Spotify To Limit Free Account In Search Of Better Monetisation
Spotify announced today that they will limit the Spotify Free account from May 1st in a few different ways. The reason behind all this is naturally to further monetise and convert those using Spotify Free to the premium accounts. At the end of March, the company also announced, as part of its move to further monetise the user base, to give all new premium subscribers a free 7-day test of the service before billing anything.
The Maths Behind Venture Capital
I want to be fully honest about this, but I'm really thrilled to be sharing information like this so openly about the venture capital business with the help of Nexit Ventures about the mathematics behind the venture capital business. While it's pretty straight forwards on a basic level, it's great to get these figures actually with comments from an actual investor. In this post, we'll look at the fundamental financials and why venture capitalists are looking for certain growth figures in the way they invest.
VC Investment Criteria
In this series, supported by Nexit Ventures, we today take a look at investment criteria that venture capitalists use to grade startups. While these are sure to slightly differ from company to company, you'll be very well off understanding the implications and criteria Nexit Ventures uses to grade their potential investments. There are six points that investors usually look at and we'll take a look at each of these in detail. The criteria are management, market potential, exit potential, business model, technology and finance.
Ethics And The Freemium Business Model - Case Social Games
Earlier this week we covered the Games Developer Conference Europe 2010 (GDCE) session on Monetizing Social Games. Continuing on the same topic from a different angle, in another GDCE session, Teut Weidemann, lead designer of Settlers Online at a Ubisoft studio, provided further guidance on how to actually maximize the games' monetization by game design. He presented, as reported by Gamasutra, that in order to succeed with the freemium business model, one should "exploit human weaknesses", i.e. design the game so that it psychologically resonates with the deepest human feelings - so look into the seven deadly sins...
Making Money From Social Games
Games Developer Conference Europe 2010 (GDCE) took place last week in Cologne, Germany. Social gaming was naturally one of the key topics, covered in many presentations. As most, if not all, of the games on social networks use the freemium business model (i.e. it is free to install and start playing the games), of particular interest for developers is how to generate revenue from the games.
Monetizing Your Business Is The Only Way To Make Money
One of my favorite internet entrepreneurs, Gary Vaynerchuk, posted an excellent video online on how to monetize your blog. It was so great, I decided to share it with everyone here as well. While this may not be that useful for many companies building and selling products - it is for those who are at least on some level monetizing their business with advertising. In the video he calls a beer glass company unplanned and unrehearsed about a possibility of them sponsoring he's upcoming beer blog. Watch and learn.
GrowVC Looking To Disrupt Global VC Business
GrowVC has slowly been marketing their concept in various social media networks and today is the date they're finally coming out with the concept and explaining it to the public. Back in December I had a chat with Valto Loikkanen, one of the co-founders of the company, and he told me the concept has been in finetuning for the last two years or so. They've put in a lot of effort to make sure their companies are registered and managed in the right way so that they are ready to scale once things start taking off.
The concept GrowVC is looking to disrupt is the age old venture capital business model. Many have complained that while business models in the online and mobile world have been turned upside down, one model remains loyal to the way business is done and that's the model of investing money into startups. Furthermore, the need for capital has gone down dramatically making smaller private investors more potential investors in startups than larger venture capitalists.
The Apple Tablet ...Which Is Made In Sweden. Or Is It Kindle? (Video)
One can't have missed the buzz (to the extent its ridiculous) of Apple's rumored tablet that is rumored to be unveiled in San Francisco on Tuesday, January 26.
In addition to the Jesus tablet (yes, that's what some people call it) there are rumors about a similar-ish device from Microsoft, a color tablet device called Courier and of course HTC is cooking one with Google, maybe. At least that's the word on the street.
What do you do with the too big iPhone? Just as the vision of the infamous CrunchPad, it would be a great device to browse the web laying on the couch. After all taking a MacBook Pro to bed or browsing it while laying on the couch is not only clunky and difficult, it is also likely to burn you. But there is only so much Internet you can browse while laying on your back or when curled up on a couch. So what would be even better usage for a browser that does not fit in your pocket?
Spotify Pays 30 Cents For 100 Album Playbacks
The Finnish Heavy Metal band Mokoma, has publicly thanked Spotify for their payout model. Their Facebook fan page states that for "every 100 album playbacks we get 30 euro cents from Spotify. Thanks Spotify." The deals that Spotify has struck with different artists have been kept secret, so it is not known if this is the only payout model. However, if there were 1000 people listening to an album and to my understanding would listen it through, Mokoma would get 3 €.
Eat.fi Finally Rolls Out Its Business Model
Eat.fi, a Finnish website that focuses on restaurant search and reviews, finally rolls out its business model after building the high quality site and community for three years. The company, quite predictably, has chosen to let the restaurant owners advertise their lunch time specials and other offers.
Even though you could argue that is has taken way too long for the founder Tina Aspiala to monetize the site, it might have been worth the wait. Eat.fi is one of the only Finnish sites that I use regularly when checking out new restaurants and especially while making lunch and dinner meetings. To get an idea of the popularity of the site, Eat.fi iPhone app topped the Finnish App Store and boasts currently about 12,000 downloads (and 2,000 Ovi Store downloads).
Floobs Revises Business And Expands To Europe
I had a chat yesterday with Floobs' Kai Lemmetty, one of the co-founders about their company and how it has evolved over the last 6 months. I have no strings attached here financially or otherwise, but I was impressed the steps this company has taken since we first wrote about them back in October 2007. The new business is a lot more service oriented and the money does not flow in from technology as the idea was before.
Along with the new transformation of their business, they have opened up a new service called Floobs WebTV. This is the new service that they will officially launch on Monday and we managed to get a sneak preview on it. The service works in such a way that there are two major segments they are targeting with this; premium users and the mass market. Premium users in this case are football teams (I'm not talking about your sunday team, these guys are after the elite of the sport - more later) and the mass market includes those who can settle for fewer features and are happier with simpler services.
Floobs Is Going For The Cash
When we last time wrote about Floobs, a video streaming service, had just shifted its focus to niche audiences. Now they have build a business model to match that.
The company has made deals with the Spanish footbal teams of the highest order. For example Almeria Deportivo along with Real Betisin and Racing Santanderin are using Floobs to stream practice sessions and press announcemets. The rights for the games have of course sold for big bucks to major television channels, but everything that happens outside of those covered by the licenses are free game that Floobs wants to tap into. This means that content will be YouTube like clips that for example a football team can capture for their fans to see. Next markets Floobs is eyeing for football are Italy, Germany and France. Along with the international reach, Floobs serves also many other sports associations and teams in Finland.
