What Exactly is a Business Model? #vc #startups

Av
This question is a tricky one. And a question to which you most probably gives a wrong answer. After one year of pitching for jurys of investor around the world, one of the investors said to me afterwards: I don't understand your business model.

I was first surprised and then angry (I'm normally reacting like that.) Thinking, here I've been around talking to you in three days and you haven't got it still! To be clear, it wasn't his fault. It was mine.

Afterwards I saw an interview of Roberto by Chris Shipley. The interview was very good, and suddenly I saw our answer. Later I used the anger and inspiration to create an entirerly new presentation. And then finally in Eurepean Venture Summit in Düsseldorf people understood!

So be aware on this question and read the whole story below.

A post from techcrunch.com by by Vivek Wadhwa has the whole story. Here is a part:




Developing the right product is hard. But what is harder is building a good business model. Fortunately, there’s nothing magical about a business model. It’s simply the nuts and bolts of how a business plans to generate revenue and profits. It details your long-term strategy and day-to-day operations.
Entrepreneurs put together elaborate business plans showing optimistic market-share projections. Even 1% of a billion-dollar market seems lucrative, right? Wishful thinking is great, but when it comes time to create your business model, you need to be realistic. The challenges differ from industry to industry, but here are seven basic components of a business model:
1. Reaching customers. Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said, “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.” The reality is that even if you did, no one would find you. Even when you know who your prospects are, it’s usually difficult and costly to reach them. You have to find them via the Internet and e-mail, or the old-fashioned way—through broadcast media, print ads, direct mail, telemarketing, or references or by cold-calling. And these potential customers are not likely to be waiting to hear from you and may not respond to you. So be sure you know how you are going to find and reach them.
2. Differentiating your product. You think you’ve got the very best solution, but so does the other gal (or guy). There’s always competition, whether you realize it or not. Smart marketing executives know how to develop unique product-positioning strategies that highlight a product’s true value. You need to thoroughly understand the competition and effectively communicate the unique advantages of your product.
3. Pricing. One of the most basic decisions you have to make is how much you’re going to charge for your product or service. Giving your stuff away is the way to go on the web, but remember that you still need to figure out how you are eventually going to make money—you can’t make it up on volume. Start by understanding how much customers value what they’re gaining from you. Then you need to estimate your total costs, analyze the competitive landscape, and map out your long-term strategy. For your company to survive, your product’s price must be greater than its overall cost.

Populære innlegg fra denne bloggen

Predicates in Core Data

Av
Database programming is all about filtering and sorting tables linked to each other. According to the book Core Data , «Core Data is Apple’s object graph management and persistency framework for iOS, OS X, watchOS, and tvOS.» In a sense, predicates are an object version of the WHERE clause in SQL. Just like NSFetchRequest represent the FROM clause in SQL. I never have had problems with WHERE and FROM in SQL, but the predicate format strings in Core Data has been quite a struggle for me. I don’t think the struggle is only my fault. Predicates should clearly be thought, at least to me, as a method of writing WHERE clauses. Here is some notes from tutplus’ Core Data and Swift: Relationships and More Fetching : let predicate = NSPredicate(format: "%K == %@", "last", "Doe") The predicate format string uses %K (K stands for Key) for the property name and %@ for the value. let predicate = NSPredicate(format: "%K >= %i", ...
More...

How To Disable Google’s Personalization Of Search Results

Av
Bilde
Do you want to know what the rest of the world gets as answer for their search, instead of what Google thinks you may want to see? I do, therefore the post from MakeUseOf.com by Ann Smarty did catch my interest. She explains it well, both for one-time use and how to change your firefox and chrome browser, and I just copy the one-time part: 2. Disable Google Personalization: One-Time (Browser Independent) Again, you may like the feature and the fact that Google tries to show you what you really want (your favorite sites or sites you are more likely to like on top), but in some cases you will want to see “real” results (for example, to check how your own website is doing). In this case, what you need to do is manually modify the search query URL path: just add this parameter: pws=0 The ‘pws=0′ parameter removes the search personalization: If you don’t want to add the parameter manually, use this browser bookmarklet (courtesy of  Google System Blog ): Turn off Google perso...
More...

InvestorForum by VentureLab in Oslo a success story #startups

Av
Bilde
Photo from Hotel Continental website 200 persons, mostly investors, joined to see what 20 startups could offer in Oslo after the finance crisis . I was astonished to see so many foreign investors, from US and from UK. There was in my opinion a lot of great projects . Since I also presented, I could only follow some: Yes Game : They have ingenuos  reduced the chess board from 8X8 to 5X6 by taking away all second officers. In that way they have create a Chess Attack, which can take you into the final stage of a chess party immediately. They have it for iPhone and very important, also as a physical board. uformia created software very well suited for 3D printing. The CEO Cherie Stamm was an American living in Norway. She softened every Norwegian heart when the said the reason was our beautiful nature. 3D Printing is in my opinion a possibility for the Western society to rebuild the manufacturing industry we lost to China. kikora presented a math editor, which evalua...
More...