Business Models
Marketplace Metrics: The three success factors
Note: This article was originally published on TheNextWeb Marketplaces are difficult businesses to run. Like all multi-sided platform businesses, they suffer from the classic chicken and egg problem: the technology has no value unless buyers and sellers are present and you can’t get the buyers on board unless you have sellers and you can’t bring in sellers [...]
Dissecting Amazon’s Platform Play
Question: Is Amazon a Pipe or a Platform or both? Short Answer: It’s complicated! Long answer follows… Pipes and Platforms are two contrasting business models, as we noted in the last post. However, the internet itself is a platform on which others (you, me, web developers, app makers, everyone) create value. By virtue of this [...]
Why Business Models Fail: Pipes vs. Platforms
Why do most social networks never take off? Why are marketplaces such difficult businesses? Why do startups with the best technology fail so often? There are two broad business models: pipes and platforms. You could be running your startup the wrong way if you’re building a platform, but using pipe strategies. More on that soon, [...]
The network effect playbook: Social products win with utility, not invites
Note: This essay was first featured as a guest post on Andrew Chen’s blog. It’s one of the best resources out there for internet startups. The proverbial chicken and egg problem of building a new social product is well understood among tech startups, and it’s been commonplace to follow two contrasting mechanisms for getting traction. Traditionally, startups [...]
How to become a billion dollar startup: AirBnB, YouTube and Platform Thinking
Note: This essay was first featured on TheNextWeb Technology startups are disruptive because they are driven by a desire to solve an unsolved problem in a unique way and create new value. Most large and established companies, in contrast, are driven by a desire to defeat competition and protect their market turf. Consider the problem [...]
How disruptive platforms get mainstream adoption
“What got you here won’t get you there.” Career advice that works equally well in the world of online platforms. The single factor that separates a successful platform from a failed one is the development of network effects. Most platform businesses fail because they never develop network effects. Social networks without users, content platforms without [...]
Reverse Network Effects: The Challenges of Scaling an Online Platform
Network effects are the most exciting aspect of Platform Thinking. Platform Thinking is an approach to business which looks at an online business as being composed of two elements: platform and value created on the platform. YouTube provides the platform, users create the value (videos) on the platform. KickStarter provides a platform but users [...]
The Three Building Blocks of Platforms
Note: This post first appeared on Harvard Business Review. I am delighted to have coauthored this with Mark Bonchek. The framework presented in this piece is foundational to my work on Platform Thinking and will be referenced in some of the subsequent posts. We typically think of companies competing over products — the proverbial “build [...]
Platform Thinking: How to get startup ideas
How does one find new startup ideas? Every business is built around solving a customer pain. Solving a customer pain creates value which in turn, if successfully harnessed, can be monetized. Platforms, in particular, connect demand and supply to solve customer pain on both sides. Platform Thinking and Startup Ideas One of the patterns for [...]
A Platform Thinking approach to building a business
Every business is an engine. It needs to do a certain set of things repeatedly to create value. If you haven’t figured out that set of repeated operations, you probably haven’t created a scalable business yet. Ford needs to repeatedly assemble cars, Google needs to repeatedly run its crawler, Facebook needs to repeatedly get users [...]
Platform junkie, Singapore-based Early stage internet guy, Currently advisor to multiple platform startups.
This blog is about taking ventures from an idea to a business... and mitigating execution risk.
