Max Levchin's favorite new startups

http://www.businessinsider.com/max-levchins-favorite-startups-are-all-japanese-2009-2

by angstrom • 17 years ago

35 57 17 years ago

rokhayakebe6• 17 years ago

My new favorite startups are the ones with a "Pricing" link and without "Share", "Collaborate", "Easy", "Friends".

markessien4• 17 years ago

Most of the really successful ideas started without a "pricing" link - google, skype, wikipedia, youtube, facebook, myspace, craigslist, plentyoffish, instant messaging etc.

And what the people want is free - torrents, muxtape, tvlinks, etc.

I'm not saying it's wrong to charge money, but not charging money has been a successful strategy for a good number of startups.

rokhayakebe6• 17 years ago

All the companies named above are the exception in their categories. I do not know another successful Google, Skype, Craigslist....

By the way Youtube, Facebook and Skype are not profitable yet (at least not to my knowledge so excuses it if I am wrong).

Let me give you a good example of "Pricing".

Take a company such as ClickCare. They provide a web based environment for home care providers to remotely ask questions to doctors, and share photos & videos of patients. The doctors can review the information from anywhere and make the proper suggestions. That is what they do, well they are also HIPPA compliant to ensure the privacy/security of the patient information. Now this video, photo, wiki company charges doctors 20,000 USD a year.

I am not saying that is all to their enterprise, but whatever effort two guys in a garage are going through to build the next Flickr, they could apply their technology in less sexy field and have a significantly higher chance at being successful.

But not everyone wants to build a profitable, not famous business. They want to be rockstars.

teej• 17 years ago

> Most of the really successful ideas started without a "pricing" link

If you define "success" to mean "lots of traffic" and not "profitable and growing". Clearly this is the case, because half of the companies you listed aren't profitable.

There are -lots- of internet companies who charge and are very successful. I'm not talking 37 Signals and Fog Creek - literally drops in the bucket. I'm talking about Amazon, Salesforce, and Google AdWords. Oh and how does Craigslist make money? Charging users.

> not charging money has been a successful strategy for a good number of startups.

No offense, but you're blowing both the "successful" and "good number" part of this way out of proportion.

axod8• 17 years ago

It's considered "HIP" to say that at the moment. That doesn't make it right though. In the same way it's hip to hate Java right now. That doesn't mean that Java isn't good at solving a set of problems in a good way - it clearly is.

There's millions to be made from advertising revenue. If you can get people to pay for something, great, but not every product is the type where paying would make any sense at all. By charging consumers directly, you massively reduce your audience to a small subset of users.

It's quite funny to see people imply that advertising revenue isn't "real" revenue, or is in some way less valuable than getting customers to pay directly.

You know what the most powerful marketing word in the world is? "FREE". The clever thing is using that to your advantage and still making money. Tons of industries do that though, loss leaders work, 'free cellphone (with contract) works' etc etc.

adamhowell2• 17 years ago

> It's quite funny to see people imply that advertising revenue isn't "real" revenue, or is in some way less valuable than getting customers to pay directly.

As long as numbers like these hold true: "At the $1 RPM (CPM/CPA/CPC) level achieved by most general sites, you need 4 billion page views/month ... to [reach] $50M in revenue per year" (http://www.thealarmclock.com/mt/archives/2007/03/a_vcs_view_...), charging money for a product that creates value is going to be a more viable way of starting a successful company online

rokhayakebe6• 17 years ago

Ad revenue is real revenue. A dollar is a dollar whether it comes from a user or an advertiser.

That being said, for every (EDIT:ok, most) struggling consumer startup you show me, I can show you a way they can apply their technology in different fields and charge customers.

We just have to stop being afraid to say "Pay Me Please".

pg6• 17 years ago

I don't have a new favorite. Mine have always been the ones that make something people want.

sofal2• 17 years ago

I think the ones that go for the intersection between what people want and what will genuinely improve people's lives are the best.

wschroter• 17 years ago

I love how people confuse "selling to Google" with a viable business.

Just because you sell the company (YouTube) doesn't mean the business was successful. It just means you've handed the loss to another company.

markessien4• 17 years ago

Finally, someone is saying it. The ideas in silicon valley that are being produced now are just so boring. I can't remember the last time I said : wow, or even just thought - well, that's different.

Sure, it's great to make a better database examiner, but if you're young and you have nothing to lose, why not try something really fresh. Something brand new? That webcam figure is fresh, for example.

vaksel• 17 years ago

truly innovative ideas are almost impossible to make money with, so people settle for doing things that they know will sell(either to users or another company)

mixmax• 17 years ago

From the Wikipedia article on Silicon Valley "It was in Silicon Valley that the integrated circuit, the microprocessor, the microcomputer, among other key technologies, were developed, and has been the site of electronic innovation for over four decades"

These were all truly innovative ideas, and they made enough money to give Silicon Valley it's name.

The problem with truly innovative ideas is not that they are impossible to make money with. The problem is that it's a homerun business where a few succeed and most fail. VC's have known this for ages, which is why they invest in innovation.

pg6• 17 years ago

Occam's razor suggests that the reason the current ideas seem boring is that you don't understand yet which ones have big potential. Microprocessors seem a great idea in retrospect, because we've seen now what they turned into, but initially hardly anyone cared about them, even within Intel.

Shamiq2• 17 years ago

I'm sorry, I don't follow how you're applying Occam's Razor here.

markessien4• 17 years ago

It may not be possible to understand what they can become, but one can look at the industry and know roughly what will happen. Let's say some guy comes up with some really great hubcaps.He can grow to become the best hubcap maker in the world. But he's still just making hubcaps, and most people don't care about them.

But the people who do stuff in media, for example music or tv, always have potential to change the industry. Same with anything communication related. These are core industries that are fundamental to human beings - so startups in those areas always have huge potential. Like muxtape for example, or justin.tv, those startups can change the world. They are not changing the world yet, but I can see that with the right things in place, they can change the world. It's the same with microprocessors, anyone who was in the field knew that if size went down, price went down and so on, microprocessors would make a huge difference. They did not predict the apps that would be enabled because of them.

Why did they not? Microprocessors created a platform, and a platform opens a brand new field for new people to create ideas within. When a startup works on something that creates a new type of platform, then breakout ideas can happen on the platform. Hubcaps are not a platform that others can build on. They're the end of a line.

trapper7• 17 years ago

This seems to be a very unpopular opinion around here. There have been few web businesses I think of as "wow" as well. This era isn't about the technological innovation (there has been little really in the last few years of software), it's about usability innovation. Mainly making things simpler and putting a framework around marketing your wares. This is great, and needed, but not so interesting.

Another friend sharing widget video thingy? Bleh.

immad• 17 years ago

That doll is awesome. Watch the video.

SwellJoe3• 17 years ago

It's awesome technology, but I'm disturbed by the seeming purpose of it. There's a whole section of the video devoted to molesting, and taking clothes off of, the teenage girl figure until she's crying in a corner...and then giving her a teddy bear to make her happy again.

The Japanese sexual culture is deeply disturbing is what I'm trying to say here.

sho• 17 years ago

Won't somebody think of the virtual children!

sofal2• 17 years ago

So... shun the superficial Web 2.0 social networks in favor of the new, innovative technology with more substance: virtual sex toys.

It's absolutely inspiring.

jmtame2• 17 years ago

wow! counted as the second time i saw a photo of max without his slide shirt on.

matt12• 17 years ago

That actually is kind of funny:

http://images.google.com/images?q=max%20levchin

jmtame2• 17 years ago

max is a marketing GENIUS. searching for someone's name and it inevitably turns up x*results of advertisements for his company ;)

i say this is a predictor of success. if you search someone's full name, count how many times you see their shirt with their company logo. until i have enough money as max to throw around, i'll pose with a 8.5x11 sheet of paper with my logo written or printed on it.

callmeed• 17 years ago

So, he's unimpressed with silicon valley conventions like "friends lists" ... but one of his favorite startups is a "mobile social network"?

I'm unimpressed with Max's shallow evaluation.

igglepiggle2• 17 years ago

My favourite startup (if you could still call it that) is Telnic (British). I think the .tel TLD will be revolutionary, but has so far received surprisingly little attention from tech/entrepreneurial communities like this one and TechCrunch - perhaps because it's not in the Valley? I guess this might change when it launches next week, or on March 24th when general availability begins..

unalone3• 17 years ago

What's so revolutionary about it?

igglepiggle2• 17 years ago

Well, there is plenty of friction in the world of telecoms, and its tangent with media - .tel solves many of these problems.

Check out the DEMOfall 08 presentation for a brief 5 minute overview, or their in-house "Tell The World" interview for a lengthier discussion:

http://www.telnic.org/media-resources.html

The best blog writeup I found is here:

http://www.disruptivetelephony.com/2008/12/is-the-new-tel-do...

If you want to get into a discussion then let me know and I'll pitch some thoughts at you, but wanted to introduce you to the subject first, in case you hadn't already looked into it.

Max Levchin's favorite new startups

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