What customers are coming to expect
An interesting excerpt from IDEO's Patterns:
Despite its reputation as a suffocating bureaucracy, China is a place where virtually anything is possible and everything is available. Want a custom-made suit for less than US$50? Knock-off Italian furniture? Unlocked iPhones? China has it all — if you know the right person on the right street corner. This no-holds-barred approach, or abundance service, has become legendary at places like Shanghai hot-pot restaurant Hai Di Lao (海底捞火锅店).
“THIS IS THE BEST FRICKING HOT POT RESTAURANT ON THE FACE OF THE PLANET!!!” wrote one reviewer. “It rivals the Ritz Carlton. Free drinks if you want them. They will bring new eyeglass-wiping cloths to wipe the steam from your glasses and offer to do it for you. …there is a children’s playroom, and there are small tables with Chinese Checkers and Chinese Chess, and they have a team of women who will give you a professional manicure. THIS PLACE IS AWESOME.”
Note that this breathless review raves about the utterly satisfying dining experience, not the meal. The restaurant’s reputation is for service—and, increasingly, that’s what customers are coming to expect.
Pretend you're 100% sure
"You have to pretend you're 100% sure. You have to take action; you can't hesitate or hedge your bets. Anything less will condemn your efforts to failure. "
-- Andrew Grove, Intel co-founder
London's Silicon Valley
In the two years I've been away from London, the city has developed a flourishing digital hub - "Tech City". A map has been created to highlight the growth of startups in the hub.
More from the BBC:
More from the BBC:
The UK Prime Minister has unveiled an interactive map of East London's technology cluster, revealing more than 600 firms in the area.
The Tech City map highlights the expansion of Old Street's "silicon roundabout". By comparison there were around 200 tech firms based there last year.
The government said it was acting to support the area's success.
Seth Godin on analyzing web businesses
Seth Godin has a great post on analyzing web businesses. Here are the six things he suggests you assess in any such business:
- What's the revenue per visit? (RPM). For every thousand visitors, how much money does the site make (in ads or sales)?
- What's the cost of getting a visit? Does the site use PR or online ads or affiliate deals to get traffic? If so, what's the yield?
- Is there a viral co-efficient? Existing visitors can lead to new visitors as a result of word of mouth or the network effect. How many new visitors does each existing user bring in? (Hint: it's less than 1. If it were more than 1, then every person on the planet would be a user soon.) This number rarely stays steady. For example, at the beginning, Twitter's co-efficient was tiny. Then it scaled to be one of the largest ever (Oprah!) and now has started to come back down to Earth.
- What's the cost of a visitor? Does the site need to add customer service or servers or other expenses as it scales?
- Are there members/users? There's a big difference between drive-by visits and registered users. Do these members pay a fee, show up more often, have something to lose by switching?
- What's the permission base and how is it changing? The only asset that can be reliably built and measured online is still permission. Attention is scarce, and permission is the privilege to deliver anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them. Permission is easy to measure and hard to grow.
Just three questions
I once interned at a VC firm. At this firm, potential startup investments flowed through rapidly, and it could sometimes be difficult evaluate every single opportunity. Faced with such a task, the associate tasked with looking at these opportunities assessed them using just one, simple rule of thumb: if you had to ask just three questions of the opportunity, what would they be?
It's a simple rule of thumb, but one that applies to opportunities beyond just looking at companies: if you could ask a customer just three things, what would they be? If you had to build just three product features, what would they be?
Which three questions will help you prioritize and get clarity on what you're working on?
It's a simple rule of thumb, but one that applies to opportunities beyond just looking at companies: if you could ask a customer just three things, what would they be? If you had to build just three product features, what would they be?
Which three questions will help you prioritize and get clarity on what you're working on?
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