The evolution of the online marketplace: six big changes since Ebay
It has been twenty years since Ebay arrived on the scene and showed what happens when you bring people together over the Internet to do commerce. Since then, there has been tremendous innovation within online marketplaces. Startups have honed in on every vertical imaginable, branched out from product to services, and tested out new paths […]
Play your own playbook
Given the frequency of media stories focused on a handful of startups with billion dollar valuations and high profile rounds, it’s understandable that founders get impatient with their own company’s natural pace of growth. This sense of urgency is intensified by the fact that growth is an elemental part of being a startup. Paul Graham […]
What’s the right business model for your marketplace?
I recently came across a good story about pivoting and how hard it can be to find the right monetization model for your marketplace. Thumbtack is a platform that helps people find service professionals (photographers, painters, home contractors, movers, etc.). My friend (and Thumbtack CEO) Marco Zappacosta described how the company first tried transaction fees, then a […]
A visual guide to pitching
There are many great articles that outline what an entrepreneur should cover during a pitch, but very few discuss how to deliver that message in a compelling manner. That’s why I wrote, “A good story is the key to any pitch”, earlier this year. I thought I’d revisit this topic with my visual guide to […]
Does free/freemium work in the enterprise?
When developing a business model, every software and app start-up eventually faces the same core question: Should we focus on monetizing customers or driving usage? For consumer apps, this question has been answered (or mostly answered): the best approach is to offer a free service to help attract and retain users. As Fred Wilson put […]