data.insights.ideas

A systematic approach to all things Internet and how we, as information hunters, interact across the Web via data, insights and ideas. More →

[datainsightsideas]

Sherpa Ventures recently published a "must read" covering the emerging on-demand economy, popularized by companies such as Airbnb, Uber and GrubHub. It reminds me of just how fast the Internet and pervasive data connectivity has changed our lives as we're living in a world where fixed assets are a liability (hotels) but our experiences are fluid, because of our phones (short term and vacation rentals). We're seeing ecosystems contract, expand and at times, get destroyed (taxi and limousine holdings). Massive opportunities emerge (on-demand car hailing products), become unbundled, with new creative classes created (drivers and property hosts). Most exciting, as a society, we're better off and we're becoming more efficient because of the glass screens in our pocket.

[datainsightsideas]

The Internet is a dream for someone with a growth mindset. Between Khan Academy, MOOCs, and others, there is unprecedented access to endless content to help you grow your mind. However, society isn’t going to fully take advantage of this without growth mindsets being more prevalent. So what if we actively tried to change that? What if we began using whatever means are at our disposal to start performing growth mindset interventions on everyone we cared about? This is much bigger than Khan Academy or algebra — it applies to how you communicate with your children, how you manage your team at work, how you learn a new language or instrument. If society as a whole begins to embrace the struggle of learning, there is no end to what that could mean for global human potential.

The Learning Myth: Why I'll Never Tell My Son He's Smart | Khan Academy

[datainsightsideas]

According to Bloomberg Reserve (their dining reviews and editorial newsletter), Yorkville is an "up and coming" hipster neighborhood in NYC.

[datainsightsideas]

In contrast, waiting until you ship a product to embark on traction development usually results in one or more additional product development cycles as you adjust to real market feedback. That’s why doing traction and product development in parallel may slow down product development in the short run, but not in the long run.

Traction Book

[datainsightsideas]

And, today people book in lots of different places. Nobody will contest that more than 50% of hotels are booked outside of corporate policy. And I know this for a fact because for 25,000 corporate customers, I manage their expense reports.

Interview: Concur CEO on Making Sense of Business Travel Chaos

[datainsightsideas]

The value capture in the private markets has also led some hedge funds and other major non-private-market investors to become late-stage VCs. Many of these investors lack the skills, focus, experience and temperament to make great, patient, long-term, private-market investors. Trying to shoe-horn a hedge-fund mentality into venture capital markets cannot portend a happy outcome. Marc Andreessen captured some of this sentiment in his recent “10 Ways to Damage Your High-Growth Tech Startup” Tweetstorm.

Venture capital is changing -- and not necessarily for the worse

[datainsightsideas]

Don’t invest in “pedigreed” founders, with startups in hot sectors, that have lots of “social proof”, located in the Bay Area. Everyone wants to invest in those companies. So, as we saw in Angel Gate, valuations in these deals go way up. Instead, invest in a wide range of founders, in a wide range of sectors, before their startups have much social proof, across the entire US. Undoubtedly, these startups have a lower chance of succeeding.

Moneyball for Tech Startups: Kevin’s Remix | Possible Insight

[datainsightsideas]

The first part of our modest insight was to face the fact that, at the seed stage, most of the value is option value not enterprise value. Any approach based on trying to work backwards from some hypothetical future enterprise value will be either incredibly expensive or little more than a guess.

Valuing Seed Stage Startups | Possible Insight

[datainsightsideas]

We can now begin to see that the new style of management is not a fad. The knowledge-based part of the economy demands flat hierarchies, mission orientation, above all a sense of direction. Not five-year plans. We can also fathom the mystery of what I’ve alluded to as re-everything. Much of this “re- everything” predilection—in the bulk- processing world—is a fancy label for streamlining, computerizing, downsizing. However, in the increasing-returns world, especially in high tech, re-everything has become necessary because every time the quest changes the company needs to change. It needs to reinvent its purpose, its goals, its way of doing things. In short, it needs to adapt. And adaptation never stops. In fact, in the increasing-returns environment I’ve just sketched, standard optimization makes little sense. You cannot optimize in the casino of increasing-returns games. You can be smart. You can be cunning. You can position. You can observe. But when the games themselves are not even fully defined, you cannot optimize. What you can do is adapt. Adaptation, in the proactive sense, means watching for the next wave that is coming, figuring out what shape it will take, and positioning the company to take advantage of it. Adaptation is what drives increasing-returns businesses, not optimization.

W. Brian Arthur, in Increasing Returns and the Two Worlds of Business

[datainsightsideas]

When you materially improve an offering, and create new features, functions, experiences, price points, and even enable new use cases, you can materially expand the market in the process.

How to Miss By a Mile: An Alternative Look at Uber’s Potential Market Size

[datainsightsideas]

The whole point of open platforms and indeed the internet is permissionless innovation - you don't need the OEM's permission to innovate.

Unbundling innovation: Samsung, PCs and China

[datainsightsideas]

I think that a paid reservation lets customers get skin in the game, and that means that restaurants might even reduce no-shows if paid reservations become a thing.

How I Became the Most Hated Person in San Francisco, for a Day | Brian Mayer

[datainsightsideas]

The ultimate hack is unlocking data to create a service experience that is about me, the customer, not what the chef and manager dreamed up before opening for business. The more you know about what I want in the moment I want it, the more orders you’ll get from me. A huge opportunity for your bottom line. I’m not suggesting overhauling your menu for each customer every day. I am thinking about all the ways you interact with a customer- the email newsletter, social media, how well you understand my order history to remind me of what I love about you. Maybe the food too. Find me where I am online and let me order- don’t force me to come to you.

Unlocking Data to Create a Better Customer Dining Experience

[datainsightsideas]

When founders are starting out, partnership inquiries sound really exciting. In theory, a successful partnership with a larger company could help your company get more customers. What you realize, though, is that partnerships are rarely a real thing. When you work with another company, either they are your customer or you are their customer. Anything other than that usually just eats up time and energy.

I sold my startup for $25.5 million. Here’s how I did it.

[datainsightsideas]

The way that my team initially looked at this question is: if it’s interesting for a local, it’s going to be really, really interesting for a traveler. That means that it’s local and interesting and unique and that’s what travelers want. If it’s good enough for a local, it’s going to be good enough for a traveler.

Why Airbnb Is Interested in Local Search

[datainsightsideas]

It appears that we are at the early stage of the emergence of digital commerce businesses that have no precedent in the physical world, and which take full advantage of the native capabilities of the internet platform to reinvent and reinterpret retail in a digital environment.

Michael Zeisser

[datainsightsideas]

The single most important lesson we learn from the short history of the consumer internet industry is that winning internet business models are engineered around consumers. In fact, consumer internet businesses must be designed, architecturally, to be more consumer centric than their physical world equivalents. This is because, fundamentally, the internet increases transparency and information availability to reduce friction, and thus shifts market power to users relative to physical world models. Therefore, competitors can and will exploit every opportunity to be more consumer centric, a dynamic fuelled by the quasi absence of barriers to entry into the industry.

Michael Zeisser