Symbiotic Entrepreneurship
One of the strategic angles we may want to look at in this course is how to tap into the flow an existing group of users to meet needs that are not currently being met by, say, popular Web 2.0 sites. Not all Internet startups need to be stand-alone applications. In fact, to the degree that you can piggyback on the success of current applications, to that degree you gain leverage for powerful marketing and/or the opportunity to be acquired at a later date. We can point to dozens of successful endeavors that have taken this path.
So with respect to ebay, like PayPal and Skype before us, we’ve got to ask “Are there tools or functions that would be really helpful to users that are not currently being met by ebay or its associated applications?”
That may be a great starting point for identifying entrepreneurial opportunity.
Maybe we’d call it “Symbiotic Entrepreneurship.”
Create an application that benefits both users and the owners of the application itself, and you might just position yourself for a nice acquisition.
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January 30th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
That would be pretty sweet if we came up with a killer app to go along with an already successful platform.
Let’s see for Facebook there are of course apps…
ebay…already is software for sniping, payment and layouts, what else?
January 30th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Slide.com is a perfect example of a company built around applications. It recently received a second round of VC investment of US$50 million. Target popularity and add on! A reactionary model of success.