Virgin Business

After some time off, some vacation, and with an amazingly cute new born baby daughter, I'm back online.

During this off-time and especially on my last trip to Europe, I've read a few books - some were very interesting while others were boring to death. Don't worry, I won't tell you about the latter. Among the great ones was the autobiography of Sir Richard Branson (click on the picture for more details and reviews). I bought the hard copy version at the airport thinking that it will be a good air traveling book, meaning, funny and with no real reason to activate any gray cells.

Boy, was I wrong.

The book is indeed very funny and smart, but it also brings invaluable insights as of how to do business out of passion and against all of the regular, conservative business assumptions. It's a book that shows that you can and should bring your own character into your business, and that a hunch is sometimes worth much more than complicated numbers analysis. It also shows you that sometimes you will be wrong and that it is not only ok, but that you can seriously grow out of these mistakes.
I won't be a spoiler so I'll just write that if you are an entrepreneur, either in practice or at heart, and you seek real-life experience inspiration, which is written from the heart, you must grab a copy of this book now.

Early-Adopters and the Flat-line

Om Malik writes about how Engage, a dating website, backed up by serious people, started off quite good but got flatlined after a while.

This is a very interesting phenomena in my view, that many young companies fail to overcome.
Everything starts great, you get the right coverage, users start to use your product and you have that "viral feeling" in the air.
And then it stops.

Why?
One reason is because the users that are the first to use your product, aka (very) early adopters, are not the users you need to acquire later on.
And what do I mean by that? Early adopters are great; they are willing to try everything, and they will tell it to their friends - for good and for bad (meaning that if your product sucks you are in trouble from day one...). However, being so open to try new stuff also makes them dump your product quickly. They are not staying around for long and they have almost zero loyalty. Because of those reasons, and because they are a relatively small percentages of the population, you reach the "flat line" very quickly.

Most startups are trying to have a conversation with their users in order to better understand how to improve the product / service / experience. Which is great - just keep in mind that at this stage you are talking to early adopters, and they will mainly tell you how to get, well, more early adopters.

Don't get me wrong, early adopters are extremely important and in fact, without them your chances to get to your main audience are poor. You must talk and learn from them, and at first you must even aim your product to their needs. But once they got it, you need to move on. How? I highly recommend reading this book: (and other books of Geoffrey A. Moore).
It provides an in depth analysis about different user types and how to advance from one stage to the other.

Do you know any company that is currently struggling with this issue? If so - please leave me a comment.

Technorati Tags: bizdev, business development, Case Study, Geoffry Moore, methodology, Engage, Strategy

Games (?) Theory

From time to time, when I need to get a different view on a situation, I come back to this book:

If you have any involvement with strategies, negotiations, cooperations etc. I highly recommend about it.
It gives a basic, non-mathematical view of "The Games Theory", and includes many real-life examples, from electronic shops marketing wars to world war II strategies.
Soon I'll post my own (non mathematical :-) ) view about the Games Theory and...digg.

Technorati Tags: Avinash Dixit, bizdev, Book Recommendation, business development, Games Theory, Barry Nalebuff, Strategic Thinking, Strategies, Strategy, Thinking Strategically