In the book The Cold Start Problem, Andrew Chen says that the 'network effect’ is really three effects:
The acquisition effect
The engagement effect
The monetization effect
In the beginning, a business seeking to build a network has to concentrate on acquiring users, even if they are non-paying. Companies often give away the service, especially software companies, and we can see that with Facebook, Slack, TikTok, and many others. Bridge didn’t do ...
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I was happy to learn that our friends at Savannah Bee and Ivystone have expanded their relationship. Savannah Bee, a partner in our Bridge Product Syncing service, has expanded its representation with Ivystone, also a Bridge partner, to cover more sales regions. Ivystone will now cover the honey brand across the country, supplementing the brand with 85 sales reps. (Previously, Ivystone only represented the brand in the Northeast.)
You’ve likely had a vodka-Red Bull cocktail in your lifetime, which was followed by a hangover for you—but helped drink co-founder Dietrich Mateschitz amass a $20b fortune. Mateschitz, who passed away last week at the age of 78, discovered the drink in the 1980s in Thailand and built it into a global brand. He promoted Red Bull, whose name is a translation of the drink’s Thai name "Krating Daeng,” via a variety of clever marketing initiatives. In the early 2000s, I ...
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Scott Galloway, the NYU business professor and firebrand, pens a weekly, attention-grabbing article about business trends. In last week’s post, he noted the rise of the attention economy. (...Yes, my post is an attention-seeker writing about an attention-seeker writing about attention.) Comparing our current economy to those of the past, Mr. Galloway notes that today’s oil is time. He tracks the growth of digital companies like Netflix, Microsoft, Facebook, and TikTok that...
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When I was a kid, my mom instilled in me a lesson to always get paid for my work. When I went to mow a lawn or do my newspaper route, she’d remind me, “Be sure you get paid.” As an adult, these flashbacks are vivid like a scene from Citizen Kane—just swap out the Rosebud sled with my newspaper delivery bike. Today, this lesson still resonates when running Bridge. When calling a store that hasn’t paid its Bridge bill, I’m confident in asking ...
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When talking about memberships and subscriptions, these two business models are sometimes interchanged but actually are different. They often differ in their pricing, customers, and offerings. A subscription is often not a membership, but a membership often encompasses a subscription. A membership is often an elevated and more powerful subscription that collectivizes and leverages the subscribers.
What They Have In Common
With both models, you often pay a fee and receive a ...
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In Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0, which the Bridge team is currently reading, the author Jim Collins confesses that he missed a key ingredient 25 years ago when he wrote the first edition. He states that he now realizes the most important part of achieving a great company is: getting the right people 'on the bus.’ I agree. Fourteen and a half years ago (long before I opened this book), I was lucky enough to pick up the right ‘passenger:' Moshe replied to my job posting (...
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Peloton’s new CEO, Barry McCarthy, was recently interviewed in the New York Times (Read the article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/19/business/dealbook/barry-mccarthy-interview-peloton.html). The authors asked Mr. McCarthy if he thought that everyone who needs a workout bike already had one. They questioned where else a company making stationary exercise bikes can go (…an ironic question for a bike product that literally can’t move). The Times wanted to know what ...
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Scott Galloway, a business leader and NYU professor, shares that we're now spending over 4 hours a day on our mobile phones--up from just 20 minutes in 2010. (…I wrote part of this post on my iPhone.) What does this mean? Lots of opportunities for Amazon--as well as Facebook, Instagram, and other tech titans--to sell to us. Our cell phones are, in essence, 1,000 'buy buttons' in our pockets (or on our nightstands) that encourage us to buy stuff online, any time of the day.
Last February e-commerce company Shopify Inc. replaced the “Ottawa, Canada” dateline that began its press releases and earnings reports with a strange new one: “Internet, Everywhere.” The geographical shift came at the insistence of Shopify’s founder and chief executive officer, Tobi Lütke, who tends to view such matters through the prism of cold, hard logic. In May 2020, only a few months into the pandemic, he’d made the early, seemingly rash decision to...
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The WSJ shares that Fiesta tableware has seen overwhelming demand during the pandemic. Growth is fueled by its U.S.-based production and families’ return to at-home dining.
While watching Salvage Kings, a Hulu TV show about a Canadian salvage company, I learned that the Nash automobile company’s 1920s slogan was "Give the customer more than he has paid for.” From Wikipedia, I learned the cars lived up to their slogan:
“Innovations included a straight-eight engine with overhead valves, twin spark plugs, and nine crankshaft bearings in 1930....A long-time proponent of automotive safety, Nash was among the early mid- and low-priced cars ...
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Historically, a young tech company like ours would go out and get a seed investor, then build up to venture capital (VC) money, do a few rounds of that, and then go public—and then down the road, take some private equity money. In sum, at various points, we’d need to fill our tank with funds from different sources.
That’s changing. In today’s market, everyone wants to invest and be a part of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) revolution (our space!). Private ...
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I’m seeing a disturbing trend online. Stores are not sharing news and events on their websites. Instead, they are relying on Facebook (and Instagram, which it also owns) to perform this task. That’s like a customer coming into the physical store and the store manager saying: "Want our news and events? We don’t have it here. Go to the coffee shop next door—which will be filled with our competitors pitching to you."
This past week I finally started doing a better job of sharing our vision. A company’s vision and how it shares this story is a key pillar in its growth. A company can grow without being a good vision sharer (storyteller), but it makes the growth slower and harder. When one gets up on stage (metaphorically) and shares their vision, with passion, it’s magnetic and can help split the sea. What medium did we add to our story-sharing tools this week? Video. I made and shared ...
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Arnold Schwarzenegger, Future Bridge Spokesperson?
Today's Wall St. Journal shares that Target stores saw a 20% increase in revenue--more than the chain had seen in the last 11 years combined. How did it do it? Target converted many of its physical stores into 'mini-warehouses,' where they can ship goods or have customers do curbside pick up.
What does this mean for indie stores? Stores will have to become more efficient in receiving online orders, which make up 40% of retail these ...
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