrative customer (big brands).
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In 10 Years
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Expansion The platform is a lifestyle platform that aims to meet the increasingly sophisticated needs of Chinese consumers by providing a wide range of imported food and lifestyle products. At this time we have already begun to cooperate with offline supermarkets, and in the first phase of the platform launch we will mainly service consumers situated in Beijing and Hangzhou.
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7 Questions to Assess Your Business Model Design
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7 Questions to Assess Your Business Model Design
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Business Model Environment Map
(link) From Idea to Business - Animated Series Ep 4 - Navigating Your Environment
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The Big Idea Canvas **The Big Idea Canvas (link)
based on **Nail It then Scale It (link)
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The Big Idea Canvas **The Big Idea Canvas (link)
based on **Nail It then Scale It (link)
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The Big Idea Canvas **The Big Idea Canvas (link)
based on **Nail It then Scale It (link)
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The Big Idea Canvas **The Big Idea Canvas (link)
based on **Nail It then Scale It (link)
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The Big Idea Canvas **The Big Idea Canvas (link)
based on **Nail It then Scale It (link)
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Backup Slides
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商業模式九宮格 顧客關係 顧客群 關鍵夥伴KP: Key Partners 關鍵活動KA: Key Activities
價值主張VP: Value Proposition 顧客關係 CR: Customer Relationships -招來新顧客 -留住老顧客 -增漲顧客購買 顧客群 CS: Customer Segments -行銷 -研發 -製造/服務作業 產品和服務 -功能性(Functional) -社交性(Social) -情緒性(Emotional) -待完成的工作 -顧客旅程圖 -人物誌Persona -痛點/快樂 -潛在需求 -消費者/企業 -巿場大小 TAM/SAM/TM -活動外包商 -產品供應商 -資源供應商 關鍵資源KR: Key Resources 行銷通路 CH: Channels -實體通路 -虛擬通路 -由虛至實O2O -人才 -技術 -創新文化 成本 C$: Costs Structures 盈收 R$: Revenue Streams -新顧客獲取成本 -技術/產品取、開發成本 -盈收模式 - 毛利率 -註冊人數 -口碑WOM -訂價策略/Freemium -活躍的使用者人數 -顧客終生價值(CLTV) -同期 留失/保留率
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Rent the Runway Case Study
Rent the Runway 的不同做法是深刻觀察到現代女性時尚的需求及困擾,加上分享經濟(Shared Economy)已被廣受歡迎,才發展為成功的創新公司。創辦人在創業過中以一系列的實際試驗來驗証企業模式中的「假設」,以行動代替企業計劃書的撰寫。因觀而得創業之靈感,由試而悟商道之途,為觀卦及精實創業的最佳實例! Rent the Runway (*case *link - read the case and introduction chapter; website; about; Aanalytics; press coverage) *Rent the Runway: An inside look at the tech startup's success *** The Business of Rentable Fashion ***The Supply & Demand of Rent the Runway testing business ideas) ***Working with Venture Capitalists as a Fashion Company
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Associative Thinking: Connecting the Dots
Rent The Runway NetFlix of High Fashion
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