It all depends, tech/developer vs BD/Marketing - Have experienced the up/down too of the Bay Area, and sometimes it takes months to get back in the saddle. Everyone wants the perfect employee, ready to go, nothing to train, Knows all stacks, all systems, liked by all 6-8 people who interview him/her, asks for 10% less than market rate.
Some companies want you to be an unicorn yourself, I've gone through stuff like:
'So you have years of mobile ad marketing and also years of online security service experience, years doing app marketing, already know our reporting and tracking systems, but you DONT have experience specific marketing on an online security app? Thanks for coming'
When was the last time free market economics 'sorted out' anything? I'd like to know. Interesting to me that despite our comments that you've read, your initial blog remains unchanged or has any mentions of this feedback. But if you really truly believe moving all ads to a handful of platforms is 'sorted' then make a case for it. What would it improve?
The larger issue is this, the AdBlockers block 'independent ads, served via third party services via web' Ad blockers won't block Google Ads via Android or iOS ads in their new "news" apps. Nor it will block Facebook ads, YouTube Ads or some in-app marketing.
So, what I think is missing in the discussion that, perhaps by flaw or mistake, but the original sin of the web (ads) is now the currency for many websites, apps, etc... and it maintains the small, medium and large publishers and companies.
Ad blocking as-now targets the independent web more than anything. It will force Advertisers to give to Google/Facebook/Apple more and basically just suck the revenues of an industry into the hands of a handful of platform. Content has already been centralized by force, now they want the ads as well.
People who say, 'if your content requires ads then its not worth it, or you are in the wrong side of history, blah, blah, blah' fail to recognize how ad monetization happens on web/apps - yes it gets annoying, but it works. Independent sites (arts, news, etc...) like a favorite of mine ArsTechnica, depend on Ad revenue.
Apple releasing Ad Blockers the same day their News app becomes permanent and with Ads that cannot be blocked its not a coincidence. And that is quite a strategic move aimed to move more ad revenue into fewer companies. I don't know if that's the right side of history then. I hope not.
However, it's all in the defaults - 90% of online users (and I cant imagine app users are any higher) never touch the defaults. Sure, a number of 20MM may have downloaded adblockers online, but it is still small. But once the option is there, one day, the iPhone7 might default to 'ad block yes' and obliterate a mobile ad industry. No one likes to defend marketers, but moving us to a system controlled by a few platforms is a bad idea. Say, a presidential election could be influenced by a company deciding it won't allow ads of candidate Y or Z etc... or Donation campaigns won't be able to afford a market price of higher ad prices.
Uhhhh, the usual, restless sleep, wake up at 7am, check email, check bank account balance, silent panic, cold sweats, yesterday's coffee, 2 days ago Pizza, a few dozen rejection emails from assorted VCs and angels, listen to cofounder latest complaints against team he hand picked and trained himself, checks site, checks google analytics, one transaction, a faint smile, a hope of a better future, an attack of naivete, and Monday is here again....
True Story - Missing are the rent prices that eat 70% of your paycheck plus having 4 roommates on a 1 bedroom apt and the fact that every and any food you can think of is already served as a $14 burrito here.
OK, one of my titles was Global Head of Freemium Channel, so here is my take:
1)I've never seen a freemium business reach above 15% paid users from total active base - if your economics cannot support this for a long time, get out right away. Most freemium business are roaches surviving on 1-5% conversions.
2) Freemium works best when:
- User has to urgently do something now that is limited (faster=paid, free= slow, those annoying download places that make you wait 1 min for each download or sign up to download now do make money of this simple fact)
- User finds content worth paying for in the sea of free content (NYT)
- User has low barriers to start, but would be hard to leave (e.g. upload photos) service
- User uses service, then gets to bill usage to others (e.g. malware software, document delivery, b2b stuff)
- User base can easily reach limits of free service and will require more eventually (e.g. data storage)
- User base can clearly be defined as amateur vs. professionals, and the professionals will need more features and pay (e.g. Wordpress plugins, Salesforce API apps, etc...)
- User base will be so large the business can be sustained with advertising (what most people want to build but ends up failing all the time - cant get done properly without a miracle)
My advice is start with the paid, always. It will give you a realistic conversion result + you can always go lower/free later. If some people already want to pay you, take their money!
You might want to bill first, offer the freemium solution later via email to 'grow' truly interested users that would convert at some point. Freemium 'fools' a lot of business who do NOT track everything religiously.
The freemium business is fragile like a soufle, so when everything is perfect it works but when not, its an epic fail. Proceed with caution.
500Startups' fund "500Luchadores" would be the closest one in Mexico, their fund for new ventures was recently 'completed' (read: depleted) so this is a good time if you want to invest on seed stage. Series A and beyond, hard to tell.
Excellent analysis. This thing is basically a deal with the devil. Get the VPN and content you want and 'sell your device' soul to Hola and whatever they want to do with it. Maybe just get Popcorn Time instead.
Jeebus dude, why exactly you need 3-6 months to get your photos from a service you didn't use often enough? AWS cost real money. How long of a warning do you need to exit a service? A year?
As you said there has been a few tries but usually tied to the lender. Lenders like 'Prosper' and others use other criteria to make the credit decision (social contacts, other bill payments, etc...) There are several FICO scores for many financial products (e.g. your car FICO score, credit card FICO score) and the main one.
I guess one way to disrupt would be a way to collect the data not usually compiled (payment history for utilities bills, rent payments, micro loan payment, medical bills) However, in any case your customers are not the people, but the institutions who check for credit, so find a need where someone needs to make a credit decision but doesn't want to use existing credit reports and scores.
Based on this, then everyone is an expert now, all you need is an opinion and an URL. So a random 19 year old's opinion is as valuable as an expert? Practically, of course not, but your arguments is that online, it doesn't matter. Expert and non-expert are the same. If that is the case, then its not cynical to say lowbrow content (even fake content, e.g. Clickhole) will beat quality content in the long run. I would rather get my Movie review notes from knowledgeable people than from a random responder at Yahoo Answers or a random YouTube video grapher ranting about Avengers and Female Ghostbusters, but if you really believe amateur content beats anything else, and the primary survival metrics are advertising dollars and scale, then nothing will survive because nothing would scale. In the scenario you describe, what content scales? Whatever ends at FB?
I love the Awl, Splitsider, Billfold et al...
But the Media Apocalypse is no Joke - The Dissolve is gone - and ViralNova is acquired for $100MM - WTF? It seems content for brainy, niche audiences will not survive due to low scale.
Unfortunately the web is finding the lowest common denominators for content consumption, and it certainly seems that those who deliver it best will survive. With 3MM uniques it seems to small to matter. Hope it does become the surviving cockroach...but it doesnt look good. Just hope the web stops becoming 'Idiocracy' for clicks.
The older the company, the less they like it. Loyalty in some places will replace skill... Even when a VP asked me about my 6 jobs in 10 years, I replied: 'same as you, been working at a lot of startups'...although I dont think the answer was the most diplomatic.
The other mental block is that people somehow trust/prefer 'randomness' vs. determined outcomes from a machine. But it shouldn't be so.
E.g. with people-driven cars, when an accident happens (lets say 1 passenger, 1 driver on each vehicle), the result is random. (4 dead, 3-1,2-2,3-1,4) If a self-driven, intelligent vehicle determines that a sudden shift to the right when the crash is happening will save 3 persons, and one dies (and this was the best outcome under all the scenarios/simulations the car calculated under the circumstances of the crash) in this case, the car determined who would be the casualty, as opposed to let the accident happen at random, which could result in all dead, all alive or other choices.
As humans with subjective POVs..we somehow prefer randomness and see it as 'natural way', 'God's will', 'Destiny', 'Fate' etc...
In the near future, algorithms will make a large number of life-death decisions. We just have to be comfortable on statistics and results. Machine results > Human Results > Random Results - so autonomous cars and other upcoming vehicles will have to make these calculations every day, we'll just have a hard time letting go of randomness or of the overrrated value of human decision-making during a car crash.
Some companies want you to be an unicorn yourself, I've gone through stuff like:
'So you have years of mobile ad marketing and also years of online security service experience, years doing app marketing, already know our reporting and tracking systems, but you DONT have experience specific marketing on an online security app? Thanks for coming'