Last week a very interesting free e-book called “Software Paradox” was trending on Hacker News. The premise of the book is, that the value of software as a product is diminishing, but the value of software as an enableris rising. Pure play software companies such as Microsoft and Oracle are fading in comparison to rising stars such as Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and newer ones like Uber...
How does one find new startup ideas? Every business is built around solving a customer pain. Solving a customer pain creates value which in turn, if successfully harnessed, can be monetized. Platforms, in particular, connect demand and supply to solve customer pain on both sides. Platform Thinking And Startup Ideas One of the patterns for new startup ideas, that I often see in platforms, is the...
Welcome to the age of the zero-dollar marketing startup. WhatsApp, and earlier Instagram, have officially become a permanent part of startup lore for having built multi-billion dollar businesses without (reportedly) spending a dime on marketing. Meanwhile, Airbnb has grown from a hipster community of mattress-renters to the world’s largest provider of accommodations without spending even a...
If you’ve been around the internet startup world for long enough, you’ve probably engaged in the user-customer debate at least once. Who’s the user? Who’s the customer? Who should we be focusing on? I’m going to start off a series of posts talking about the basic elements of Platform Thinking and this being the first, I’d like to talk about the User-Customer...
