Or, Incentive based referral system and method for social networks.
By: Alon Cohen & Ronen Mizrahi
Linked-In is one of the earliest business social networks and as such inspired great hopes of simple access to people for the purpose of doing business. The hopes were for direct or friend-assisted access to individuals you want to do business with, which may be in your network up to a certain degree of separation.
Many of those who actually tried using the network as business tool report a complete failure. Here are some bloggers sharing their experience:
Seamus McCauley states in post at Virtual Economics: “Here’s the problem with LinkedIn - it doesn’t do anything. You sign up, you find some colleagues, you link to them and then…nothing.”
So have others Including Jeff Pulver, who completely gave up on Linked-In and moved to Facebook.
Our experience is that even using the paid version of linked-in for direct access does not help a bit. The only people you really gained access to, were the people you already knew beforehand, and all the rest of the millions on the network remained inaccessible.
One can only assume that Linked-in invested vast amounts of development time into the referral mechanisms just to discover that it doesn’t work in the real world. The network’s main value is apparently manifested as a repository of resumes and as an active update mechanism that generates notifications as friends find to new jobs.
The problem, as we identified it, was not the concept of the friendly referrals but rather the lack of incentive for people to propagate introduction requests, specifically in fear that they may not be up to par, and the lack of a method to evaluate the request and determine whether passing it on will undermine their reputation in the eyes of the receiving party or reinforce it. In other words am I doing the receiver a favor or am I wasting their time with junk. Plus what’s in it for me?
The idea is to create a clear incentive path and a tracking mechanism for deals that materialize due to referral actions taken by individuals, with the intention to make business introductions facilitated by a social network significantly more efficient when compared to pre-existing methods.
This is similar to the efficiencies social networks added to other forms of communications between friends such as selective sharing of news, photos and other personal data.
Business referrals among friends has been taking place in the world long before the Internet came along, yet it has not been made more efficient or monetized by social networks yet, like other social activities have.
The Internet and specifically social networks provide the underlying infrastructure to do just that with the potential to track the referral and its path in the network and to keep all parties updated with respect to the referral progress.
As an example if I knew that by referring a start-up to an NBC executive I will receive 1% or so of a multimillion dollar in case the deal is closed, I will probably do my best to forward the referral request, and even make an effort to find the correct next link to ensure higher success probability of the referral.
Think about helping an entrepreneur get to a VC for a few million dollar funding deal, or for that matter, any other deal that is easily quantifiable. I am sure you can think of some as you read those lines.
Obviously the network will monetize its database by taking its own 1% or so commission from those “few” multimillion dollar deals.
The provisional patent described here was filed and it is depicting a method and mechanics associated with incentivizing and monetizing the referral system in business social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Linked In, Xing, Plaxo or Pulse and can fit other social networks used for Dating and Matching, as such it is not limited to the business domain.
Third-parties currently working on social network projects and APIs (Google, Open Social and so on) may also implement it across several social networks such that the referral path may span and can be tracked across seemingly unconnected networks.
The inventors are happy to negotiate licensing terms with interesting parties that want to own the patent and its priority date.
In a year from now (April 7th 2009), this patent will officially lose its priority date and will be available, royalty free, to all social networks. Take that as our own contribution to the social networking world, and yes, we need this to work. We are already in discussions with few parties, so if you are the CEO of a social network straggling to differentiate and compete, or a Biz-Dev guy for that matter, with those companies, don’t let this slip between your fingers, be among the first to contact us.
For more information, please contact: Alon alonc@netvision.net.il, or Ronen ronenmiz@gmail.com
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Monday, March 3, 2008
Making Money out of Patents
By: Alon Cohen - See me or call me
In general I think patents are a waste of time, specifically for the inventors. A patent is merely the right to sue someone, not a cash register, in fact, until you can actually sue someone it is nothing but a drain on your resources.
Most “business” models around patents involve suing companies that infringe on the patent, or threatening them, or selling the patents to the companies that can sue the people that potentially infringe, or having some legal firm help take the legal cost of suing on some contingency base.
It is all about a long legal fight that an inventor / patent owner has to initiate in case he/she was lucky to invent something useful. It seems what is required from the inventor is to be a lawyer, or at least have some affinity for legal battles.
In my mind a complete waste of time for society, just the opposite of the original idea of patents that were design to compensate and encourage people to invent and share for the good of all mankind. It seems that since the only people enjoying that legal economy are the legal firms, maybe they should encourage people to file patents on their firm’s dime.
During the summer (as I was visiting
I can happily attest to the P&G process. During summer 2007, I entered a P&G contest, where they were in a search of a technological solution for a specific improvement of a popular consumer product. I presented a solution and won the contest, and yes they even paid. In my case one-time fee, as was agreed as part of the contest rules. Few weeks ago, Feb 2008, they opened the model for others to come and bring them ideas. Check P&G’s
In many cases, where an individual file for a patent during the course his/her job, the patent legal work is paid for by the company and the patent is assigned to the company and not to the individual. In many cases, companies that are not trigger happy will never sue others for infringement as it may be too distracting for their day to day operation, or simply bad PR.
On my record, I have at least one patent that might be “legally monetized” the patent has to do with network based time shifting of radio and television broadcasts in essence a “network based TIVO”. If you have the time on interest find it here.
As I am really fed up with the patent legal process (and find it boring), I am trying to think of new innovative ways to make money out of innovation which is interesting. In a sense I am looking for a quick way to flush the potential of a patent if such potential exists.
One such way which I am contemplating now, is submitting a provisional patent (very low cost say at LegalZoom), then publishing the patent / idea on a blog, potentially even stating a ball park price, and inviting potential companies by name, to come and read the concept.
Correct me if you think my logic is wrong here. If a company reads this blog and find some innovative idea interesting, they will want to be the first to engage and negotiate out of concern that their competitors will try and grab the patent for its priority date. Since they don’t know if others have approached me they might move even faster. Unless, say Google will cooperate with Microsoft, to NOT buy the patent, for a year, the process seems safe.
Obviously the idea has to hold some merits, if it doesn’t, nothing will happen and the patent will become public domain. The inventor invested not thousands, but rather just few hundreds of dollars; hence the value got flushed early on into the process for the innovator at very low cost. It is also good for the rest of humanity since after a year, if a real patent was not filed, the provisional patent is out there for anyone to use.
Let me know what you think, I am gearing up to try this concept myself on this blog so if the logic is wrong let me know.
As for new patent ideas, if you are Google / Microsoft, or LinkedIn / Xing, stay tuned, I have something coming up for you to fight over.
ACSunday, February 17, 2008
Solar Energy Innovation
As energy cost rise, the need for significant solar energy-producing facilities becomes evident. The sun that reaches the Earth's surface daily delivers 10,000 times more energy than we consume.
There are discoveries in the Nano Technology space (2005) related to absorbing more energy from the sun; scientists have invented a plastic solar cell that can turn the sun's power into electrical energy, even on a cloudy day. Those "spray-on" cells have the potential to be five times more efficient than current solar technology.
Another interesting solar generator uses a
Flying over the
I envision "solar farms" consisting of plastic material rolled across deserts generating enough clean energy to supply the entire US and the planet's power needs. We need to make this happen regardless of any political affiliation. It is a question of quality of life, and independence above everything else.
Insufficient planning and deeds in this area are probably the biggest mistakes the US economic leaders made over the past 50 years. It is still possible to do the right thing if we accelerate the efforts now.
See where innovation can take us if we put our minds to it. A solar powered Rickshaw demonstrating the use of clean solar energy while relying on nature’s designs. With that invention, it seems like we will not need wheels.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Best Communication tools for Small and Medium Businesses
Many people that I have been talking to recently, like me, work from home. They do travel, they do get out sometimes but their main business is from home.
Since a large portion of the US economy is based on very small to medium size businesses I though that it only makes sense to discuss some of the latest coolest tools that I have seen that can help you build and be your own small business from home or anywhere, while projecting a very large professional footprint.
The three most important communication elements in my mind for creating the large footprint are:
- Online Presence.
- Professional Flexible Sounding and Acting Phone system.
- Conference Call Service.
- Online Presence.
For the on-line presence specifically if you provide services, a must have tool is a page on BitWine the benefits are simple to understand. You get instant presence on a popular site which is being scanned by Google every day. You can later link the BitWine page to a more sophisticated web site, or a blog, but BitWine provides the basic tools for doing business on-line, including a way for people to reach you by phone or Skype, and a way to charge people for services rendered using PayPal or Credit card. Imagine that all that is free, and probably consumes 10 minutes to establish.
- Professional Flexible Sounding and Acting Phone system.
When you travel or at home you want people to always call you on your own 1-800 number, or ‘corporate” number, leave messages, get to your accounting department, send faxes, search the corporate directory, in other words provide everything that a large corporate would provide.
The difference is that you want most calls to eventually land on your cell phone, or home phone. When you do hire an accountant you want the flexibility to change the destination of the accounting extension with few clicks.
You also want to be able to receive all your faxes to your mobile e-mail and get SMS or e-mail notifications and even the voice mails themselves onto your blackberry or outlook. You want the transition from home to mobile to be seamless. Phone.com do all that automatically and much more.
The fact is that the Phone.com service can even save you money. For instance you never have to give out your cell phone number, which means that you never have to pay number porting fees if you change the phone company in order to get a better plan from the other guys.
If all that sounds scary, let me tell you, you are correct it use to be that way and it use to involve words like IVR, Key Systems, PBX, DID and so on. Luckily it is not the case any more. Phone.com is now providing all those features and more with only few clicks and plain English.
If you wonder about the cost, how does “less than $10 per month” sounds?
Mind you, it does not end there. Phone.com has the best customer support ever, so a simple call can do the job. If you read this, then there are three months free waiting for you. Start here or call 1-800-998-7087 and accept their 3 months free offer.
Since a large portion of the US economy is based on very small to medium size businesses I though that it only makes sense to discuss some of the latest coolest tools that I have seen that can help you build and be your own small business from home or anywhere, while projecting a very large professional footprint.
The three most important communication elements in my mind for creating the large footprint are:
- Online Presence.
- Professional Flexible Sounding and Acting Phone system.
- Conference Call Service.
- Online Presence.
For the on-line presence specifically if you provide services, a must have tool is a page on BitWine the benefits are simple to understand. You get instant presence on a popular site which is being scanned by Google every day. You can later link the BitWine page to a more sophisticated web site, or a blog, but BitWine provides the basic tools for doing business on-line, including a way for people to reach you by phone or Skype, and a way to charge people for services rendered using PayPal or Credit card. Imagine that all that is free, and probably consumes 10 minutes to establish.
- Professional Flexible Sounding and Acting Phone system.
When you travel or at home you want people to always call you on your own 1-800 number, or ‘corporate” number, leave messages, get to your accounting department, send faxes, search the corporate directory, in other words provide everything that a large corporate would provide.
The difference is that you want most calls to eventually land on your cell phone, or home phone. When you do hire an accountant you want the flexibility to change the destination of the accounting extension with few clicks.
You also want to be able to receive all your faxes to your mobile e-mail and get SMS or e-mail notifications and even the voice mails themselves onto your blackberry or outlook. You want the transition from home to mobile to be seamless. Phone.com do all that automatically and much more.
The fact is that the Phone.com service can even save you money. For instance you never have to give out your cell phone number, which means that you never have to pay number porting fees if you change the phone company in order to get a better plan from the other guys.
If all that sounds scary, let me tell you, you are correct it use to be that way and it use to involve words like IVR, Key Systems, PBX, DID and so on. Luckily it is not the case any more. Phone.com is now providing all those features and more with only few clicks and plain English.
If you wonder about the cost, how does “less than $10 per month” sounds?
Mind you, it does not end there. Phone.com has the best customer support ever, so a simple call can do the job. If you read this, then there are three months free waiting for you. Start here or call 1-800-998-7087 and accept their 3 months free offer.
Listen to Phone.com's CEO Ari Raban in an interviewed by Dave Mason Part1 part2
- Conference Call Service.
The last thing related to communication is Conference Calls. Specifically for someone who works from home, you are often required to put few people on the line for a work session. You can do that with your cell phone, if you pay the wireless companies and if you are using a GSM phone. I would argue that “wait let me connect the other person” statement, does not sound professional it is good for an ad-hoc session but not for a planned meeting. Plus, the obvious question is: why pay for a service if you can get it for free?
You can get a conference call service for FREE at confreecall simply register, get your bridge code and you are done.
If your business involves mostly on-line participants than potentially you can try a new paid service called HighSpeed conferencing where participants actually talk using Skype (or phone). The difference is that the sound quality for the skype participants is like listening to FM radio vs. a standard low quality phone call. HighSpeed conferencing is not free, but they do offer a 10 days of free trial.
All the above services are free or almost free, for the proper disclosure I can say that the CEOs of all those companies are friends of mine and I help them whenever I can. When you do call or register don’t hesitate to say that I sent you, who knows, I might gain few friendship points if they hear about it. And hey, for a paid advice on all those services try my on-line presence here.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Improving Your Internet Application Success
Many VCs and Entrepreneurs struggle with the problem of predicting when to invest money and time into a new idea and when to pass. Some just guess, others invest in people and passion. I decided to try and see if we can analyze and find some success predictors.
A method often used by investors include a mental simulation that assumes the investor is the target audience (even if it is a product for kids) which will usually end up with one conclusion “I would not use it, why would anyone else”. When in doubt, they will say let’s wait and see if it gets some traction. This is a good test but if the product gets traction without marketing budget, you may not need the investment, or the valuation would be different.
Entrepreneurs often get excited an in love with an idea and forget the basics such as the business model. As a frequent visitor to the NY Tech Meetup forum I can tell you that the forum organizer banned the Business Model question simply because, many entrepreneurs had no idea what it is.
To make that process a bit simpler I have decided to do a summary of my non-scientific observations of some internet product features that can be used as predictors for success.
As a reference I chose to look generally on some successes such as ICQ, Skype, MySpace / Facebook, Google, Twitter, Wikipedia and try to ask the question “what traits do they all have in common?”
If you have designed your product with a viral approach, good, if not, try to ride on top of an existing Social Network that has strong communication tools, so that it would very simple for a user to tell a friend, see what I found.
LinkedIn for instance has Poor communication tools, they adopted the “Don’t e-mail me, I will call you” approach whereas Facebook did the opposite with features such as Poke, Status, and Simple internal mail.
The use of OpenSocial API (led by Google) will enable new application to get closer to the Holy Grail of interoperability and Viral Distribution with the mantra of “write once run many” (on many Social Networks that is).
Simple & Reliable
Not much to say here, the product should Simply Work (Like Skype) vs. for instance MSN Messenger or other SIP phones that at least initially suffered from all kind of NAT (networking and fire wall) issues. I would say that new products should be designed with security in mind and work behind corporate firewalls. It seems that people now work from home, and “shop” from the office.
The GUI must be as simple as possible, like twitter; it should work on every OS, and on any browser. I know it is not always simple to do, yet it is a good design consideration, that can be achieved over time.
No installation
Every installation that a user is required to do is a friction point, even Skype in my opinion may have been more popular if it did not require setup for the first second.
My recommendation is to use Flash when possible (if a web page browser based technology is not sufficient). There are new similar or Flash like next-generation environment but it is better to stick to those already deployed with end users. The most popular applications such as G-mail, Facebook, MySpace, don’t require installation.
Sometimes the audience you need for Business Development is different than the one really using your product. Skype Developer Program manager said in a developer session in NY “Make sure your application can run on a Mac” so more people in skype will know about you.
User Participation (UGC)
It makes sense, that applications, which let users share private or public information, get more attention. First the users who placed the information keep getting back to update, or share more. Second it provides for an incentive to tell others about it.
In a way it feeds our basic curiosity to see what other people expose and our need to be exposed. In other words the basic human Voyeurism and Exhibitionism. Good examples for that are Q&A sites, Facebook and MySpace.
It turns out that UGC it is also good for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), which dramatically contributes to the economics of the site.
SEO In general is something that needs to start from day one, from the point when you register the domain name, or buy one that has traffic, and on, on every page that comes up on the website.
Usefulness
Usefulness or Utility is hard to predict, what useful for me may not be useful for others and vise versa. I would never think that emoticons will be useful in any way, yet almost two Million users of Zlango think otherwise. When Skype came out people might say why I need another Messenger/Yahoo/AIM/ICQ/… well apparently me2 is not always useless and if it always works with better audio quality, it is useful.
A product is also useful if fills a personal social need like, promoting global knowledge, by writing articles in Wikipedia or a need for personal promotion by writing a personally related factual page in Wikipedia.
Fun is another form of utility if people can derive fun of a product it is useful for that purpose.
So how do you predict if a product or a webpage is useful, I guess by asking as many people as you can, or finding a specific need that the product covers. One way to try and predict is by using the Kawasaki map of Uniqueness vs. Value.
Business Model
There are many business models that one can come up with, yet the most successful are Ad Revenue which is based on traffic or Eyeballs, Recurring Subscription fees as done with Linked-In, and WOW (World of Warcraft) and so on. The last is selling non tangible replicable products such as Music, Videos and things like Software Download. A type product that makes you money while you sleep.
Commission based models that are driven by paid clicks (and not by organic traffic) are getting hard to support with the climbing prices of popular keywords. In some popularlucrative domains (sex for instance) a click can cost more than $10, imagine how much money has to be made per transaction to get the net revenue balance the cost of the click divided by the conversion rate. The party receiving the gross revenue is the one that need to support the ad, not the party receiving the commission, and this is a hard situation to create.
Marketing
Never leave marketing to pure luck. The more successful companies (leaving out those that got lucky or had other traits working for them) started with nice marketing budget. They started with their SEO activities, such as creating content, creating back links, grass root buzz creating activities, Ads, Videos, TV commercials, radio commercials, free “minutes”, and more.
A good young marketing person is an asset worth having on board. Pure luck is simply to hard to manufacture.
Having said that a startup need to make sure it allocates sufficient funding for marketing purpose.
Investment Requirements
A product or a web site is not built in one day, it takes time and time needs funding. As an entrepreneur I would recommend that the first Angel or VC round will take in account R&D and Marketing. From an entrepreneur point of view if you finish the product and you can not market it to create traction; you will not be able to raise the next round. Investor place no value on Internet technology those days, as sophisticated as it might be.
An investor on the other hand would argue that it is better to raise money for marketing after the product is proven, or has gone few improvement phases. This obviously seems to minimize the risk, and drives the company to make improvements trying to make the product get traction without marketing.
I say, raise the money up-front. Spend on marketing only after you have done some improvement phases. Don’t get caught with a product everyone says is good, but has no traction to prove them right.
I will conclude by stating that not every application or website encompasses all the ingredients from day one, the more it has from the get go the better its chances are to succeed.
You must keep adding the ingredients and funding in order to move from the initial success to the ultimate exit opportunity. If you are stuck without one or the other, start writing Blogs :).
Alon Cohen
A method often used by investors include a mental simulation that assumes the investor is the target audience (even if it is a product for kids) which will usually end up with one conclusion “I would not use it, why would anyone else”. When in doubt, they will say let’s wait and see if it gets some traction. This is a good test but if the product gets traction without marketing budget, you may not need the investment, or the valuation would be different.
Entrepreneurs often get excited an in love with an idea and forget the basics such as the business model. As a frequent visitor to the NY Tech Meetup forum I can tell you that the forum organizer banned the Business Model question simply because, many entrepreneurs had no idea what it is.
To make that process a bit simpler I have decided to do a summary of my non-scientific observations of some internet product features that can be used as predictors for success.
As a reference I chose to look generally on some successes such as ICQ, Skype, MySpace / Facebook, Google, Twitter, Wikipedia and try to ask the question “what traits do they all have in common?”
I came up with the following list of “success” factors (traits or features) that seem to repeat themselves on the more popular applications and websites. I have also added some of my own experience to the mixture.
Let's start with those:
- Viral or Social Characteristics
- Simple & Reliable
- No installation
- User Participation (UGC)
- “Usefulness
- Business Model
- Marketing and Budget
- Investment Requirement
Viral or Social Characteristics
If a product is more useful to you when your friends have it, it means that it poses the viral trait. For instance what can you do with ICQ or Skype by yourself? Maybe talk to strangers. Yet, when your friends have it, you are really thriving.
If we look at my MySpace, the need to show people your new psychedelic page background drives you to ask others to join in.If you have designed your product with a viral approach, good, if not, try to ride on top of an existing Social Network that has strong communication tools, so that it would very simple for a user to tell a friend, see what I found.
LinkedIn for instance has Poor communication tools, they adopted the “Don’t e-mail me, I will call you” approach whereas Facebook did the opposite with features such as Poke, Status, and Simple internal mail.
The use of OpenSocial API (led by Google) will enable new application to get closer to the Holy Grail of interoperability and Viral Distribution with the mantra of “write once run many” (on many Social Networks that is).
Simple & Reliable
Not much to say here, the product should Simply Work (Like Skype) vs. for instance MSN Messenger or other SIP phones that at least initially suffered from all kind of NAT (networking and fire wall) issues. I would say that new products should be designed with security in mind and work behind corporate firewalls. It seems that people now work from home, and “shop” from the office.
The GUI must be as simple as possible, like twitter; it should work on every OS, and on any browser. I know it is not always simple to do, yet it is a good design consideration, that can be achieved over time.
No installation
Every installation that a user is required to do is a friction point, even Skype in my opinion may have been more popular if it did not require setup for the first second.
My recommendation is to use Flash when possible (if a web page browser based technology is not sufficient). There are new similar or Flash like next-generation environment but it is better to stick to those already deployed with end users. The most popular applications such as G-mail, Facebook, MySpace, don’t require installation.
Sometimes the audience you need for Business Development is different than the one really using your product. Skype Developer Program manager said in a developer session in NY “Make sure your application can run on a Mac” so more people in skype will know about you.
User Participation (UGC)
It makes sense, that applications, which let users share private or public information, get more attention. First the users who placed the information keep getting back to update, or share more. Second it provides for an incentive to tell others about it.
In a way it feeds our basic curiosity to see what other people expose and our need to be exposed. In other words the basic human Voyeurism and Exhibitionism. Good examples for that are Q&A sites, Facebook and MySpace.
It turns out that UGC it is also good for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), which dramatically contributes to the economics of the site.
SEO In general is something that needs to start from day one, from the point when you register the domain name, or buy one that has traffic, and on, on every page that comes up on the website.
Usefulness
Usefulness or Utility is hard to predict, what useful for me may not be useful for others and vise versa. I would never think that emoticons will be useful in any way, yet almost two Million users of Zlango think otherwise. When Skype came out people might say why I need another Messenger/Yahoo/AIM/ICQ/… well apparently me2 is not always useless and if it always works with better audio quality, it is useful.
A product is also useful if fills a personal social need like, promoting global knowledge, by writing articles in Wikipedia or a need for personal promotion by writing a personally related factual page in Wikipedia.
Fun is another form of utility if people can derive fun of a product it is useful for that purpose.
So how do you predict if a product or a webpage is useful, I guess by asking as many people as you can, or finding a specific need that the product covers. One way to try and predict is by using the Kawasaki map of Uniqueness vs. Value.
Business Model
There are many business models that one can come up with, yet the most successful are Ad Revenue which is based on traffic or Eyeballs, Recurring Subscription fees as done with Linked-In, and WOW (World of Warcraft) and so on. The last is selling non tangible replicable products such as Music, Videos and things like Software Download. A type product that makes you money while you sleep.
Commission based models that are driven by paid clicks (and not by organic traffic) are getting hard to support with the climbing prices of popular keywords. In some popularlucrative domains (sex for instance) a click can cost more than $10, imagine how much money has to be made per transaction to get the net revenue balance the cost of the click divided by the conversion rate. The party receiving the gross revenue is the one that need to support the ad, not the party receiving the commission, and this is a hard situation to create.
Marketing
Never leave marketing to pure luck. The more successful companies (leaving out those that got lucky or had other traits working for them) started with nice marketing budget. They started with their SEO activities, such as creating content, creating back links, grass root buzz creating activities, Ads, Videos, TV commercials, radio commercials, free “minutes”, and more.
A good young marketing person is an asset worth having on board. Pure luck is simply to hard to manufacture.
Having said that a startup need to make sure it allocates sufficient funding for marketing purpose.
Investment Requirements
A product or a web site is not built in one day, it takes time and time needs funding. As an entrepreneur I would recommend that the first Angel or VC round will take in account R&D and Marketing. From an entrepreneur point of view if you finish the product and you can not market it to create traction; you will not be able to raise the next round. Investor place no value on Internet technology those days, as sophisticated as it might be.
An investor on the other hand would argue that it is better to raise money for marketing after the product is proven, or has gone few improvement phases. This obviously seems to minimize the risk, and drives the company to make improvements trying to make the product get traction without marketing.
I say, raise the money up-front. Spend on marketing only after you have done some improvement phases. Don’t get caught with a product everyone says is good, but has no traction to prove them right.
I will conclude by stating that not every application or website encompasses all the ingredients from day one, the more it has from the get go the better its chances are to succeed.
You must keep adding the ingredients and funding in order to move from the initial success to the ultimate exit opportunity. If you are stuck without one or the other, start writing Blogs :).
Alon Cohen
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
