broadstuff

“£300 worth of coupons” they might say, when in reality it’s comprised of 100s of 20 pence off deals, and nobody realistically will ever make a saving of £300; not just because half of the offers aren’t relevant to you, but because you’d have to spend £1000s to take that advantage. As Anthony Cope put it, “Most of these ‘offers’ are too expensive for SMEs to take up.” It’s the same deal here. Maybe the Advertising Standards Agency would be interested in this £1500 claim – because in my eyes it’s impossible to even get a £100 of true, practical and real life savings from this scheme.

- Company Tax holiday for the first N year (like Ireland does)
- Simplify and expand what can be written down as R&D Capex
- Provide cut price accomodation and basic office services
- Increase the range of things that smaller companies can write off as expenses, compared to say the US the UK writeoffs are ludicrously tight.
- Simplify employment law for companies of less than say 10 people
- Tax relief on funding of small technology startups to encourage higher VC lending levels
- £1500 of Real Cash, or a voucher that is redeemable on something with a meaningful discount. A small contribution from the bankers who are supporting this effort but aren't actually lending to small businesses would go a long way, say 1% of their bonus pot this year?

To concentrate on the admittedly not brilliant website and on the somewhat desultory offers is to miss the bigger picture. Entrepreneurship is the key to economic prosperity. There is a very real cultural problem across Europe with the whole concept of entrepreneurialism. Changing cultures takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. Some efforts will succeed, others will fail.

What is important in StartUp Britain is the political will behind it. To get the Prime Minister and two other cabinet ministers to the launch shows the political drive behind this. Cynics will argue that it is politicians cashing in on the publicity. Or perhaps it is the manifestation of a realization that entrepreneurship is the way that Europe is going to have to turn to get itself out of its economic malaise and the desire of the U.K. government to help in the ways that government can, without getting in the way.

Funds set up by Goldman and JPMorgan Chase have invested in Internet start-ups like Facebook and Twitter or in funds with stakes in those start-ups. Even the mutual fund giants Fidelity Investments and T. Rowe Price have stepped up their efforts, placing large bets on companies like Groupon and Zynga.

Thomas Weisel, founder of an investment bank called the Thomas Weisel Partners Group that prospered in the first Internet boom, says he is “astounded” by the amount of money now flooding the markets.

“I think it’s much greater today,” he said. “The pools of capital that are looking at these Internet companies are far greater today than what you had in 2000.”

Yet there are notable differences between the turn-of-the-century dot-com boom and now. For one, the stock market is not glutted with offerings. In 1999, there were 308 technology I.P.O.’s, making up about half of that year’s offerings, according to data from Morgan Stanley. In 2010, there were just 20 technology I.P.O.’s, based on Thomson Reuters data.

..............most of these companies have already gone public. How do I know? Here’s how:

1. You can buy and sell shares on exchanges
2. Many employees are newly wealthy from selling shares
3. Analysts are covering some of the companies
4. VCs and institutional investors are selling their holdings to non-pros

You see? These companies — LinkedIn, Zynga, Facebook, Groupon, Twitter, etc. — are already public, just not public on traditional stock exchanges. So, when they go re-public, that is, when they go public on more traditional exchanges, like Nasdaq or the NYSE, that will be the moment at which insiders exit en masse in an unprecedented way. Any professional investor who wanted a taste of this stuff has it, and they will be idiots not to exit when the liquidity improves on more traditional exchanges.

That doesn’t make them bad companies, of course. They’re not. They’re very good companies, emblematic of huge changes in society and technology. But they’re public, and they’re about to go re-public, which will almost certainly make their prices fall.

7. The "Big IPO" happens (Netscape et al)

8. The big Investment Banks start to make a market in the New New Thing, punting in your pension money, and have "entrepreneurial" options and divisions to retain les autres MBAs

1. As with all products that are launched, ther are problems at first. It's just when you have taken $41m of funding others start asking how come a bit more than if you are a debt ridden, unfunded startup.

2. It's too early to decide if its the Successor to Facebook, one way or the other. It's only just come out the gate at 1.0, lets see where we are in a month or so UE-wise*

3. It is a dead cert for Stage 3 in our Ten Stages of BubbleMania, gusting Stage 5

Color is not about photo sharing. It’s a new way to build spontaneous social networks — and collect massive amounts of data about what people are doing and where they’re doing it — without collecting any personally identifiable information like last names, addresses, or even passwords.

- iPad adoption speed incredible, no one is sure what it eans but unlikely to be bale to charge silly prices like you can on e-Readers. 70% margisn are going to come off Amazon/Kindle.
- Stormclouds are gatehering for current eBook pricing model, as free downloads start to take off.
- DRM is not the answer
- iPad creates a new media cohesiveness that Kindle, laptop cannot match easily
- Increasingly not enough for author to write have to pre-market, post market, engage with audience
- the "Novel" is a recent phenomenon - Dickens was serialised for example (yes, you knew that) but everyone thinks the serial lends itself better to interactive media.
- Music is different, in that songs are different to chapters, but not different to short stories - but people don't really go for short stories - but if properly written would read instead of newspaper on way to work

- Where is the growth? - not BRICS et al, they can't pay western prices so piracy is endemic - long term game. ROI > 5 years
- US, Europe has people and money in next 5 years
- We will see lots of "wiggling" of business models

- There has been very little innovation in Display ads over last 10 yaers, the system was built by technologists in dotcom era but marketers are starting to change it now
- Digital outdoor media is something to watch over next 5 years
- Smart clients are using mixed media
- Mobile - still small, growth potential probably overstated - needs further smartphone penetration and single standard - also a good payment device (estimated 2-5 years out).
- 1 in 3 use location on mobile vs 1 in 5 on web.
- Still darned hard to work out what happens with Social Media - to quote:

"Advertising that interrups people when they don't want to be interrupted doesn't work"

The paywall is costing the newspaper $40-$50 million to design and construct, Bloomberg has reported.

And it can be defeated through four lines of Javascript.

......

Canadian coder David Hayes has just released NYTClean, a bookmarklet that, in one click, tears down the Times’ paywall.

“Released” is probably even a little strong — it makes it sound like there was an extended development process. All NYTClean does is call four measly lines of Javascript that hide a couple

s and turn page scrolling back on. It barely even qualifies as a hack. But it allows you access to any New York Times story, even when you’re past the monthly limit. (I just tested it out with a Canadian proxy server — works just like it says.)

Imagine a Venn diagram with two circles. One represents all the people on the Internet who might be convinced to pay for nytimes.com. The other represents all the people on the Internet who (a) know how to install a bookmarklet or (b) have read a Cory Doctorow novel. Do you really see a big overlap between the two? If someone is absolutely certain to never pay for the NYT, then it makes sense to squeeze a little extra advertising revenue out of them on the rare occasions when a link sends them to nytimes.com.

The problem with that model, though, is that it assumes inefficiency. It assumes that the happy-to-pay crowd (or the grudgingly-will-pay crowd) never find out about the workarounds — or at least that the workarounds remain complicated enough that they won’t want to bother. One click, though, ain’t all that complicated.

Investment value and valuation by VC company, red = may not be in the money (Source TechCrunch.com)

....the billions of dollars in late stage deals being invested by the top firms in Silicon Valley are another matter. First of all, we’re talking about far bigger chunks of cash, mostly from pension funds and endowments. And these firms are making investments in the handful of sure $1 billion-plus winners that Wall Street and the Valley have spent more than a decade of sub-market returns waiting on to mature. Each deal represents dozens or even hundreds of people cashing out, while others take on a greater risk. And each deal represents another delay in companies like Facebook or Zynga going public.

And quietly there’s plenty of grousing going on about the trend. Some of it is pure player-hating, and some of it raises good points.

For example, the vast majority of VC firms who can’t raise a $1 billion expansion fund cry that these new mega-funds aren’t real venture capital investing, they are firms acting like hedge funds. Some allege they are even abusing their positions as the current darlings of the venture world to make huge trades in well-baked companies without any board obligations, but still get paid like VCs with huge management fees on these mega funds.

Within the elite Sand Hill Road club, VCs snipe about who is still adding value and draw distinctions between a negotiated late-stage deal and a pure secondary stock purchase. And, those who were smart enough to get in early on a giant like Zynga, Twitter or Facebook, chafe when a VC that’s thrown money at a rich secondary valuation now proudly lists those companies as core companies in their portfolios.

1. There is a New New Thing that trancends the Old Economics, and you cannot value It the Old Way. This Time It will Be Different. Dumb Money companies start paying over the odds for New Thing acquisitions.

2. Smart people who have been there before start calling it a Bubble (or at least a "Frothy Market"), New New Thing apostles make ever more glowing claims of the dizzy heights available, while "Startup Networking Events" start to proliferate.

3. Companies with founders deemed to have "rubbed off the right stuff" (ie sons of, ex employees of, etc etc) get funded straight off at eye watering valuations for next to no product proof or traction.

4. There is a flurry of new incubators started by (newly minted) VCs (trying to buy in)

5. Companies start getting funded "off the slide deck" with no actual product

6. MBAs start leaving banks to start up companies

7. The "Big IPO" happens (Netscape et al)

8. The big Investment Banks start to make a market in the New New Thing, punting in your pension money, and have "entrepreneurial" options and divisions to retain les autres MBAs

9. Your Taxi Driver gives you advice on what stock to buy - you punt in your own pension money

10. A New New Thing darling buys an Olde Industry thing at Stupid $$$. This is the Top Of The Bubble.

While most of these deals and prices had been reported before, a few things jumped out at me once I collected the data in one place. It’s clear the quality of deals is slipping. When DST pioneered this category, the firm was adroitly responding to a gaping market need. These companies needed huge amounts of cash to scale to the unprecedented 1 billion person online market potential, but the IPO market was closed. That’s no longer the case. “Oh, how it’s no longer the case! Please, dear God, call me!” some poor banker is no-doubt lamenting, reading this post.

(i) How to do it?
(ii) Will it last?

There is good gamification and bad gamification. Bad gamification is slapping extrinsic rewards (or a contrived story) on top of an interaction. Good gamification amplifies the intrinsic rewards of a particular behavior – to increase the feeling of fun, flow, or accomplishment of the player. Players know bad gamification when they see it, because it doesn’t take their interests into consideration. Good gamification aligns the needs of both designer and player.

Gamification needn’t look like a game. If your application domain is movies (Netflix), auctions (eBay), or social connections (Facebook, LinkedIn) – simply highlighting the right numeric counters and lists is sufficient. Gamifying acknowledges your user’s inner drives, their ability to learn, and increases their receptiveness to your application’s benefits.

- Air miles programs are bad gamification. Do you play the air miles game? I didn’t until very recently, because it is a poorly designed game. Rewards (free flights) are only available to expert players. Most programs are hard to sign up for, track, and claim. It does not making flying more fun. So, until recently I’ve ignored them.

- CityVille is brilliant (but bad) gamification masquerading as Game design. Zynga has perfected the gamification of inviting and buying (disguised as sharing and building). CityVille is certainly not optimized to be a fun virtual city planning game. It doesn’t maximize your creative building pleasure, though it does offer some intrinsic rewards:

- guided creativity
- feeling of building something (with friends)
- blingyness, positive feedback

It doesn’t take long before you run into a wall where your fun ends and doing things that benefit Zynga become a requirement (you must pay or invite to continue). The sinking feeling you feel at that moment, is the line between good and bad gamification. It isn’t bad to expect players to pay (or send uncomfortable invitations), but at this point the rewards all swing in Zynga’s favor. You realize you aren’t playing a game, but participating in the gamification of inviting and buying – and it ceases to be fun.