Do Business Models Just Happen? For Dopplr It Did
Dopplr has finally found its gold mine, the aggregate user travel date. Dopplr plans to anonymize and aggregate all the recommendations that have been added to Dopplr over time and selling the information to those who want to know where the worlds most frequent travelers are visiting.
This will effectively be big part of their business model in addition to the lead generation that has been in place already for a while (see video below). Dopplr aggregates the travel advice and recommendations in what it calls a Social Atlas. Marko Ahtisaari, Dopplr CEO, calls the Social Atlas "pops chart for the cities of the world", which it really is. In effect Dopplr monetizes recommendations made by friends and like-minded people. Not very much unlike Finnish startup TripSay (see our story here). Dopplr's model is still easier to see working, because it does not depend on sharing individuals' insights, just the locations and the times they were visited.
(video via Informilo)
Marko Ahtisaari is Dopplr's new CEO
Dopplr, a part Finnish intention sharing online service that let's you see who of your friends are also in town you visit, announced that Marko Ahtisaari, formerly the head of Blyk's Brand & Design, has been appointed Dopplr's new CEO. The appointment will be effective 1st January, 2009. Ahtisaari is also a founding investors in Dopplr.
Dopplr's current CEO, Lisa Sounio, who is also in a relationship with Mr. Ahtisaari, will step down from the CEO position to act as Dopplr's Chairman of the board. Sounio has run her other company, a design strategy and PR agency Sonay, alongside Dopplr. Thus, effectively dividing her time between the two. This is probably partly the reason for her stepping down when Dopplr is gathering speed and thus needs a full time commitment. Another reason is very likely the second round of financing that Dopplr just received. To stir the pot, Blyk also just landed a major investment, which surely plays a part in the new arrangement along with the others.
As one of the Dopplr's investor's Martin Varsavsky said (video interview here) that the company does not currently have a clear business model. It remains to be seen whether Ahtisaari will drive the company in a new direction that will bring a clear business model with it. The new round of investors might be anxious to see even a theoretical return for their invesment in the current economic climate and be less willing to see one of their portfolio companies just building user base without any hope of a real cash flow.
Spotify Opened For Public
Spotify, a Swedish startup offering a lightweight software application enabling on demand streaming of music, has opened up its service for public.
Earlier on we wrote about rumor that Spotify had raised €15m round from various investors. Last week I received a confirmation that Creandum and Northzone Ventures has invested undisclosed sum to the Swedish startup (more bout this here).
It's no wonder the startup is investors' latest darling as it just recently signed significant licensing deals with Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, EMI Music, Warner Music Group, Merlin, The Orchard and Bonnier Amigo.
The service launched on October 7th 2008 in UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Throughout the remainder of this year and into 2009 Spotify will be rolled out to further markets.
Spotify offers three different subscription models: Free, Day Pass and Premium accounts. Day pass cost you just under one pound sterling for 24 hours whereas the Premium account costs you 9.99 pound sterling a month. Free account is advertising funded, but if you have received your free account via an invitation already earlier on as I did, chances are you don't need to deal with any advertising yet. Advertisers that have signed up to be included from the launch include Ford, T-Mobile and Xbox.
Spotify – the story from Spotify on Vimeo.
In comparison, the service is better than any other music service I have seen so far. Spotify allows you to share songs and playlists with friends, and even work together on collaborative playlists. It will also recommend music you might like based on what you've listened so far. To my delight it also seems to do the recommendation very accurately to match my taste. Martin Varsavsky used a fitting analogies for the service.
[...] Spotify is like iTunes but with on-demand. It’s like Joost, but for music! It´s like Pandora without the need to vote and with your ability to listen to music anytime you want. It´s like Last FM without the community.
The only downside was that some of the current users saw many of the songs on their playlists disappear as Spotify cleaned their playlist to reflect the current copyright agreements that they have been able to push through. Regardless, I think this is a minor disappointment and the users will possible see many of the songs reappear as Spotify tries to get more record labels behind them.
You can also post and vote on your favorite playlist Digg-style at Spotylist. Spotylist also allows you to find new playlists that others have posted via simple links. I already found two good ones just from the blog comments.
The fact that another service has already build its own offering on Spotify's core product is a solid example that there is something very special about this service. Forget Last.fm, go Spotify!
Martin Varsavsky Talks About Dopplr
Serial entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky of FON talked to me in London about why he's so excited about Dopplr, the business model (or lack of thereof) and traveling in general. Here's a recent blog post on Dopplr's new set of investors from yesterday.
Dopplr Secures Financing From a Star Line-Up
Dopplr, the Helsinki and London based startup, has secured second round financing from a very admirable group of investors including Esther Dyson, Tyler Brûlé, Thomas Glocer, Yat Siu, Aditya dev Sood, Lars Hinrichs, Joshua Schachter, Brian Behlendorf, Ami Hasan, Daniel Sachs, Joshua Cooper Ramo, Kim Weckström, and Azeem Azhar. Saul Klein, who invested in this round, also invested in the previous round together with Martin Varsavsky, Reid Hoffman and Joichi Ito.
“Dopplr is leading the way in intention sharing services online. It is valuable to know where your trusted friends and colleagues will be, and where you could meet them next,” said Lisa Sounio, CEO of Dopplr. “Partner brands on Dopplr will also give you relevant information and offers tailored to you. For example, when you tell Dopplr your plans to go to Hong Kong, you might get the latest intelligence from Monocle and offers from boutique hotels picked by Mr and Mrs Smith.”
Despite seeing a lot of attention from both the press and investors, there are some questions that people look answers for. One cannot miss the (despite somewhat questionable) data from Compete.com. According to Compete.com, Dopplr reached just over 50k UVs in August. If you're making money from commissions on hotel bookings and such, you need a lot more traffic to make the business model work and therefore focusing on such a small group of people travelling so much might be difficult. Furthermore, Mike Butcher at Techcrunch UK makes a solid point about the dilution of ownership with so many investors. It could be that once you get enough popular investors on board, the odds of you failing are smaller as these investors are looking forwards to making a return (hence they echo the name as much as possible).
Having these questions answered would be interesting, but nevertheless you have to give it to the Dopplr team for getting financed in such a tight market - we haven't heard that many similar stories lately.
