Wednesday, February 13, 2008 by Lincoln Murphy
Back in December 2007 I wrote a post about saving Starbucks from its impending doom. As it turns out, they took my advice and are going to begin offering free Wireless Internet access. Hopefully this will stop the bleeding. Labels: marketing, starbucks
 | »
Friday, February 1, 2008 by Lincoln Murphy
I've been monitoring my web statistics and have noticed some interesting things, and have also made some changes. First, I've noticed a handful of clicks on my email address, which is behind a "mailhide" feature I wrote about here. I've noticed that these clicks came from people that found my site via a search for something to do with SaaS or they came from my LinkedIn profile. Either way, I can see that they weren't robots. The problem is that I never received an email from them. Either the system failed (thy couldn't read the captcha, the popup was blocked, etc.) or they simply got irritated and moved on. Either way, that cost me a valuable contact so I have removed it. You can now contact me directly via email at lincoln@lincolnmurphy.com.Second, aside from SaaS traffic, which makes up the majority of my traffic, thankfully, I've also noticed a lot of traffic coming on older articles. Some are links from other blogs that linked to my article when it was first posted. Others are coming in from Google searches (almost exclusively). Many keyword searches include the term Mapsco and end up at my lengthy article about the mapping company. In fact, I've had a handful of searches internally via my Lijit widget with the term Mapsco. The other non-SaaS traffic is coming from northwest Arkansas (Wal-Mart territory) to my article published early in 2007 about Wal-Mart's customer segmentation plan.I'm have an pipeline of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Product Marketing articles that I'm going to try to bring online in the next couple of weeks. Also, I'm experimenting with Squidoo as a platform for aggregating SaaS Product Marketing news and articles.Labels: actionable, intelligence, marketing, SaaS
| »
Wednesday, January 16, 2008 by Lincoln Murphy
I'm always trying to learn about real life, in-the-field objections that sales people are having when it comes to selling SaaS products, especially to enterprise clients. There was an article published today on Silicon.com that features an objection to a SaaS product that I have not yet heard of... limited feature set. Wait, yes I have, and this is not a SaaS problem just because the product in question was a SaaS product.If you aren't interested in reading the article, or the synopsis of the article, here is my take on it. Basically, the vendor showed the client some pre-release features that they couldn't deliver in a timely manner so the client looked for a product that could deliver. Unfortunately to get the features they needed, the client had to take a best-of-breed (do we still say this?) approach rather than an integrated one. This new approach caused problems since sharing data with the systems chosen proved to be a challenge.This scenario could have occurred regardless of the software delivery method. First, integrating products that are not built to share data is not easy. Whether deployed or SaaS, products that are built without data sharing in mind often cause problems when forced to integrate. I think the mentality with a deployed solution, where you generally have access to the underlying database, is that if push comes to shove, you can drop down and query the data manually. Queries are one thing, but often people think they can import and export data this way. What they often miss is that business rules are enforced within at the application level and by writing directly to the database they could be causing data integrity problems.Since SaaS products are hosted, a mechanism to directly work with the underlying database is generally not available, nor should it be. The SaaS vendor should know their market, know where they fit in the market, and know what products they might have to integrate with. They should learn this early in the process and create the tools necessary to allow for integration with those third-party systems. This should not come up as a concern to the client if the SaaS vendor has done their homework.Second, in the case of the scenario referenced in the Silicon.com article, the vendor made the error of showcasing features they were not ready to deliver. Again, this is not a SaaS problem but an age-old problem in the Software business itself. Selling features that do not exist yet, or even products that don't exist yet, is not new, and not limited to SaaS. Software vendors of every kind must be cognizant that over promising and under delivering is not the way to build a sustainable business.Labels: marketing, product management, SaaS, sales, start-up, technology
| »
Tuesday, January 15, 2008 by Lincoln Murphy
This isn't my first complaint about online mapping services. Also, in this article I ask why Google doesn't have their own URL Shortening Service. It sure would make sending map URLs easier. For instance, if I want to send a map URL to someone, I can hit "Send" and it will bring up a window for me to send an email to someone.However, it just sends an email with this really long URL in it:http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&
geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q=1+post+street,+
san+francisco,+ca&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=
35.136115,82.265625&ie=UTF8&ll=37.789811,
-122.402029&spn=0.008563,0.020084&z=16&
iwloc=addr&om=1 If I didn't want to send an email from within the Google UI, but instead wanted to include this link in a meeting invitation in Outlook, it would either be cumbersome or I would use a URL shortening service. Why doesn't Google create user-friendly, sharable URLs for their maps and other services? In fact, why don't any of the large mapping companies do this? I just checked Yahoo! and MapQuest and they both do the same thing. MapQuest's URL is just a monstrosity!Yahoo! (not as bad as Google, but still bad)http://maps.yahoo.com/#mvt=m&lat=37.789098&
lon=-122.402044&mag=3&q1=1%20post%
20street,%20san%20francisco,%20ca
MapQuest (HORRIBLE! Is this for real?)http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?
address=1%20Post%20St&city=San
%20Francisco&state=CA&zipcode=
94104%2d5203&country=US&title=%3cb
%20class%3d%22fn%20org%22%3e1%20
Post%20St%3c%2fb%3e%3cbr%20%2f
%3e%20%3cspan%20style%3d%22display
%3ainline%3bmargin%2dbottom%3a0px
%3b%22%20class%3d%22locality%22
%3eSan%20Francisco%3c%2fspan%3e
%2c%20%3cspan%20style%3d%22
display%3ainline%3bmargin%2dbottom%
3a0px%3b%22%20class%3d%22region%
22%3eCA%3c%2fspan%3e%20%3cspan%
20style%3d%22display%3ainline%3bmargin
%2dbottom%3a0px%3b%22%20class
%3d%22postal%2dcode%22%3e94104
%2d5203%3c%2fspan%3e%2c%20%20%
3cspan%20style%3d%22display%3ainline%
3bmargin%2dbottom%3a0px%3b%22%20
class%3d%22country%2dname%22%3eUS
%3c%2fspan%3e%3c%2fspan%3e&cid=
lfmaplink2&name=&dtype=s
I can't understand why in 2008 this type of thing is still around. With the explosion of Twitter, micro-blogging, text messaging and IM, this just doesn't make any sense. And as I stated in the other post on URL shortening, the metrics Google et al. are missing out on is unbelievable.Labels: google, marketing, random thoughts, usability
| »
by Lincoln Murphy
Why doesn't Google provide its own URL shortening service? Can you imagine the potential for a Google-owned version of this type of product. Think of the intelligence they could gain on the popularity of URLs.No longer does a link have to be on a published web page to count against their Page Rank, but now the sharing of those URLs could be taken into account. In fact, this seems to me to be a better way (potential system-gaming aside) of determining the popularity of a URL. A big question is, how many people publish links to their favorite content vs. share URLs with friends. I'm guessing the former out-weights the latter by a huge margin.If Google provided an easy-to-use tool (bookmarklet, addition to its toolbar, integration with gMail and Reader, etc.) and encouraged its use, this could be a serious blow to the 90+ URL Shortening Services out there, and a major gain in actionable intelligence for them.Labels: google, marketing, random thoughts, technology
| »
by Lincoln Murphy
LinkedIn can only be used for non-commercial purposes...
Is this the first site where 100% of the users are in violation of the terms of service?Labels: linkedin, marketing, random thoughts
| »
Monday, December 31, 2007 by Lincoln Murphy
I'm not going to attempt to predict the future, but I believe 2008 will be the year of the Small Vertical (intra-vertical focused) and Niche Horizontal (spanning only a few, related verticals) SaaS ISV. The headline producing SaaS ventures in 2007 were the big players, with horizontal offerings. These were Salesforce.com (CRM), Business Objects (BI), and NetSuite (Office Productivity). Just as in the deployed world, "big" horizontal applications are the same ones that have traditionally received the press. And 2008 will not be much different. Small ISVs that until now have remained in the "deployed" software and traditional licensing game will begin to break out. I predict that 2008 will see the largest influx of vertically focused and niche horizontal SaaS offerings to the market to date. The future of SaaS (the long tail, if you will) is the Small Vertical and Niche Horizontal products and tools. These will be new tools, tools ported from "deployed" solutions, and internal tools utilized by technology services organizations they would like to productize.The problems I wrote about in my articles in early 2007 regarding selling SaaS solutions to the Enterprise for the most part still hold true. Sure, the climate is changing, but many of the objections are still being faced. These challenges are actually a good thing for well-prepared ISVs as they provide barriers to entry for those SaaS vendors that are not ready to overcome them. In 2008, these barriers will become an even larger part of the story as more and more small ISVs attempt to sell SaaS products to F1000 companies. Large, well-funded, and well-connected, SaaS vendors had to overcome these same hurdles to get to where they are, but had the resources to wait out the market; small ISVs do not have that luxury.Since I work with companies to bring their vertically-focused and niche horizontal on-demand software and technology service products to market, 2008 will present some interesting challenges and opportunities.Happy New Year!Labels: business, marketing, SaaS, software, technology
| »
Thursday, December 6, 2007 by Lincoln Murphy
 Brand Autopsy has an incredible series on what it is going to take to save Starbucks. While Starbucks is far from heading into the deadpool, its same store traffic has dropped for the first time in history. While the folks over at Brand Autopsy have some wonderful ideas, and I can see where Seni Thomas is going with his new media ideas, but I say it is even simpler than all of that. In fact, it is simpler than what Starbucks is doing with traditional advertising. Are you ready for this? They should make their wi-fi free. That is all.You see, when their store traffic was high, they didn't need, or even want, people hanging out, leeching off the free Internet, even if they might buy an extra cup of coffee. The customer turnover was the key to the model; pushing people through like cattle. They simply had plenty of foot traffic and many of their stores were packed. Those that really just wanted a place to hang out, drink coffee, and work on the web found the local coffee shops, and some national chains, more than accommodating. And, frankly, for people still going to Starbucks for business meetings, many find a signal from an adjacent apartment complex or other business or use a mobile data card and connect that way. Starbucks lost a large share of people, not because the people found a better coffee product, but because the thing that was once a luxury, a free Internet connection, was now at the core of their decision on where to go for coffee. So, the net effect of providing free wi-fi is that you instantly get back the folks that would prefer Starbucks but choose the local coffee shop that has the free wi-fi. This, by the way, will also cause the local coffee shops to have to step up to compete on different level, rather than just offering something Starbucks doesn’t. Additionally, by providing a web-interface to gain access to the free wi-fi system that displays terms of service and disclaimers, Starbucks can also advertise to a captive audience (similar to Panera). While I wouldn't suggest selling ads to third-parties (or worse using contextual advertising from Google) on the login-portal outright, as that might dilute the brand, they could certainly drive users to partner online services, such as their iTunes tie-in. As an additional value-add, and revenue driver, Starbucks could present coupons that the customer can send to their mobile device and show the cashier for discounts on non-standard items, such as takeaways like mugs, packaged coffee, etc. No need to discount drinks, they'll already buy those at full price, but this would drive revenues through ancillary items and push slow movers in a big way. Additionally, I would provide a pay service that offers a better QoS guarantee for people that still want that, but they would still get the advertising and coupons because it is a value-add, not just a nuisance.So, in my estimation, that 1% traffic drop could be made up, and revenues increased, by opening up their wi-fi and marketing their retail products through that channel. No need to spend any money advertising through traditional channels, no need to develop new innovative drinks, no need to glue cups to cars, etc. I don’t think this is the end-all, be-all of what they need to do, but it is certainly a start. I do like the Brand Autopsy suggestion of making the stores smell more like coffee, however. Image via.
Labels: business, coffee, ideas, marketing, retail, starbucks
| »
Tuesday, November 27, 2007 by Lincoln Murphy
 Ewan MacLeod, who runs SMS Text News, an all-things-mobile blog that is updated multiple times every day, agreed to help me out. Ewan posted some questions I sent in order to solicit feedback from his audience. The question pertains to mobile (SMS) network aggregators and large ASPs and whether they take an active role in the success of their lower-tier partners.
Here is a link to the post and I will leave it there. If you have any answers for me, please post them there. Feel free to contact me directly, as well, but I want to make sure Ewan gets the traffic and that everyone can share in the resulting responses.
Image viaLabels: business, channel, management, marketing, mobile, sms
| »
Thursday, October 18, 2007 by Lincoln Murphy
 You probably capture a lot of data in your web or SaaS app, but how often do you mine that data for Actionable Business Intelligence; information you can use to solve business problems, such as slumping revenue, high client turnover, etc? It might be time to stop everything else you’re doing and go write some queries. Below are some scenarios that I helped a start-up solve recently with information right at their fingertips.
If you have paying customers who aren’t using your system, find out why they aren’t actively using the system and fix it.
Ask them what you can do to make their experience better, what problems they are having, etc. If you do not, when their contract is up, or they get their next bill, there is a high probability they will no longer be paying customers. It is much easier and cheaper to keep these customers than it is to go find new ones.
If the majority of your system’s usage is from non-premium users, maybe you are giving away too much.
Contact those free users who are actively using the system and find out why they haven’t upgraded. If the answer is “I don’t need those premium features” then you are giving away too much. You can either reduce the feature set on the free version or introduce advertising within the free product.
The former might cause some problems with your users, but the reality is it has to be done. Tell them you are scaling back on the feature set in the free version but you would be happy to upgrade them to the premium version at a discount.The latter can be implemented without making existing users too upset and would be one of the reasons someone would upgrade to the premium version; to get rid of those pesky ads. Remember, however, that if your user base is small, ads might not make up for the lost premium revenue.If you have multiple people from the same company using your service, perhaps you could leverage that into a corporate account.
Those users may not even know the others in their office are using it. If you don’t feel you have enough users at that company for them to consider a corporate account, leverage the few users you do have to spread the word internally… give them an incentive to spread the word (free month for every new user, etc.). This will quickly get you to that magical number you’ve conjured up that would give you confidence to sell to corporate. Alternatively, you might find that you have a large, un-related user base in certain cities, and that might be a great place to go for an early-adopter round table (with free pizza!) to get their feedback and to get them to spread the word for you.If the usage of your system is very small or the majority of the users are not paying, perhaps you can use that data to justify reducing your overhead.
Do you need all that hardware at the co-lo if you are only getting 70 hits per day or do you really care if the freeloaders have to wait a second longer for processing to occur? This is difficult for tech-founders who might have a geek crush on their servers but could be enough to save a company with low revenues.Finally, whether you are mining data or not, make sure to constantly solicit feedback from your early-adopter customers. It reminds them, and you, who exactly you are building your web service for.Image via. Labels: actionable, application, business, data, ideas, intelligence, marketing, mining, SaaS, technology, web
| »
Thursday, October 11, 2007 by Lincoln Murphy
 Sales = ABC (Always Be Closing)
Business Development = ABO (Always Be Opening)The focus of business development is not to close as many sales as possible in the shortest time possible (no quotas here), but to build as many relationships as possible over time. In business development you are looking to open doors to create opportunity for the sales team to close sales. These doors must be open or the sales team has less chance. Often, these relationships take years to nurture and are more than worth the trouble.I thought I came up with this, but I found this from the Book Yourself Solid blog that mentions this different mindset. If you search for ABC, on the other hand, you will find a million articles.Door kicker via Labels: business, development, marketing, networking, sales
| »
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 by Lincoln Murphy
 Obviously the main value proposition of social networks is to show everyone else who we know. It's not about keeping in touch or keeping a record of our contacts, it's about proving to everyone else how popular we are. If we don't have many connections or friends, we simply say that we don't really participate; "I'm not an active user". It's pointless.What we really need is a way to keep track of those people who are actually a part of our "social network" (can we get a new name, please), and a way to keep up with them and their changing profiles. Then Xobni Insight appears on the scene and seems to be heading in this direction. Read more about it if you are unfamiliar with the way it works here, here, and here.I was lucky enough to get an early invitation to the Xobni beta was immediately blown away at how it exposes the social network that you already have and updates the "network" as you organically add people. Its not about meeting people, it's about getting to know the people that you know better, and staying in touch. If Xobni can figure out a way to build a network around the exposure of this data, they will instantly create the most useful "social network" around, at least for business.Here is an example of how a Xobni-powered social network would have changed the dynamics of a recent Connection Request exchange on LinkedIn. A guy contacted me in an effort to make contact with one of my connections. I forwarded his info to my connection and never got a response. I tried again because I really wanted to hook them up (it was a potentially lucrative gig for my connection), to no avail. I eventually called and left a message telling my connection to contact this guy, but no dice. Oh well, time to move along.Why did this happen and how could it have been avoided with network intelligence powered by Xobni? First, if LinkedIn had Xobni metrics embedded for my connections, or if Xobni had its own web-based visibility into my network (as I choose to expose it), the guy trying to contact my connection would have noticed that I haven't communicated via email with my connection in a few months. In fact, given the ability to drill down, they could have seen that the last time we had an email conversation was over three months ago and that I had, in fact, emailed my connection two times in that time period with no responses to those messages. Perhaps my connection is just that, a "connection", and not a "relationship". Given that, perhaps this guy would have avoided contacting me.For someone doing prospecting who doesn't want to waste time, this type of network intelligence would be very beneficial (and valuable). I think it is safe to assume that only a handful of everyone's connections are their true friends or close colleagues. Of my connections, probably 10% are people I deal with even once a month. The rest are people I want to maintain a connection with "just in case", but rarely go to them for any thing of substance. I don't have any substantive metrics, but anecdotal evidence suggests that many (if not most) LinkedIn networks are like that. Most of the people I know really well are not on LinkedIn and, frankly, have no interest.A Xobni-powered social network would completely change the dynamics of social networking; in fact, it could turn the entire model on its head. Create a way to feed the Xobni engine with multiple email accounts, IM, Skype, mobile phone and SMS data (via on-device software), and you can create visibility into who is really connected and who did a glorified reciprocal link bit. As long as the Xobni powered network is opt-in with the ability to expose my data to only certain groups of people and the network effect data is anonymous, the possibilities are incredible. So far, I am very impressed with the Xobni Outlook plugin and can see some incredible things on the horizon for this company.Labels: ideas, marketing, networking, social, technology
| »
Sunday, April 22, 2007 by Lincoln Murphy
Disclaimer: Everything contained within this post is speculation on my part, I have no information about the internal workings of Mapsco.People outside of Texas and Colorado are most likely not familiar with Mapsco (history here). Mapsco produces physical map books, where the entire metro area is broken down over a series of pages and each page is broken down into a grid. You look up a street in the index, and it tells you what grid cell, which is a letter, the address block (2500 - 2700 for example) belongs to. For example, the Mapsco number for the address 11811 Preston Rd. Dallas, TX 75230 (their Dallas retail store) would be 15X; Page 15, Cell X.
 Obviously this code is map book specific, both by listing a page and the fact that there is no metro area designation. Some simple modifications, such as grid number vs. page and the addition of a metro prefix, such as DFW, would allow the code to transition from paper to web and back, without adding much heft. It is pretty cool really; shorthand for a physical address would be very, very welcome in today's terse world of IM, texting, etc.For those in the Dallas / Fort Worth area, until a couple of years ago, Mapsco was almost ubiquitous, at least for businesses that did any amount of local travel. In fact, real estate ads in the newspaper would often list the Mapsco number of the house so you wouldn't have to look it up, just turn to the page in the booklet and be on your way. How great.Then the Internet changed everything. As web map systems started becoming better and better, adding semi-accurate driving directions, the need for Mapsco suddenly disappeared. It seems the company decided that the only way it could remain relevant was to move away from consumer-oriented mapping and focus on detailed business and government mapping. This was always a large portion of their business, but it seems, at least if you look at their website, that their focus is definitely in those other areas. They have not stopped making retail map books, but I believe they made a strategic decision to focus on business and government. A quick glance at the vendor list from the gigantic Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting in San Francisco last week does not indicate that Mapsco had a presence.How has this potential shift worked out for them? I don't know. They are still around. I'm not sure if they had plans to move into other states before then decided to hold off when they shifted focus, or even if they did shift focus. This is all from an outside perspective. As a consumer in the DFW area, Mapsco used to be synonymous with mapping, and it simply is not anymore.So what if you go to the Mapsco site and want to see an interactive map? You are sent to a third part mapping site called Multimap http://www.multimap.com/. I cannot see a direct connection between the two companies (though there may be one), but Multimap does not seem to offer the Mapsco number in their mapping system. I'm guessing someone at Mapsco said "you know, we should at least provide some type of interactive mapping system on our site." Perhaps this was done a few years ago before mashing up with Google, Yahoo! Or Microsoft (GYM) Maps was easy (or possible). At least if Mapsco hooked up with GYM, they might have made a buck or two off of contextual advertising!But wait, after some digging around on their site, you will find that they do have an online version of their maps; only its not free, and 12 months of "internet mapping" is included with their "VIP" packages. The cheapest is $50 per year, which probably isn't bad for what you get; a package that includes a map book and 50 inquiries with a Data Service Specialist. Also, they do use their Mapsco number in their Store Locations list, and even have a link to a static image of the map grid. Now that is what I'm talking about.So why am I picking on Mapsco? What did they do to me? Honestly, it is just something I've been obsessed with for a while and thought I would share. A bit of therapy, really. Mapsco may have a thriving business doing what they do. If not, perhaps they might want to listen to my words if as nothing else, a tech-savvy consumer living in their top market.First of all, let me get one thing clear. I do not believe Mapsco should ditch the map books. There will always be a market for paper maps; and there's are very easy to use. Even when mobile web devices are ubiquitous, there will still be people who want real maps, and the Mapsco numbering system is fantastic. If you need to use a real map, Mapsco is the way to go.However, I believe they could seriously augment their brand (which still has great value in the DFW area, at least) by offering an online mapping system. You tell me what your Mapsco code is, perhaps in a Craigslist ad or via IM. I throw that in a browser toolbar extension or desktop widget, snag the map, print and I'm out the door. You could do that with addresses now, but it is not always that simple or quick.How many times have you entered a very detailed, very correct address into GYM maps only to get a puzzled look from your browser? Entering a 6 or 7 digit code to get a map is much better than typing in a whole address. In my experience too, GYM maps are slow. This is with a fast system on a fast broadband connection. I often find myself going back to the "classic" maps rather than the new dynamic maps (at least on Yahoo!) so I can see the full map. I often go to Yahoo! from Google when it simply won't load all of the map pieces. Mapsco wouldn't have to even be dynamically generated. Just give me the grid cell image I'm interested in. Fast, easy, and I'm on my way. In an ironic twist, I believe by improving their brand's standing and putting them back in the "map business" in consumers' minds, this will probably drive up sales of their map books.Does this solve the problem of door-to-door directions? No. But it will sure get you in the vicinity quick. Take that and the street address and you are good to go. If you want directions, Mapsco could mashup with Google. They need to stick to what they do best and that is the grid and numbering system. Everything else out there someone else is doing and they can just leverage those other systems.Is it too late for Mapsco, though? Not at all. While, as I said earlier, Mapsco is not where most people's minds go when the term maps is mentioned these days, people still know about the brand and remember it with great affection. I've mentioned this to many people who fondly remember using Mapsco. Unfortunately "Are they still around?" is generally the follow-up to that memory. I'll add this. Not only do I think they still have great brand recognition, this would also be the best time to do this. From a technology standpoint, this would be relatively easy to implement. First, it seems a company called MapLogic, who licenses GIS data from ESRI, has a product called MapLogic LayoutManager that lets you create real-world map books, complete with street index and everything. It seems some modifications to that system would allow Mapsco to overlay their grid onto any location ESRI has data for (basically everywhere in the world) and put it into book form. This same data could also be leveraged for their web site. According to their site, Mapsco collects their own map data, which means they will have a difficult time scaling their operations (unless they have super-deep pockets).From a business standpoint their brand is still very well known, at least in the areas where they gained traction over the last 50+ years, and they could leverage that swimmingly. I believe a lot of people in Dallas would really like to see Mapsco come back with a killer service, and would really support them. I know I would.By the way, Mapsco... if you are reading this, I can help you make this happen! I also have lots of other ideas I didn't list here that I can see coming from this system.- LincolnLabels: ideas, marketing
| »
Thursday, March 1, 2007 by Lincoln Murphy
Is competition bad? This is always a hotly debated topic. How many entrepreneurs, when asked about competition for their new venture, respond "there is none?"Not only does that response make the entrepreneur look foolish by saying that there is no competition, but that lack of competition does two things:- It shows that the entrepreneur did not do his homework (going back to "foolish")
- It un-validates the market
First of all, it really does make the entrepreneur look foolish. There is no other product or service, anywhere, that does what you are trying to do? Really? At all? Okay, so they may not be doing exactly what you are, down to the last detail, but are there other products or services that come close? How about substitutes? Even the status quo is the competition. An entrepreneur must think of every potential competitor, even if the only competition is "no action".Assuming that there is not even a substitute product (other than doing nothing), by stating that no one is playing in your field could be a turn off to investors. Why is no one playing in this field? Could it be that there is no economic reason to enter the market? Is there no money to be made? Like selling ice to Eskimos? (With global warming, this might just be a viable market now!) Perhaps the niche is simply to tight. What if you expand a bit, do you now see competition? But what if... just what if you did find that one thing that no one has ever thought of before and there really is no competition (except there always is the status quo), then you better be able to prove that no person has thought of it before and you really are the first. This is not impossible, and I hope that you do find that needle in a haystack, but it is a bit improbable these days. If it is true though, you must be able to prove that there really is an economic model behind it.The bottom line is, if you enter a market with no competition, you have your work cut out for you, both in finding investors and customers. The investors won't believe you have a market and the customers don't know there is a pain you have a solution for. Competition is good; a fragmented market with lots of small competitors is even better. Look, everyone is jumping in, but no one has significant market share! Whoo Hoo!In case you wish to keep track of your competitors, my buddy Andrew Holt started a site last year, which I use extensively, called Competitious. It is a great competitive intelligence site, especially for web companies. It aggregates data from around the web on both you and your competitors, keeps up with your buzz on the blogosphere, etc. Go read their front page and learn all about what they do. Fantastic site, and free!- LincolnLabels: business, competition, marketing
| »
|
I help companies bring their Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Web applications to market by leveraging the Morph Application Platform and Morph AppSpaces, the first Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for Ruby on Rails.
I am located in Dallas, Texas. Contact me via email.
|
