Can enterprise SaaS products be viral?
“Going viral” is often the holy grail for Internet startups, who hope to quickly scale to hundreds of thousands of users (then hundreds of millions) with relatively low user acquisition costs. However, in a recent blog post and presentation, Andrew Chen argues that SaaS products aren’t viral: “For consumer internet entrepreneurs that are working on big markets, […]
The one barrier to entry startups should focus on
Creating effective barriers to entry can be the single most important driver defining the profit potential of a company. In today’s B2B and B2C web markets, barrier to entry boils down to one thing: demand-side benefits of scale. To be successful, every web start-up needs to be thinking about how it can build demand-side economies […]
Traction is the new IP
“Traction is the new IP” sums up perfectly how the technology space has evolved over the past decade due to the nature of the web. Barriers to entry are no longer created by patents or by tech differentiation alone, but by superior traction in the marketplace. In today’s web landscape, word of mouth drives adoption […]
4 ways to compete in Amazon’s shadow
“If it has a UPC code, Amazon will beat you.” Thanks to a bigger inventory, low prices, convenient return policy, trusty user reviews, and services like Amazon Prime, Amazon is the world’s largest retailer and doesn’t seem to be moving from that position any time soon. But even in the shadow of Amazon, there are several […]
The only 2 ways to build a $100 million business
With tens of thousands of new start-ups being created every year, the potential of a company to truly scale and become a large, stand-alone business is more crucial than ever before. A great product is always the foundation but a clear distribution strategy becomes essential to cut through the noise. So most early-stage VCs have […]