cyberlaxamana

by Richard Zhu (blog: http://richardzhu.org/) Think about the shopping list when you buy a new laptop: A new laptop: $500 (OS pre-installed) Anti-Virus: $40 (e.g. McAfee Total Protection 2011) Microsoft Office: $120 That is what happens in US, where average per capital income is about $40,000. What happens if this is in a developing country? Let’s pick up a hot one, China, where per capita income is 6.23% of US (Only $2,500 per year? Yes! That’s why your iPhone is made there!). Let’s see the impact such costs can have on these people’s income. (We know that the prices are the same): % of Annual Income US China Computer 1.3% 20.0% Anti-Virus 0.1% 1.6% Office 0.3% 4.8% Total 1.7% 26.4% Here we see that a new laptop is a big thing in China, like in many emerging markets. The relatively high price is giving incentive for them to seek alternative options. Here are things consumers could do to make the overall price less hefty: ...

by Amit Jain In the startup world, subscription revenue is sexy.  Entrepreneurs and investors love subscription revenue (also referred to as recurring revenue) because of its predictable nature.  Startups with such revenue models essentially are striving to be annuity businesses: each customer signed up is an incremental lifetime monthly cash flow (with the caveat that churn rates are zero and renewal rates are 100% in this perfect world). David Skok’s series of blogs on SaaS economics (Software-as-a-Service companies are inherently subscription businesses) contain several analyses on the high profit potential of startups with recurring monthly revenues.  Apple/Google recently announced subscription-pricing capabilities for app developers as an alternative to ads-based or one-time transaction-based pricing models.  In our LTV class, we saw Rentjuice as an example of a startup that pivoted away from per-transaction pricing to subscription pricing.  It seems t...

by Colt Stander A number of LTV classmates had a recent twitter conversation concerning how Foursquare could finally monetize while providing additional value to its members.  The strongest response was for advertisers to push deals to the users, leading consumers to these businesses.  With that, we all assumed this provided value and left it at that. Upon checking my email this morning I was greeted by 30 emails from deal websites with their daily offerings.  Between Gilt Groupe, Living Social, Groupon, Jack Threads, RueLaLa, Restaurant.com and the number of other fashion, local, restaurant, and tech websites, can you guess how many I actually opened, let alone purchased anything?  Zero.  I came to a realization this morning that I am so bombarded with deals every morning that I don’t even bother to look at them.  I now beg the question, am I so cheap that I am no longer interested in products, even when they are on sale, or are we becoming so flooded with...