Data
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 [...]
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 [...]
How to get users to contribute on a creativity platform
Let’s loosely define creativity platforms as platforms that allow creators to express themselves, and possibly get an audience for their ‘creations’. YouTube, Dribbble, 500px, Instagram, Flickr… the list goes on. A platform without creators is a ghost town and there is little incentive for consumers to use it. Replicating the technology of YouTube is a [...]
The Network Effect Isn’t Good Enough!
This essay originally appeared on TechCrunch. I had the pleasure of co-authoring it with Nir Eyal. Nir runs a great blog about the intersection of psychology, technology, and business at NirAndFar.com. If there is one altar at which Silicon Valley worships, it is the shrine of the holy network effect. Its mystical powers pluck lone startups from obscurity [...]
How Quora, StackOverflow And Yelp Create Sustainable User Contribution Systems With A Simple Hack
Platforms that are dependent on user-generated content (UGC) constantly face a challenge to be sustainable. A key metric for such platforms is the ratio of producers to consumers. Very often, production of content on such platforms occurs around certain seeds. A few examples of seeds are: a) A movie listing on Rotten Tomatoes to incentivize [...]
Reverse Network Effects: Is Twitter Losing Its Mojo?
As a network scales, network effects make the network more useful for users until a point after which further scale makes the network less useful to the users. This is reverse network effects with scale.
Why Promoted Posts Are Not The Social Network Revenue Model We Were All Waiting For
Social Networks haven’t yet figured out a revenue model. Advertising has its limitations as usage shifts to mobile. Both Facebook and Twitter have tried promoting content for a fee but it might not be a sustainable model.
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.
