BizDevBlog

Code-Chef Needed

A quick note for all of you developers out there - KitchenBug, a startup where I'm siting on the advisory-board, is hiring. More details can be found on the KitchenBlog.

Free

Hello friends,

Sorry for being offline for a while - I am working on several new stuff, including leveraging the concept of my blog, so stay tuned.

In the meanwhile, I wanted to share with you a post by Chris Anderson, Wired editor in chief, that I find important, and that I believe that it represents the main trend in business models for the upcoming year - Free: http://tinyurl.com/2okqbk

I would love getting your comments - do you believe that every internet only product should be free?

Technorati Tags: business development, Business Model, BusinessModel, Chris Anderson, Free, Wired

B2B are Socializing

At the time, I wrote about the benefits of having a blog as part of the business interface with your customers and the relation between blogging and churn.

The trend, fortunately, is growing, and according to a recent survey by BtoBonline, is even expected to grow also in B2B sectors.
"The survey found that 19.8% of marketers are currently using social media as part of their marketing strategy."

I believe that the social media still lacks the business approach and that Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and even LinkedIn are still not a complete answer for their needs. However, it's great to see that business are starting to use the social media to do business, not just by having a branded website but showing that, even in B2B, what matter most are the people behind the B.

Technorati Tags: bizdev, business development, Facebook, LinkedIn, Media, social media, Strategies, Survey, YouTube

Value Creation - Post 2 - The Opportunity Approach, In Theory

On the first post that addressed the Simple Rules Strategy (base on Professor Sull's podcasts from the London Business School, which I highly recommend) we've discussed the two common methods of Value Creation: Value Creation through Position and the Resource Approach.

This time I would like to focus on what I find as the most interesting method - The Opportunity Approach; While the first two approaches requires that you'll have significant resources in advance, the Opportunity Approach requires mostly your brains and your speed, and therefore, naturally, it can best serve new startup ventures very well.

Seizing the opportunity means acting without owning the position, and without owning the resources - you just use the opportunity. Trying to semi-quote Prof. Sull:

The logic behind this approach is based on the identification of a gap in the market, like an unserved customer need and acting in a "blitz" style to immediately address it.

Take Twitter for example, (for those of you that are still unfamiliar with this phenomena, Twitter is a very simple micro-blogging service that became extremely popular within a matter of months). They didn't try to build a wall against competition by having an "atom-cracking technology", or trying to own their position by "leveraging and enhancing user needs". They just recognized an opportunity, and immediately acted to put their product there.

Another good example is Skype. Many companies gave VoIP before Skype and some even gave free subscriber to subscriber calls, much like Skype did. But, Skype founders were the only one to recognize that the opportunity lies not within the technology, but in the offering, and they set all of their focus, first and foremost, on the free calls between the subscribers. The opportunity was being able to speak with your friends for free, not saving $ on long distance calls.

The best way to explore and deploy the opportunity approach is in highly volatile markets, where there are many companies with no clear market leader, and where you feel the trend change on almost a daily basis. The current video distribution/CDNs market is exactly in this state now.

Now, the only question left is how can we recognize these opportunities in practice. Well, that's exactly what the next post of value creation is all about.

Technorati Tags: bizdev, business development, Case Study, Donald Sull, London Business School, methodology, Skype, Simple Rules, Strategy, Twitter, Value Creation

Internet/Media/BizDev Snippets of the Week #2

Everything that you simply must know about:

• Microsoft buying a share of Facebook - In case you just came back from a week without internet/TV/radio/people. (Via DownloadSquad).
• Google and Nielsen team up to better serve us Ad-Words on TV - Here's what TechCrunch have to say about that.
• Rating and growth of social networking sites - (from TechCrunch again).
• Mashable take on NBC Universal CEO and the dumping of the iTunes deal
• Skype new mobile phone (via Mashable again) - a bit disappointing in my opinion and a lesson on how not to build hype (as opposed to iPhone).
• Alibaba raises almost 1.5 Billion (via PaidContent)

Technorati Tags: bizdev, business development

iDrink #7

The Israeli community of Internet & Media investors, entrepreneurs, bloggers, etc. is getting together tonight, 7PM at Mandy's bar.

I'm proud to be a part of the iDrink team together with Ouriel, Orly, and Sagi.

Currently there are more than 830 people registered to our community, and this time, on top of the event being sponsored by Nisha and Outbrain, it is especially important for me since KitchenBug, a startup that I'm assisting in the last few months, will present their product there and declare their launch!

So if you are in Israel, make sure you are registered (here) and come to party with us Internet geeks in a loose-schmoozing environment.
If you want to meet up there send me an email to bizdevblog AT gmail DOT com.

Technorati Tags: bizdev, business development, iDrink, Israel, Startup

Internet/Media/BizDev Snippets of the Week

Everything you need to know about:

• Media Companies and Investments in Tech Startups - Via Fred Wilson
• The new advertising experience/series of MySpace (and Ford) called "Roomates", A very interesting advertising experience in my opinion
• "Flyers" - The new ad-system of FaceBook - (The core power of FB within a few months if you ask me) via Mashable
• Bebo and Orange test for a business model - via Mashable again
• AT&T and Napster test for those that don't have iPhone - via MobileCrunch
• Figures regarding VCs investments in Internet & Media companies - via GigaOM

Technorati Tags: bizdev, business development, news snippets

Value Creation - Post 1 - The Common Approaches

In the last few weeks I've been listening to some great podcasts.
One of them is from the London Business School and I encourage you all to especially note Professor Donald Sull and his great series about Strategy of Simple Rules (full list here, iTunes here)

I'll try to summarize the key issues from those podcasts in the next few posts and further explore this issue here with regards to media/internet business development, with a focus on value creation.

Professor Sull mentions three goals that a company has when trying to increase value: creation, capturing, and sustaining. And it is important to understand that business-development, when conducted properly, is one of the greatest methods that serves those three in a cross-company level.

The two most common approaches of value creation are Value Creation through Position and the Resource approach of Value Creation.

The position approach is mainly about setting High Barriers to Entry, and those can come from different angles such as regulation or technology, where their main purpose is to keep your competitors out and allow you to create value.
As Professor Sull mentions, think of it like a "Fortes" - concur a high hill and build a heavy defense wall around your castle there.
Taking a closer look at the YouTube deal provides a great example for this in business development - Google made sure to get the necessary 6-12 months of not getting sued for copyrights infringement period, and in the meanwhile built their "fortres" around it in terms of both the buzz and the content agreements that made it impossible for their competitors to follow.
Taking this approach requires a lot of resources aka cash, so startups usually can't/won't take it.

The resource approach for value creation is more about having control and owning the resources that create value. In order to do so, those resources should be rare, and valuable (as in creating value for the customer, not to your company directly).
When taking this approach, a company must validate that these resources are something that is very difficult to imitate, and continuing the previous example, think of Google's search engine. Their superior search technology is not only setting a very high technological barrier, but also creates a inherent value to the customer in the better search results. And the resource for making it happen is not the best algorithms or fastest, smartest servers, but having the best people that create them. Anyone who visited a Google office anywhere, and I'm happy to say that I have, knows how much effort (aka not only cash, but true attention) Google put in their people.
If you're a young company it will be hard for you to compete for this kind of a resource, but make sure you still do whatever you can to get your A-team.

However, the most interesting approach, that is most relevant for young and dynamic companies, is the Opportunity Approach, and that's where the Simple Rules Strategy plays a key role. More about that in the next posts.

Technorati Tags: bizdev, business development, Case Study, Donald Sull, Google, London Business School, methodology, Value Creation, Strategies, Strategy, YouTube

Getting Great Feedback

A few days ago I decided to check up some tools for improving my project management efficiency and I stumbled upon a cool application called SharedPlan.
After installing the free, lite version, and playing with it a bit, I found it great.
However, from time to time I noticed a bug so I decided to drop it.
Then when I checked my emails, I found the usual "thank you for trying our software, we'll be happy if you can provide us with feedback" email from SharedPlan.

So I decided to be a "good samaritan" and answered them back, describing the bug that I found.

One hour later they answered, thanking me for providing them with feedback, and a proposal: tell us how you found the bug, and if we squash it, you'll get a free license to our full product (worth $200).
So I did, and 4 hours later they answered: thanks to you we managed to find the bug and fix it! here's your code for the free subscription. Cool right?

Well, I'll review the SharedPlan software when I get to know all of its features better, but here are some tips to take from this story into your feedback process:

iDrink #6 was great

iDrink #6 was cool.
Two new startups presented their newly launched Internet services: Velingo, and Yalicoo, and they were presented by no other than Guy Zohar himself! (my absolute favorite Israeli news anchor).
I heard that two interesting deals were started that night and I saw a lot of schmoozing and people enjoying speaking about Internet, media, and everything in between.

Many thanks for all of you who attended - I hope you had fun like I did.

And stay tuned for the upcoming iDrink07  - I already know it is going to be great  ;-)

Technorati Tags: bizdev, business development, iDrink, Internet, Israel, Yalicoo, Velingo