Nexting: A new movement ?

This was a very interesting video about nexting. Chat Roulette has potential to be interesting to the startup world...get people talking about ideas in real time from around the world. If the idea sucks, they dissapear forever...or be the genesis for virtual collaborations with absolute strangers.

chat roulette from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.

Shareholic: Finalist for Best Overall Add-On. Needs your vote

For the first time, About.com's Computing Channel is running a coordinated Reader's Choice Award program. During January, thousands of nominations were submitted by readers in a wide variety of categories including Best Overall Add-On. Shareaholic has qualified as a finalist in the Best Overall Add-On category!! Now throughout the month of February, folks will vote for a winner. Winners will be announced March 1. If you could take a minute to vote, I'd really
appreciate it!

Vote Here

The Digital Music Industry isn't music to anyone's ears

I just finished reading an interesting article about web-based models (Daily Deal). Thought I'd post the most important points here and my personal views:

- The global music industry has gone from $31Bn to $18Bn
- Apple sells 25 percent of all US music, Walmart sells 14 percent
- It costs a penny to play a song (you can start your own co today) so the more successful you are, the more cash you burn (remember Netzero!)
- There are 350 digital music cos (good grief!) And $1 billion has been invested
- Pandora, which raised $50MM is profitable with $40 million in revenues but very few paying subscribers
- Spotify (Europe) also raised $50MM
- There have been 2 exits. MySpace acquired Imeem with 16 million listeners for $1 million; CBS paid $250MM for Last.fm but its reportedly not doing well
- Interesting models: Ecast (digiral jukeboxes for clubs and bars), Jamendo (selling rights-cleared music to businesses) and Rhapsody (first-mover streaming subscriber but only has 700,000 subscribers)
- 95 percent of digital music is still illegal.
- Getting label approval is a laborious process; nothing is standardized
- Venture units of both Sony Music and Universal Music have been dismantled

My predictions for the next 3 years

- First the obvious ones. Most of these cos will dissapear and most VCs won't make a dime
- Old musicians may be found bagging groceries as their retirement rapidly dries up. There will be many more tours, videos with product placements and merchandising so bands can milk the few good years (anyone remember Britney) - and more recent bands will play at Yahoo and Google !
- Labels will standardize distribution, even adopting common platforms (e g an Amazon equivalent for distributing all major labels might emerge and anyone will be able to contract from them and stream the music)
- Local radio advertising prices will drop off a cliff
- Cool hardware will have unpredictable success, but there will be a resurgence of cool radios in the home with retro designs but till the big consumer cos like Bose step in, these will be niche businesses with unpredictable sound quality
- Cable will go outside the box. They will l sell hardware that will pick up the Internet based stations from the set-top box and and give us more control. The radio on cable will finally get significantly better with more controls to users (though TV sounds won't hence the need for a wireless-enabled radio)
- The more lawyers a label hires and the longer it takes to strike deals with these 350 startups, the slower will they be to get online, and the less likely they are to survive
- and finally, Pandora's hardware will do well and create profitable revenues for the company

Coupons for the Facebook crowd: 2010s hottest startup

How to Build and Sell Great Products

Last Wednesday, our TLP session in Boston focused on "Getting Revenues and Building Great Products". Ajay Kulkarni, Founder of Sensobi (TLP '09) which was chosen for Techstars 2009, moderated the IT panel, which featured Rishi Dean (Co-founder/CTO at Visible Measures, a venture-backed startup in social media), Rama Ramakrishna (MIT Sloan Lecturer in Operations Research, Founder, Profit Sciences, CTO, ProfitLogic - which was sold to Oracle for $250MM), and Mike Sheeley (TLP '09, Co-Founder and COO at RunKeeper, the #1 fitness app on the internet).

Each panelist shared valuable tips from the trenches on what they've learned from their good and bad experiences building products.

Here are some of the key lessons/takeaways from our three panelists:

Build off your passions, interests, and market experience when creating a new product

A startup will consume your life. Make sure you pick a space that interests you deeply so that the ride is enjoyable, no matter what the outcome. If you're not 100% committed and excited about your your idea, it will be hard to carry on when things get tough. Build off your expertise - it is much harder to create a truly great product if you aren't intimately familiar with your target market.

What you value in your product and what your customers value will likely not be the same

Talk to your customers as much as you can to understand what features they care about the most. Focus as much time and energy as possible on the biggest value drivers for them, not all the bells and whistles that you think are going to make the product more interesting. Don't assume that you know what they need - your interpretation of what they need won't always be correct. Watch them use the product in their natural habitat to unlock even more insights.

Know your market economics

Understand what people are willing to pay for - if possible, insert yourself in a pre-existing flow of dollars instead of creating a brand new flow. Show a clear, tangible ROI that people can't ignore or argue with. Figure out as early as possible whether what you're building is destined to be a hobby or a real business.

Think big - small ideas require as much work as big ideas

Just because an idea may be more niche-focused and small in scope, doesn't mean that it won't be a lot of work. Developing any product is going to be a significant amount of work, so why cap your upside by focusing on a small problem or small market? Your time is valuable. Spend it developing game changing products if you want to build a truly successful business.

Flexibilty is better than perfection

Avoid the temptation to wait until a product is "perfect" before you launch. Iterate and improve constantly in short development cycles. Get something out the door and be willing to change direction based on market feedback if necessary. The longer you wait, the greater the chance that competitors will steal your thunder. Provide just enough value to keep your customers engaged, and then add more over time.

For more tips, check out Rishi Dean's presentation embedded here:

Building Great Products: tips for non-product executives - Presentation to TiE Leadership Program

View more documents from Rishi Dean.

Tips on Starting Up from Dharmesh Shah of Hubspot

On December 9, the Boston TLP class was treated to a talk by Dharmesh Shah, founder of HubSpot and the popular blog OnStartups.com. The Getting Funded Competition had been a fast and furious VC negotiation round and it was great to have a dynamic speaker like Dharmesh to keep the energy going. Dharmesh has founded several software start-ups and he shared some of the lessons he picked up along the way.

Partnerships with big companies are unequal

He cited his experience of partnering with a big company (which eventually acquired his previous start-up) and described the challenges of working with them. So watch out for big partners, particularly ones that have no precedent of partnering with smaller companies!

Starting a company with family or close friends

Another big DON’T here – based on his first start-up with his younger brother, where they both felt they had to treat each other without regard to the relationship, creating undue pressure.

Power of a modest liquidity event

Two paths lie before most entrepreneurs – to either bootstrap a company by taking no outside capital (which often yields a bigger piece of a smaller pie) or to accept institutional financing (and end up with a smaller piece of a bigger pie). Dharmesh believes that bootstrapping may lead to a better outcome personally, but one should decide based on whether the business can achieve its goal without VC capital.

Risk

Don’t spend too much time on the technology risk; focus on market risk instead!

Don’t scale prematurely

Don’t prepare for potential problems too early by building team and technology for future scenarios (go at the right pace)

Building a great team

Early on in a company’s life, hiring generalists makes more sense than specialists.

Build a following early

Connect with potential users through blogs and LinkedIn, but be careful to limit the commercial spin if you want to build credibility.

Think Simple

Learn to say No (e.g. setting up 2 pricing schemes and optimizing too early usually carries a hidden cost)

Cardinal Sins

1. Losing objectivity (e.g. keep management debating both sides of important issues)

2. Keep investors and employees separate (if you invest in your company, separate the two roles and treat your cash the same way as other angel investors’).

These are just some of pearls of wisdom I took away from the talk – Dharmesh’s blog discusses these issues and more in detail. Visit OnStartups.com for more, and Happy New Year everyone!

David Mclure: An interesting look @ Internet Startup Metrics (AARRR)

An interesting presentation with a lot of useful advice. I disagree on one bit of advice about not worrying about revenues, and focussing instead on traffic. The "noise" with regard to internet startups is increasing, and those who will succeed in getting funded and building sustainable businesses are those entrepreneurs who are thinking hard already about monetization.

Cloud Computing: Vishy Venugopalan

Cloud Computing and Startups

View more documents from midtownninja.