On Tuesday I will be chairing a session at mesh. The session is currently titled "Creating a Viable Web Business" and we are so lucky because it is not "Creating a Viable Web 2.0 Business"! This made us laugh at our pre-panel drinks get together… The panel also includes Albert Lai of Bubbleshare, Mike McDerment of Freshbooks (Michael is also one of the mesh founders) and Malgosia Green of Nuvvo.
We will discuss what it takes to create a viable web business which really is not much different than creating a viable business period. No matter how you look at it you need: customers and the revenues we all associate with customers. We are however going to do it a bit differently and focus on what not to do: Malgosia says it well:
We’re all young entrepreneurs [except the sarcastic Leila], and if I may be humble enough to say, know more about what not to do than anything else. What I mean to say is when you get something right, sometimes it’s because you really knew what you were doing, other times it’s luck, but most of the time it’s because you got it wrong before, learnt from your mistake, and got it right. So, what better way to discuss “Creating a Viable Web Business” than to tell stories about how you’re definitely not going to create one.
That said, we will be prepared to answer questions from the audience. So participants, let me hear some of your thoughts, suggestions, ideas, questions. Looking forward to it all!
– Has the hype around Web 2.0 made it harder to clarify and differentiate your value to customers?
– What *was* the biggest thing NOT to do in your experience?
– How has the fund-raising process been for you, both for angel and institutional money, and what would you suggest about this process?
– Does Web 2.0 imply lower exit valuations than ‘traditional’ software startups? How does this factor into your positioning?
That’s it… I’ll be an audience curmudgeon.
We welcome curmudgeons specially the web 2.0 kind. Kidding aside, all excellent questions! Thanks.
I sat fascinated months ago as we talked on a patio with Paul, Sutha, Estelle and others, and chatted about how to hire intelligently.
And what I’m wondering is, how do you, and how do you not, build your team? How do you incentivize them when you have no cash and little more than a dream? How do you get people to buy into your vision? How do you find the ‘right’ people? Is it about the resume? Is it about the interview? Do headhunters matter? Would you rely on job boards? Should you incentivize your team to refer people in?
And like that, but with flair and passion and fun 🙂
mesh Questions
Leila Boujnane is asking over at Hyperbio for topic suggestions on the mesh panel shes chairing – Creating a Viable Web Business. Vote early and vote often.
…
Some potential questions:
– Discuss methods for marketing your web business. What methods have you used to gain visibility? (without using spam of course)
– I see a lot of companies basing their whole business plan on GoogleAds. However things change quickly, how long do you predict GoogleAds will be a viable income.
– Please discuss the concept of “building for the buyout”. How realistic is this? How many startups actually get bought by GYM?
7 different themes/questions
1 – Key Performance Indicators for Viability
– what are your top 3 key performance indicators (KPI) telling you that your business is viable today, what are your top 3 KPIs telling you your business will be viable in 6 months (12 months, 2 years) from now
2 – Managment Control Systems Needed for Viability
– what are the top 3 most important management control systems you need in place to ensure the viability of your business
3 – “We are going to change the world” – is this viable?
– in the old fashion days of internet 1.0 for startups it used to be all about “how are we going to change the world”, do you think that this still holds for web 2.0 companies, is the “how are we going to change the world” a solid foundation for creating a viable business or is it too altruistic.
4 – Internet 1.0 reborn to Web 2.0 and who will be reincarnated in Web 3.0?
– in the old fashion days of internet 1.0 (back to that boring theme again) there were a whole bunch of businesses, technologies, models that just didn’t work and needed web 2.0 for it to happen ( i.e. ecommerce sites , today look at success of online shoe shopping company Zappos, recent financing by high profile US Ignition Partners of Canadian ecommerce jewelry company Ice.com, (as compared to the demise of webvan, eToys etc.) the application service provider (ASP) model that was never really accepted then but now reappearing as Software as a Service model) what businesses, technology do you see today in the web 2.0 world that will have to wait until web 3.0 for them to make it happen
5 – Growing the Business for Viability
– how do you grow fast enough without getting ahead of yourself or behind yourself and going bankrupt or missing the right opportunity because you weren’t properly equipped (i.e. making huge investments in infrastructure or capital in anticipation of growth that just didn’t happen fast enough, how do you get the timing right)
6 – Scaling the Viable Business
– how do you scale your business, Jeff Clavier had a recent posting on his blog about how daunting a challenge it would be for a startup to hook up to Macdonald’s IT system http://blog.softtechvc.com/2006/05/mcdonalds_it_sc.html, for example how easy would it be for your business to scale to hook up to Macdonald’s and have them as a customer and service them correctly
7 – Crossing the TechCrunch Chasm to be Viable
– Paul Kedrosky on recent post in his blog http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2006/05/12/the_first_25000.html refers to Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital’s blog posting of ” Crossing the Crunch Chasm” phenomena , getting beyond the 53,000 users that TechCrunch generates for companies,
. > For Nuvvo, we can see from gagglescape posting from Venture Forum event last week http://www.gagglescape.com/index.php/site/comments/233/ you only have 6,000 users how much longer until you get to the Crunch Chasm of 53,000 and how much longer until you get beyond,
> For BubbleShare I haven’t been able to get info on number of registered users you have ) I can only determine that you have 240 registered users to your online forum) are you beyond the Crunch Chasm,
> For FreshBooks, according to an April 2005 news article from your site you had 10,000 users at that time, where are you on the Tech Crunch Chasm,
>For idee which is in a different category of enterprise software, in the VC world we often determined if a startup has crossed the chasm of viability when it had 5 brand name customers, 5 brand name partners and 5 brand name investors, how close is idee to that ?
3 questions for you:
1. How do you find good people to hire?
2. How do you structure compensation for your team when you are a start up?
3. Selling into a large firm: how do you do that when you are a start up?
Sales questions:
How are sales different for a start-up than for a large firm? What is the
client buying? If the customer is another large firm how do you maneouvre
complicated purchasing processes? How do you deal with a champion that
doesn’t have the decision-making power? How do you get around gatekeepers?
People questions:
As a start-up how do you keep the team on track if they are dispersed? How
do you deal with cowboy team members (i.e. Good at what they do but not good
at working together)?
Derrick
Devante Alfredo Uriel Darrin Ibrahim