joshuago’s business Bookmarks
An overview of the major problems facing journalism today, and an exploration of potential funding models.
Could it be that the last chance to save a young family from foreclosure is a 28-year-old Pakistani-American playwright-attorney who learned bankruptcy law on the Internet? A fun and informative, if at times infuriating, read.
Startups need different metrics than large companies do. They need metrics to tell how well the search for the business model is going, and whether at the end of that search is the business model you picked worth scaling into a company. Or is it time to pivot and look for a different business model?
The appeal of bundling is partly that it reduces transaction costs: instead of having to figure out how much each part of a package is worth to you, you can make a blanket judgment. Bundling eliminates the problem of fretting about small expenditures, which may be one reason that flat-rate pricing is very common in the vacation industry. It also offers what economists call option value: you may never watch those sixty other channels, but the fact that you could if you wanted to is worth something. Many consumers also perceive bundles as bargains; getting a bunch of things for one price feels like a deal, even when it’s not.
If you’re planning a web app, it’s always worth reminding yourself what the base need is that you’re satisfying, and how much value it is likely to have with the user: a successful business/service should neither over nor under-value itself.
By carefully curating the people you follow, Twitter becomes an always-on data stream from really bright people in their respective fields, whose tweets are often full of links to incredibly vital, timely information.
Having to think through and answer these questions forces you to identify what you need to do today to seek profits and growth.
A really useful thread on Hacker News for non-programmers who want to be involved in an early-stage startup.
The big three tend to believe that their brand will carry them through the digital era and they refuse to believe that powerhouses in the worldwide Print industry have fallen prey to the smaller, nimble highly technology savvy digital companies which is what will happen in India if they fail to wake up from their slumber. While these large media companies continue to invest in their digital businesses heavily the results are shoddy. Even the true Internet players from the early days of the Internet era in India like Rediff and Sify continue to underwhelm the market with poor product offerings and declining ad sales.
TheFunded has produced founder-friendly versions of every legal document necessary to launch a new startup. These documents were carefully written from scratch to keep founders in control of the companies that they create.