Mapping Out Your Web Startup

[Click on the image to expand]

Intro

Modeling startups is interesting, especially for entrepreneurs, once you get all the elements of your site down onto a map, you can start seeing the interconnections, new opportunities, strategies and optimizations. I recommend doing this for your site on a large whiteboard.

Building on Dave McLure's article from almost 1 year ago, I have gone ahead and added in an extended viral engine view, more revenue options, retention methods and customer acquisition strategies. Thanks to Immad Akhund my co founder at Heyzap.com for adding in his insights into the model and James Smith.

The Model

The model doesn't pretend to be the only way to look at the system. Depending on your definitions and view point, boundaries can move as can the interconnections. Furthermore, the elements in the model are not a complete list. I'm sure there are better ways to look at this system. It's a 2D view on a complex interlinked system.

Focus

An important point to note is that there are many options present that you may select within each section of the model. E.g. an SEO strategy will just not work for certain keyword areas that you may be trying to win or SEM may not have a positive ROI for your kind of site. Each strategy has a time and a place. Start with a few and get them right. Depending on your product, you should focus your effort on different areas.

Acquisition Engine

You have to get users into your site. These are the classic methods. Many different methods here and channels to explore. Bear in mind what methods are efficient use of your resources, you can't and shouldn't pick them all. You will also need a specific seeding strategy for when you launch, which I should go over in a future post.

Core Product

The users have to interact with something. This could be focused around a website, app (or widget) or infrastructure play. This could also be a combination of these elements. This core product can be distributed into the acquisition, viral and revenue engine so that the boundaries become very blurry.

Viral Engine

You want to greatly accelerate the user acquisition process. You need a viral engine. I have split this into Method and Channels. Methods constitute specific driving forces behind the viral transfer. Channels are the specific channel by which the method occurs. Not all methods and channels are compatible - bear that in mind. The are specific motivations and corresponding incentivizations that lay behind the methods, which I won't go into now. This is not an exhaustive list.

Retention Methods

I have kept this section brief. Once you have users coming into your system you want them to keep coming back.

Revenue Engine

There are two main groups inside here. Trade Methods and Trade Objects. Trade Methods are the method by which the trade object is traded. The trade object is the actual value representation your are trading. E.g. Amazon EC2 trade method is the utility model and they trade bandwidth/storage, ebay is a commission basis (paypal) and a market place which trades mostly real goods (some virtual) but it also has a subscription model upgrade for pro accounts. Wikipedia has its donations. Compete has its freemium to access data but they also license data, pogo.com has its subscriptions to access content, google adwords/adsense is kind of a utility model. Oracle licenses. You can stack combinations of monetization strategies.

Funnels

Each area has it own funnel by which users fall out along the specific processes they have to go through. E.g. a user is on the point of buying something on Amazon - they have to go through 5 screens to get to the end and there is loss of users during this process. Every funnel section has its own specific complex mechanics and related game theory. Optimize the funnels that matter.

Interconnections

In a way, everything is interconnected. The special extra connections to get a mention are the fact that the viral engine can affect the retention, also the viral engine affects the revenue engine is certain products. The retention model also affects the revenue engine.

Things left off the map

You also have a cost engine to go with this. Don't forget to model this as it is affected by the revenue engine, acquisition engine, retention methods and sometimes even the viral engine.

Summary

Remember, this is only a model and a view of the situation. This should help you navigate your product structure and come up with new strategies and ideas. Good luck and leave some comments so I can improve the model for all the entrepreneurs out there.

Adventures of Spock: Rebuilding Vulcan

Warning: there was no actual point in this blog post. It just accidentally happened on weekend afternoon...


"Vulcan has been destroyed, we must rebuild it."




"MMM - I hope this is logical"




"Forget logic Spock, sometimes you have to go with your heart"




"Ok, quick let's go - we have to rebuild Vulcan!"




"Where is Sulu, when you need him.....position the ship..."




"Arrgh somethings not working...."




"Something doesn't sound right with the engine...."


"Something is broken in the engine cooling bay"




"Scotty, we have a problem with the engine cooling"




"We're on full power down here! She canni take any mooooorrrrre"




"I need to think fast, I need a solution!"




"Hmm, this should work....."




"Yes! We've fixed it!"



"Powering up transporters!"




"I must keep away from the red zones"




"Ok ready, to transport to vulcan"




"Powering up.."




"Energize"




"zzzzzzzzzzaalkhdlkjflkjsdflkjsdgklhg "




"Arrgh, vulcannibals have ravaged our once pleasant land."




"Take that, you loquacious zealot."




"And say down, you little homie."




"And I here by plant the first tree of vulcan"




"Live long and prosper. Our job is done here."




"5 years later on Vulcan"

Windows Vista, ActionScript 3 and Flash 10 Debugging – how to output a trace.

In order to debug a ActionScript 3 program in Flash CS4, when you are working with your .swf inside a webpage rather than inside Flash CS4 you need to output trace and errors messsages to a logfile. This is not included in Flash CS4 meaning that if you are trying to make anything more complex or more integrated into a webpage you are programming in the dark.

At the time – I couldn’t find any Vista and Flash 10 specific documentation/blogs posts on this, hence the write up.

1. Create mm.cfg file with the following inside the file:

“ErrorReportingEnable=1 TraceOutputFileEnable=1 TraceOutputFileName=JudeGomila-PC:Users:Jude Gomila:Desktop:flashLog.txt MaxWarnings=50”

2. Replace “JudeGomila-PC” with your “Computer name”. Replace ‘Jude Gomila” with your Vista “Username”

Don’t include the quotes.

3. Save the file into c:\users\YOURUSERNAMEHERE

4. Right click on Computer (what used to be ‘my computer) in explorer.

5. Goto to properties, then “Advanced System Settings”

6. Click on “environmental variables”

7. Add a new variable to your user variables. Variable = HOMEDRIVE, value = c:

8. Add another new variable to your user variable Variable = HOMEPATH, value = %USERPROFILE%

9. For step 8 – remember to leave in the “%” symbols.

10. Click ‘ok’, the click ‘ok’

11. Run your .swf file from Adobe flash CS4 or whatever your using

12. Now if you have the latest flash version 10. Goto the directory C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Macromedia\Flash Player\Logs

13. You should now find the log file in this directory called flashlog.txt

14. Restart you firefox.

15. Now output this flashlog.txt to a tracing program. Your ready to go.

For Mac users, Windows XP, Linux see the following links:

http://www.digitalflipbook.com/archives/2005/07/trace_from_the.php
http://broadcast.artificialcolors.com/index.php?m=20040401
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/15/flex_docs_en/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=Flex_Documentation&file=00000794.htm

Wobbly Webpages and the Rise of 3rd Party Plug and Play

So beginning with this idea.

And this one!

As you can see in the flash animation in the above links. Sites are just more fun if objects inside them can start interacting with other parts of the site. It's clear that this is how some web pages should be. I want my webpages to be wobbly.


Wobble My Site


From a user perspective, I want to drag and drop stuff around, popping components into place. I want to delete components that I don't like and I want the site to remember my settings. Facebook is doing this slightly with their new version but I think we are just scratching the surface here. I want to be able to make elements of the site wobble, interact, bounce and act like objects in reality. I want new feature releases to be optional for me. I want the entire site widgetized. I want to play with the site and interact with it in a much deeper level in a very visual and 'mouse on' way.


I want to have consistant behaviour of my widget components in their different form factors between my browser, operating system and phone. I want my browser to be invisible. I want to have clear channels of content and functionality.


For example, I'm searching and buying plane tickets. I want to be able to make a 'plane ticket look up function by dragging a KAYAK search widget to next to a seatguru.com widget next to a ticket payment widget, my 'check in' widget and my google calendar and reminder system. I want these to be able to hook these together by dragging them next to each other and setting up this process.


Another example, I want to search for a cool movie, download the torrent and rate the film. So I want an Apple trailers widget and IMDB review connected to my torrent lookup on piratebay.com connected to my torrent downloader to my player back to IMDB. Without copy and paste being used or moving across different tabs in a browser. Things should be prefilled in.


I want all functions and all content to be able to be appropriately cross connected.

Share the Wobble

I want my friends to play with some parts of my site experience. Leaving bombs, actions and surprises on sites that I visit. I want my best friends to do fun things to my sites and leave secrets for me. I want to see how friends perform overall processes and learn best practices. I want them to throw a wobbly and for me to be in the middle of it.

3rd Party Plug and Play - Application Level

This is happening already. Processes and actions that are common among many sites are being stripped out and replaced by highly specialised and better widgets.

Comment system - Disqus, JS Kit

Login system - Clickpass

Feedback system - Getstatisfaction

Video Content - Youtube

Music Content - last.fm
Games Content- heyzap.com
News Content - daylife.com

etc

We have a way to go before all functions and content streams are stripped out before we see the rise of the widget mashups and widget platforms. It makes sense for startups to try to compete on a core competancy and focus.

3rd Party Plug and Play - Cloud computing

Hosting, database, dev UI - Heroku

Storage - Amazon EC2

Data portability - Gnip

etc

Conclusion

Imagine, we have everything widgetized, my social graph moves where I go, I can visually make widget mashups to construct new functions and I can see how my friends functionally use the their widgets. I can throw parts of a site around and poke people in new visual ways by causing their google search bar to go bright green - only because they have allowed me to though. I can skin all sites in my theme. My browser and sites have merged. My operating system has disappeared. Widgets have become both so small that even the delete function is a widget but also large 6ft meta widgets (widget mashups) roam the net performing amazing functions that once made me cut and paste and use something called tabs. Bye bye destination site.

Godaddyrefund.me

Godaddy's Landrush Screw Up

So I woke up at 7:30AM to start bidding @ 8AM on .ME domains like everyone else did when the public domain land rush opened last week.

You can imagine I had a list of verbs, unusual urls and cool .me ending words and hoped for the 1000x returns that I wanted to make on the URLS.

So this is what happened:

8AM - I'm ready to start buying. The website is acting real slooooooowwwww.

It takes 45 mins of cart loading time to get my first batch through!!!! It was so slow it was unbelievable. During this time URLs were going in and out of 'unavailable' status as if godaddy had no idea as to what was going on.

8:45AM woah my first batch had gone through of premium URLs. Confirmations come through. Money removed from my bank account.

8:55 AM I got another batch through and confirmations come through to my email.

I continue to do this until around 10AM and I had topped my budget.

Later that day I get emails coming through saying that the URLs had been taken. All URLs had been rejected. How sad. Luckily I had pooled resources with a friend and we managed to get 1 premium together as a team.

So techcrunch then do their post on the matter and godaddy sent out an email saying we're all going to get a refund within 24 - 48 hours plus 5 - 7 days bank processing time. Jokers.

So now some of the refunds have come through. Luckily for me I made some money off the currency move in the mean time between spend in UKP to USD and refund in USD to UKP - it was minimal though.

Godaddy's Prebid Screw Up

So I bid on some domains to get into the private bidding process earlier this year. A similar experience was faced but everyone kept quiet to reduce the competition for domains at the time. Godaddy had also gone through the same process of taking our money then having to refund us later. However, some sources believe that godaddy employees had been hot picking off the best URLs for themselves. All the evidence pointed to this.

More interestingly they also issued login IDs for each individual URL auction. So we had tons of Usernames to use. We had to reset the passwords then change our passwords in a 'ballsed up' long winded process. They then, due to complains, sent out a new process where by our bids were consolidated into one login ID. If only they were using clickpass.

Godaddy Bid Mechanics

Unfortunately, because my bids are coming up soon I can't explain how the mechanics of the bidding work fully. From the way the system is setup though. I can tell various pieces of useful information about the bid (e.g. predicted end price, best time to bid, bid strategy, max bid price I should bid, predicted number of bids). It's going to be exciting knowing this information. I am basically hoping to arbitrage between the privateness of the private godaddy auction (imperfect market) (e.g. imperfect buying) vs. the open market of sedo (near perfect market). So thats the theory. If you want to supply capital and be part of this - email me. I'll tell you how it goes later....in the mean time I'm going to relax.me

Mapping Processes for Startups: Monetization

I'm a big fan of mapping out options for decisions that you have as a startup.

Using a google document spreadsheet we can start to do some basic analysis on various decisions or choices that a startup may face.

This post will attempt to describe some aspects of how to look into selecting a monetization strategy for your website. Sometimes its obvious how to monetize a technology and in many cases its not.

So here is the process:

1. Firstly brainstorm the monetization methods that you may be able to use - at this point don't kill any ideas. A place to start with this is to think in these terms:

• Advertising: Using advertising to generate revenue. E.g. CPC (selling traffic), CPA/affiliate sales (selling action), CPM (selling brand exposure) or a combination of methods.
  
• Subscription: Using a subscription model (freemium/premium) (selling service/access/data)
  
• PAYG: Pay as you go. Using some kind of pay per use model (selling a service/access/data)
  
• Non advertising commission: Commission based method. E.g. Paypal 3.5% cut of transaction (selling a service/access)
• Direct: Selling something directly whether virtual or real. (selling a product)
• Donations: Allow a community donation. (selling vanity/fear/pride/respect/vision)
  
• New Methods: Monetizing in a new ways (selling site engagement/interaction?, selling privacy?, selling identity?, selling social connectivity? )
  
• Combos: Combinations of the above. I.e. multiple revenue streams. [Useful for experimenting and gathering real data and useful when in growth phase and diversifying in search of larger profits).
  

2. Now take these specific 'monetization methods' that you have generated and analyse them using the following fields (using the spreadsheet) filling out the fields with low, medium, high where relevant:

• Description- Write a brief description of the monetization method
  
• Technology required - What kind of technology is required to achieve this. Do you have these skills in your team? Can you get them in?
  
• Product orientation changes - How much do we have to change your 'web product' by in order to make the monetization method work? Do we need new features on our site/widget/platform/technology/etc?
  
• Critical mass required - Do we need to have a critical mass of users in order to get this monetization method to work? Does the method scale better as we get more users. E.g. a market place like ebay. Or does this method scale flatly e.g. no market place.
  
• Time required for implementation - How long will this method take to implement in terms of company time?
  
• Ease of implementation - How easy (excluding the provision of time) is it to make this method?
• Consumer annoyance factor - Do we impair the customer experience by this method and by how much? Banner ads all over the place is one extreme example here. E.g. if twitter were to try to monetize and starting adding ads to feeds or your site - people would complain.
  
• Partner annoyance factor - if we are working with a partner/s do we annoy our partner with our monetization method. If so, by how much?
  
• Exposure - How large is the exposure of this method. E.g. a banner on the front page affects all your users. V.s. Freemuim models offer more exposure to the power users of the site. For advertising methods this can be quantified in terms of pageviews, uniques etc. You want to be high but targeted correctly.
  
• CPC/CPA/CPM revenue potential - this is more advertising specific but try to put some predictions down so you can compare monetization methods.
  
• Contextualisation rating - Is this monetization method contextualizable and to what degree. E.g. there is no point making a freemium model on a site like moneysavingexpert.com as the users are there to learn about saving money. There use affiliate cuts instead. On the other side of the coin Snaptalent are doing great stuff with facebook ads.
  
• Adverse effects on the distribution/growth of your site/widget/etc - a subscription model won't work well on a widget because it would probably kill the distribution effect of the widget. E.g. Subscription model is bad for sites that rely on a market place to grow. Ebay do this now that they have their market but only on the powerusers. E.g. it wouldn't make sense for Zilok to charge a subscription while they are in their growth phase. Much better to use a percentage cut of the sale.
  

3. Now that you understand a bit more about your options, now try to map the value proposition that your site/widget/app/etc has; to the monetization route that you think are candidates. For example:

• If your site makes a process easier then a clear monetization method candidates would subscription, advertising, PAYG.
• If you sell direct sell product that is innovative to the market (then you can charge directly for it).

Other thoughts:

• Make your monetization method work for you in a competitive sense
• Disrupt your competition and create competitive advantage by using a different monetization method than what is normally used in that industry.
• If you are going for multiple monetization methods, you may want to check the compatibility between them and such for the best group effect on revenue/the other factors.
  

Which Twitter Personality Type Are You?

This study is based on real life twitter profile observations.

‘the newbie’ – You’ve just joined. You have no friends. Move onto ‘social climber’ mode. But if you’re popular already on facebook, you can afford to sit back, relax. Become ‘the arrogant one’ – your days as a newbie are numbered.

‘the social climber’ – Tons of following, not so many followers. You’re hoping that some twitwhores will connect back to you. Keep going – you’ll make it as a ‘web celebrity’ some day!

‘the arrogant one’ – Let’s face it – you are arrogant. Your ratio of followers to following is high but your absolute number of followers + followings are low to medium. You may also be classified as ‘lazy’. I would at this point throw some examples in but I don’t want to offend anyone @Dwane.

‘the lazy one’ – [ironic lack of description].

‘the bore’ – You’re naturally accumulating people that you are following but nobody wants to follow you. I’m sorry, you will just have to try harder…

‘the femme fatale’ – So you’re female, hot and you‘ve got this strange following of geeks. Lots of followers, less following. Exploit this niche while it lasts baby.

‘the blogger’ – Tons of followers and you seem to be following quite a few as well. You are balanced and doing well. You add real value to the internet and adsense – thanks for that.

‘the entrepreneur’ - Whatever your intentions, twitter may help your startup and business opportunities. Use it and love it.

‘the web celebrity’ – Well done, you’ve made it to the higher echelons of net society. You have the highest levels of followers and you tend to follow lots of other people to help you maintain that position. Now its time to sell your twitter profile on ebay and use it for advertising products on each tweet.