Ask HN: list of companies, and business models?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=645583

by sdrinf • 17 years ago

4 6 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Below is a proposal for a very minimal (in terms of development) site, which might still prove to be educational for all of the HC community:

For entreprenours, and investors in the startup community, Businessmodels.com (temp name) is an open wiki with a list of the most successfull online / web based companies, and their respective business models. The wiki aims to answer questions such as what basic proposition does the business operates in, what was the critical differentiator to competitors, and what can we learn from them.

Putting together such wiki would allow us to take a fresh perspective on what seems statistically advantegous, as well as note trending, and market shifts.

I'm not quite sure, if such resource exist per se, so this thread is dedicated for eyeballing the concept.

Do you think it has editor magnet potential, and would you contribute to it (anything other, than your own)?

(Please keep it constructive)

gasull2• 17 years ago

Interesting, but nslookup businessmodels.com returns NXDOMAIN. Also, please submit with the working link and put the comment in the home page of the wiki instead.

ScottWhigham3• 17 years ago

?? The way I read it, he/she is submitting a proposal - a request for feedback on an idea. I think the format of the question was fine and I didn't think at all to try to go to the domain.

ScottWhigham3• 17 years ago

Interesting? Yes. Able to make the proprietor money? Doubtful. I can't figure out who would pay for the site - subscribers or advertisers/sponsors? Who is the target market - MBA students? Enterpreneurs? I'm not sure and, since I don't know who the users are, I don't know how it makes money. If I can't figure out how to make money from it before I launch, I wouldn't launch.

Would I contribute? No, because I would get no value from the site. I have to wonder whether it would be faster for me to google+read your wiki than to just visit the company's homepage when I want to figure out their business model. Like many entrepreneurs here, I can eyeball a site and figure out the basics of their business model fairly quickly. Adding a layer of, "What was that site again that lets me look at a company's business model?" just doesn't help. Besides, if it's a wiki then you've got all sorts of editorial stuff to deal with that a non-wiki site wouldn't have (i.e. lawsuits of confidentiality breaches, trade secrets, etc).

sdrinf• 17 years ago

Thank you for your feedback. My main motivation behind this project is learning, thus I'm not expecting this site to be a direct cashflow of any kind. I suspect, that information gathered systematically to answer the aforementioned questions could be of great public service.

Regarding the content, there is so much more to learn about each individual business, than superficial eyeballing. If you start a systematical approach, writing down, for example the top 1K alexa sites, and their respective business model, for any given concept you've got hundreds of sites; not even differentiators defines businesses that sharply. I suspect, that behind each successful business, there's a mix of differentiators, perspective, and way of thinking/measuring; grabbing, and noting these less tangible insights would be the main focus of the site.

I don't really consider lawsuits to be a threat -most of the stuff can be figured out by a combination of public announcements + general available info on the net + business logic.

> Would I contribute? No, because I would get no value from the site.

Your answer presumes, that user contribution is a function of value received from the site; in my experience, this is not so. Yes, there are good-intentioned hippies, but most people are just pushing their own agenda, wrapped in a marketing blanket, which sometimes happen to be aligned with things like "building a global encyclopedia".

So, to re-iterate the original question: do you think there are people who's business agenda would align with the creation of aforementioned wiki?

ScottWhigham3• 17 years ago

"If you start a systematical approach, writing down, for example the top 1K alexa sites, and their respective business model"

Okay - now wait a minute. You want to review 1,000 websites. Fine. You're going to do so by figuring "out by a combination of public announcements + general available info on the net + business logic" their business models? No chance. You might do 10 or 20 but you aren't doing 1,000.

But let's play a game - let's pretend that you do this project and you make it through all 1,000. How long does it take? 40 hours per week, perhaps it takes only three years - I think that's probably a fair estimate. One person working full-time on such a project could likely accomplish that in 3-5 years. One person trying to herd cats into helping them might be able to accomplish such a task in only 18-24 months if they work full-time.

But what of the opportunity cost? What else could you have done - for the world, for yourself - during that time? This project is of mild interest to a slim percentage of people in the world. Notice that you posted it on HN and it got three votes - 1 for free and 1 from me b/c I wanted to see opinions. I don't think it has merit but it is interesting to talk about and, if I had to guess, that's sort of everyone else here's opinion. We'd rather work on our own business models than pore over others'.

I'm not trying to come down on you - not at all. But I don't see how it can make you any money long-term. And if it can't make you money long-term, then it's a time-suck; it's taking time away from something that could be making you money. Now if you just enjoy doing it, great - I understand completely. But don't fool yourself into thinking you're going to have the time to create this great database of up-to-date business models. The internet has plenty of abandoned projects; it doesn't need another.

The best way to learn is to do. Go create your own company with your own business model. It will be wrong. You'll learn or you won't. Reviewing the top 1k alexa sites will not help you learn how to create a business model for your own company.

gasull2• 17 years ago

I just created the wiki for you in less than an hour: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=648223

Ask HN: list of companies, and business models?

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