Kategorien
business

Exklusiv und kostenlos: Die Pokemon-Local-business-Social-Media-Umsatz-sofort-Strategie!!!

Seit heute gibt es Pokemon Go ja auch in Deutschland und im Büro war niemand mehr in der Lage den Kopf zu heben, geschweige denn, ansprechbar zu sein. Alle Welt strömte nach dem Mittagessen nach draußen („Verdauungsspaziergang“) oder hetzte durch die Gänge („Er läuft weg..!!!“). Mit Wachstumsraten doppelt so hoch wie Tinder, mit einer Useractivity jenseits von Gut und Snapchat scheint Pokemon Go da anzuknüpfen, wo Pappkärtchen vor 20 Jahren aufgehört haben – nur dass jetzt erwachsene Menschen auf dem Firmen-Parkplatz und nicht mehr auf dem Schulhof stehen. Dass es dabei aber auch findige Köpfe gibt, die daraus sofort eine schneidige local business Strategie machen (Man kann dafür zahlen, dass besonders viele Pokemons auftauchen, die man fangen kann) finde ich hingegen bemerkenswert – einige Pizzerien sollen sich vor Pokemon suchenden Gästen kaum noch retten können, würden nicht Luigi und Co Sonderschichten fahren (ach nee, das war was anderes… 🙂 ) Mehr zu den, wie ich finde wirklich nicht schlechten Werbeideen für kleine Geschäfte auf Pokemon Go, bei den Kollegen von inc.com

 

(Beitragsbild von Miramax Films/Photofest)

Kategorien
business IT

What is the filter economy?

Recently I noticed more and more companies rising, which don’t own an asset, which don’t manufacture a product or don’t create their own content. Instead they provide filters for existing stuff. Examples are:

  • Airbnb (don’t own houses, but let you find the best one for your needs)
  • Uber (don’t own cars, but get you a taxi ride)
  • facebook (don’t create content, but sample your newsfeed)
  • google (search engine) (don’t own content, but let you find the right one.)
While these examples are not new and have been described as players in the so called „sharing economy“ as well, I belive there’s a new aspect to it, when you understand them as filters. Like in a filter economy

What is the filter economy?

Seeing and understanding them as filters shows the underlying need, since more and more content is being created on the net: someone has to sort all the stuff, has to sort out the noise and display the relevant stuff. The businessmodell behind is quite obivous:

Who controls the filter, controls the money.

Controlling the permeability of the filter allows you to exactly target the needs of your customers while being more relevant to them, which usually leads to a higher conversion rate or pricetag. Identifiying the type of filter allows the user to chose what he really needs („I need recreation and spiritual time in the sun“ instead of „I need a flight to Bali, find me a hotel there…“ – you get the point)

Some companies are basically built on filters

Companies which play this to the best are currently:
  • buzzfeed (though they produce content themselves as well 🙂 )
  • Spotify (obvious algorithms and playlists)
  • Slack (filter communication in channels)
So, you can add is my company a filter? to your businessplan canvas when you are just starting or ask yourself which content, which services can my company filter for my customers.
Ideas:
  • provide a filter for video content on the net (youtube does no good job)
  • provide a filter for holidays (no one wants to book a flight, a hotel, a car himself anymore. Travel is still broken.)
  • provide a filter for work
Kategorien
business IT

What is so special about Slack?

The other day it went through the news , that slack’s Valuation is now at 2,8$ Billion.

Whoppa you think, they’ve launched in Feb 2012 – isn’t this going crazy? Well, in a way maybe, tough others – lets have a look at the figures (data provided by Slack):

Screenshot 2015-03-31 19.44.17

Table: Prediction for the year 2015, by me

They say, they do have 135.000 paying customers paying $6,67 per month making an average revenue of $900k a month.

In the table above I put in their prediction, to add $1 mio in ARR every 11 days (which is roughly $3 mio. per month) – though I am not quite sure about them using the term „ARR“ which is defined as Accounting Revenue Rate and is more a Return on Investment figure than a figure average revenue return, which would be my interpretation.

That translates to roughly 4,65 mio paying customers and $704k revenue per employe – not that bad.

Given a continous growth, that might even justify the valuation of $2.8 billion as the multiple of 16 would fall throughout the next 4-5 years.

How did they do it? They have no fuckin idea, as Stewart said in munich this year, but let’s have guess:

– they serve a very fast growing segment of business apps: that is, in contrast to the big payers like yammer etc. small and mid-sized companies . These customers typically use other „semi-professional“ apps like Dropbox, Google Apps, Skype and so on. they are in a segment between the typical freelancer and the big corporations. This segment in general, will explode in the upcoming years adding more and more developers and freelancers in always changing (project-wise changing) combinations in the „services-industry“. Btw: all „old-economy“ industries are being disrupted and becoming service industries.

– these customers are the real cloud customers: they want to move fast and flexibel – and they are willing to pay for stable solutions.

– Slack has integrated with the most important other cloud services, and with one click, they are fully integrated.

– Their native clients are fast, stable and of a very nice and intuitive interface – the hashtag style channeling is known by every private twitter user.

– add to that the upcoming „internet of things“ where you want to have ONE system to control them all, and you can guess, why the bet on slack might be a good one

So, slack is doing many things right – and I am really looking forward to see them moving in the future.

And they can do nice gifs, too… 🙂

Daily active user growth:

Daily active user growth
Kategorien
business

Me public speaking: New Year event at the Sparkasse

From time to time I am invited as public speaker – and at the beginning of this year I was invited to the „new year“ event of the Sparkasse Worms-Alzey-Ried. I spoke in front of 400 bankers (with ties) about our digital classical music magazine VAN and how it transforms media of the past (age old classical music) to todays digital reading, listening and reception habits. There are similiarities to the Sparkasse, because it’s quite an old german bank – the first one was founded in 1778 in Hamburg and with their core business model (being a public-near institute) hasn’t changed much ever since. So they ask themselves how their brand should conduct a change (or more an adaption to new habits and needs), but also the core business model is at stake, due to shrinking interest rates together with rising labour cost.

Sparkassen_Jahresauftakt_2015_Bornholz03

 

As Sparkasse traditionally is a very regional (and personal) bank my advice was to be the central, personal partner, regarding everything money: this includes crowdfunding for regional projects, all in one API for everything online, and a „genius / sales“ approach: Have a „product genius“ help you with everything you need, but you do „sales and business“ with a different guy. This eases the tension of having bankers, trying to sell you something.

Thanks very much for the organizers for having me – it was really exciting getting an inside view of their business and needs.

 

 

Kategorien
business IT

Zusammenarbeit 2.0: collaboration software der motionet

Seit der Gründung der motionet AG in 2007 haben wir verschiedene Frameworks und collaboration software tools erst für die B2C Kommunikation (facebook hat uns dann irgendwie überholt) und dann für die B2B Kommunikation entwickelt: hubber.it ist eine der beiden Plattformen, die wir sowohl selber hosten, bei Partnern hosten als auch auf dem Telekom Business Marketplace. Doch tools sind nicht das Einzige: die Frage ist doch: wer braucht collaboration tools wirklich und isses dann eher ein Slack oder so etwas wie ein facebook-nahes hubber.it wie von uns gebaut. Mit dieser Präse gehen wir manchmal auf Kundenfang: viel zu viele Buzzwords, aber: was drin steht is nicht ganz blöd und wenn man genau hinschaut sieht man, dass es nicht nur um die Tools geht-die sind im Zweifelsfall nämlich eher unwichtig.

Ich selber finde das Thema collaboration im Unternehmenskontext wirklich spannend, gerade wenn man es nicht nur als „was gibts heute in der Kantine“ Austauschtool integriert sondern mit anderer Software über API’s verzahnt: „Weil Maschine XY gerade das Produkt fertig gestellt hat, kannst Du jetzt mit einem Klick hier den Versand triggern und die Kollegen informieren“. Dafür muss man aber verstehen, wie das eigene Unternehmen funktioniert und tickt. Das immer wieder herauszufinden und die wirklichen Mehrwerte zu finden macht mir dann in einem Beratungsprojekt Spaß.

Disclaimer: ich bin Vorstand und Gründer der motionet AG

 

 

Kategorien
business invest IT

Okanda: Book meeting rooms online

Over at Okanda you can now book meeting rooms online – they have a quite big portfolio in germany and UK currently and fastly expanding. And now they even have an image movie – in german 🙂

Disclaimer: I am an investor in Okanda.