What's the revenue model?

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was asked what the revenue model was for Twitter and he replied: "I don't know. I'm making this up as I go,"
How do companies such as this raise 10's of millions? Is this 1999 all over again.

I started WrapMail in 2005 (actually started operations in 2006) and right our of the gate there was a very clear revenue model and pitch:
----------------

You have a website and your employees send emails every day.
WrapMail makes every external email into a marketing tool without anything to install on any desktop – nothing to learn BUT when the email arrives the recipient is now exposed to your interactive letterhead!
Every external email can show your brand, your products/services and of course the images are clickable so you will drive more people to your website.
When your wrapped emails are clicked the system tells you who is clicking on what and when!
You’re going to send emails every day anyway, why not show people what you have to offer – just click on this email to experience for yourself. Every employee becomes part of the marketing effort with WrapMail.
Cost: $40 to sign up, thereafter $5 per sender per month
---------------
We're approaching 1b corporate email accounts worldwide, pretty easy to multiply this with $5/month to see a colossal market. An added bonus is the fact that our model is residual!

I can understand that start ups fly by the seats of their pants in the beginning BUT there's got to be more to it than just building an audience, at least for me to invest.

Brick and mortar can learn from online companies

In the beginning most internet companies charged for information (newspapers for example) and then it changed as they found alternative ways to drive revenue. This lead to a lot of good information becoming free to the user while others footed the bill.

The "brick and mortar" world could take a lesson here and improve their position in the competitive landscape.

Imagine for example if travel was free. Who would pay for it?

Hint: Take a look at what's footing the bill online for the most part and you're in the right arena but it is not as obvious as just "advertising".

This might be my next project BUT to get people thinking outside the box wont hurt.

Have a nice weekend :-)

How to fix the US economy

Bureaucrats like to complicate things, I like them simple (which the former of course view as radical thinking).

1. Plan to drill for oil off shore (look to Norway for any environmental concerns)and start drilling asap (just look at oil prices after Bush said he wanted to get going on this!).
2. Plan new nuclear facilities
3. Enforce laws on the books that currently are being ignored such as:
a. Immigration
b. Naked short selling - this is a BIG one - this has been illegal since 1933 but still happens in massive volume every single day and is a huge burden on the stock market
4. Fix the tax-system, preferably eliminate income and corporate tax but at the very least change individual tax to a flat tax of no more than 15%
5. Change the mentality of government to find ways to earn money selling the public services they want or that someone is willing to pay for.

There once was a Swedish Business Leader who stated "when you sweep dirty stairs you start on top" and then he fired almost all his business leaders.

The US should be looked upon as the largest Corporation in the world and run as such focusing on profitability while at the same time taking care of both the employees and the stockholders (tax-payers). The thinking needs to change or this "Free" society will be outpaced by other continents and the "Empire" will indeed crumble.

Innovation is the mother of capitalism and as such needs to be sufficiently motivated and not, as today, be discouraged by red tape and bureaucracy. Intellectual property creates independence and that coupled with energy independence...now you got something.

maybe less attorneys and a few more entrepreneurs :-) would do the trick?

are emails secure?

I recently spoke to a CEO who really believed that his email was totally secure since they had their own "extremely secure" data center. Total nonsense! When the email leaves that very secure server in the data center it will go through a minimum of 2 service providers and very often numerous routers and switches on its way to the recipient. These "boxes" that the email passes through can be accesses by a large amount of people (typically support people) and of course these people can read these emails if they wanted to (just make a copy). Actually many ISP's do keep copies of all the emails that pass through their server!

Emails are NOT secure (encrypted emails are more secure BUT that requires decryption on the other end, a daunting task).

The root of the problem here is really the lack of understanding IT in its basic form at the CEO level, a subject for a separate post. Lack of knowledge is costly.

US Banking

I don't get it! I go online to my bank, Citibank, and pay my Landscaper. The bank turns around a few days later and prints a check that they send via the US Postal system. Is this 2008 in a modern world where internet is abundant and I can watch TV on my cell phone? I happen to also have an account in Europe and there internet banking works a little differently:

I go online, enter the recipients account number (nobody writes checks there anymore, every bill is electronic and always has the recipients account number on it), the amount and confirm. Within seconds the funds have arrived in the recipients account. Furthermore, most bills now show up in my bank account (that's right, not in the mailbox) and there I can approve or not - it's one click. These transactions are bank-independent! There's no such thing as waiting for a week or two for a check to clear.

When will the US Banks get coordinated and make this simple for their clients? Of course the banks like to ride the money and make interest but I'm afraid that this hurts them in the long run: Let the clients have immediate access to THEIR money and as such become more effecient and more profitable - this will lead to larger deposits and need for other banking services.

Efficiency on all levels is what will grow the economy.

iPhone - what's missing?

Got the latest iPhone and yes, it is better with 3G. I still do not like the fact that these phones are locked so I cannot use other SIM-cards but that should go away next year.

So, what's missing?

Why can not somebody make a cell phone that becomes a complete mobile device that contains every function one use other remotes or methods to transfer data? Here's what I'd like to see my ONE device be able to do:

Phone
Remote for any electric device (from my TV to garage door)
Credit/Debit card - this way a code must be punshed with every purchase (there goes a lot of the fraud in the garbage)
Vital data (Drivers Licence, Health info etc etc)
Frequent Flyer cards
Internet/Browser
TWO SIM slots

I basically want one device that contains everything in my wallet, acts as a phone and a PC and replaces any other remote device.
Security will be important so it needs to have information be protected and also store vital information online somewhere for retrieval.

The iPhone is as close as what I've seen and the technology to do everything on my whish-list is already there. I would think especially banks would love to drop the physical credit card and replace it with the one stored in my cell that requires a code on every purchase.

Politicians: Make money, don't take money!

I have a dream that one day a "politician" (and this will not be the run-of.the-mill-in-somebody's-pocket-politician) will get on the barricades and say:

We the government should start to MAKE money instead of TAKE money.

Imagine if the government (who employs about half the people directly or indirectly in this country) would look at the other side of the equation: Revenue (NO, that's not TAX).

How can the various pieces of the government MAKE money? How can they sell something that we will buy?

Example: Prisons

1. Have people in prison MAKE something that we would buy. Maybe take all the smart white collar crooks and start a software company (PrisonSoft). They could develop software for all kinds of applications and the talent pool is enormous! The not so smart guys can also make something sellable and put it up for sale on eBay or other places.

2. Any prison located next to a highway - put advertising on the walls

3.Government cars could have advertising on them

4. Government run casinos

etc etc etc - some ideas might be WAY out there but the bottom line should be: MAKE money don't TAKE money.

Now, combine this with cutting the fat of the pencil-pushers (you know who I'm talking about, the crowd that spent a few million dollars in their cubicles and came up with the brilliant idea to call Car Pool lanes HOV - what's the deal with that???). Abolish the word TAX and IRS (there's a few hundred thousand people that can do something else).

We the People should be able to build our businesses and the country without the interference of some dude in a cubicle making it difficult for us. Of course there are laws to stop the crooks but don't make the environment such that innovation is killed before it gets started. 98% of this country's business are small business and that's how any company starts out - MOTIVATE us to keep innovating and let us reap the fruits of our labor without your stinking hand grabbing stronghold of our wallet!

Musings - Intro

ok, figured I'd write a blog also and muse about what I see, hear, think etc. who knows, somebody might actually read it sometime.