ok. question is not about ui/mobile/web anything. it's how will you break chicken and egg. what's the creative marketing scheme to get that done? usually it involves cracking one side first vs. the other. in the used / deep discount space that typically means supply where supply siders are also users on the demand side. in b2c it means demand first.
My idea is to bring the buyers first. Doing thing that doesn't scale the first weeks like inviting gamers personally and give free credits to grow the inventory.
But I'd love to hear what do you suggest.
I like your idea of letting buyers express interest in things that aren't actually for sale yet, which helps sellers gauge what demand there is. But you do need to follow up quickly with sellers or the buyers will end up going elsewhere. Perhaps you could add something unique e.g. paying with Bitcoin?
More interesting than double-blind test is if each of the yc partners play fantasy startup.
a) each pick his/her top 5 yc companies per batch that they think will be most successful (and main drivers why)
b) each pick his/her bottom 5 that they think will be least successful (and main drivers why)
c) each assign the value of each of the 5 most successful companies 5 years from now.
(and build a bridge as to how that value will be achieved).
and then run some fun numbers on your predictive capabilities.
when i ran "c" for my private equity firm on all investments made over 20 years in various vintages and industries, i found my answer as to why my job of building complex financial models was pretty much worthless number painting. very low predictive ability in value drivers and financial projections being met (these are later stage businesses, too). also, i realized that i should get out when every newer vintage had a larger % of the driver of value stemming from leverage (i.e. financial engineering) than ebitda outperformance.
Michael Jordan and Lebron James definitely get lucky...
But I'd bet on them hitting that lucky shot more than 99% of other basketball players because they just know how to execute. One of my friends was a top 10 high frequency equity futures (snp minis) trader in the u.s. i used to think damn he gets lucky all the fking time. i mean at best it's like 70/30 ratio. just pure luck. how does he just call the tops and bottom and never read a sec filing or financials of a company?! nope he is really that good at execution, and that's why he's only right 70% of the time whereas others are just coin flipping.
a lot of times. timing is luck. but a lot of people get lucky on timing... it's like if the bubble bursted next year then people would have said there was never an easier market to raise money / take risks / make quick money in mobile,social, etc. but i'm pretty sure there's a ton of smart people with luck on their side that's trying to do that right now; and 100 other variables besides luck will make majority of businesses fail.
how do you define luck? break down the components of luck.
why start a company where every year the market size shrinks.
unless you prove to me that churn is slower than the market realizes (e.g. netflix when it began) such that you can be the stepping stone and your larger vision is to be the formidable player in this new technology X that you'll develop in the background, this seems like a market (even if there is one) that a) investors will murder you on and b)not sure you want to be in the space.
enter a space where there is secular tailwind not headwind. don't look at next 12 months (you'll be busy just getting the product ready for market reception)... but next 5 years and how you'll bridge that gap. maybe i'm missing something here about your vision.
1) It is really hard to be a sole startup founder. I would advise against being a sole founder. 100% of 0 = 0. startups have binary outcomes (most of the times).
2) A product really doesn't mean anything unless it's a 1 in a million amazing. Marketing and growth strategies as xwowsersx pointed out is extremely important (you will not succeed without great strategy) and I would imagine if you are a sole technical guy, you don't have time to think about coming up with marketing strategies because you'll be busy developing.
3) You have to realize people are smart and people have domain expertise in their respective fields. I'm a business guy. I'm pretty sure that I can pretty much take any hacker and come up with case study after case study of various marketing, managing, growth, hedging strategies that's worked/didn't work. That would save you hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars in opportunity cost. But that's my expertise. That's what I'm supposed to be good at. And even though in 12 months, I could probably learn coding, I would be at best middle 50 percentile (probably not even there). So instead of doing that, I would easily give up a huge chunk of equity to bring in someone who is an expert in coding and managing development. That's because all I care about is winning and maximizing my chances to ensure a successful outcome. And along the way, I'd learn various part of tech end and vice versa.
4) Some would argue that business skill is easy to acquire. I would highly doubt that. Unless you are an exceptional outlier, you can't be good at everything and you're brain isn't designed to. A backend specialist who is amazing at UI/UX design who is creative to come up with awesome marketing strategies and knows how to manage a team through the ups and downs? I haven't met anyone in real life yet that can do that. I'm sure some of these tech billionaires are, but that's why they're billionaires.
What kind of business do you want to start? I have some ideas too if you want to trade notes / work on it together. Don't worry about getting business experience before starting. Get a good team. Then you'll learn on the fly. And for some businesses, you may be able to start without a business guy. For most, you'll need one whether to create the deck, go raise funding, sell customers, execute strategy, get PR, schmooze for connections, etc etc. I can help out on the business end. Btw. ideas mean nothing. Execution is everything. And marketing/sales execution is a lot harder than novice entrepreneurs want to admit.
completely agree with your statement. long term zero economic profit theory should state though as they move up the spectrum / take less risk (new entrants in their own space will enter to fill the space they can't fill anymore and they will have a new type of brand (e.g. fb was exclusive for college kids and now it's to connect everyone. so naturally college kids want something their age bracket want to use and fb is struggling to get those kids to continue to think it's cool. but for fb it works bc they created the industry they expand into). problem with incubators as they move up the spectrum is do they think they're as good as the guys that have been doing it for a long time / are they going to be perceived as threats and no longer synergistic alliances.
1. social commerce sites typically have a fraction of the conversion rates to normal e-commerce sites. e-mail re-engagement is very effective for return visits. even a simple best of the week gets high open/click through rates.
I do agree with you right off the bat is not ideal. However, given the space I play in, I cannot be in the etsy transaction phase to get sign ups --> see fancy (they now have 10m users - what is your opinion of their strategy)? when i showed the first click through page for 10 seconds , my bounce rate dropped to 60% from 70%. do you know what i should be shooting for?
2. great. thanks for the insight. will do.
3. what's interesting is that i have the email sign up option but i guess it's not clear enough. only thing is fb is great from a social user acquisition standpoint. there's embedded virality aspects within the site such as collection and commenting that works great in acquiring super targeted users (their friends). 70/30 of our users opt with the facebook sign up. but you seem to say that we should make email sign up much more prominent bc sign up is better than no sign up. maybe like a wanelo.com look? do you know the efficacy of having google+ / twitter as well or stick to the most effective one on my platform and then just give email.
i'm not in the flash sale business. i'm in the discovery commerce business (what i want to do is create a platform for local retailers to properly market their products/stores without having to get into a groupon scenario to get discovered. gilt/fab naturally has to move toward a marketplace concept because of growth and market conditions: need to move bigger amount of inventory and in a booming stock market scenario, inventory with good deals is not that readily available.
thanks again so much for your comments and i hope to incorporate a lot of the changes as fast as possible. btw do you know anyone who is a pro tablet/mobile/cross browser interface guy that can make my site usable in other states than just laptop on chrome/firefox? my guys do not have that experience.
also if you would like please use the username: [email protected] password: guest to peruse the site.
GILT originally had the same approach but changed it as curiosity grew. By locking out purchasing to registered users only - my wording was vague. Allow users to see what you have, even if it's faded out with a box above showing users how to gain access to what they see behind the "Registration Wall." GILT did this best.
3. I didn't see it. Using lazy registration is better viewed through the lens of "What information can I use to grow." With Google+ , Twitter - what information does it give you to help you grow?
Facebook gives you a large amount of information about the user, their connections and more - but the network isn't as hip as it once was - therefore, make both forms of registration equally accessible.
- Promote connecting with Facebook after registration for those who chose not to in the beginning. Show the benefits such as connecting with friends, showing what's popular etc to help. Also, beware of relying on facebook data as email address are now "@facebook.com" by default and others have unreachable college email address. Give them the option to change their email address while keeping their Facebook UserID intact.
I'm a designer/developer. My email is in my bio, if you need help just hit me up.
