“I’m a huge believer in getting a million people, getting them engaged, and then building a business model on top of that. I knew I wasn’t planning on really trying to work on a business model until later.” – Reid Hoffman, CEO and Founder of LinkedIn
I got this quote from a recent CNNMoney piece on LinkedIn and struck a chord with me. I feel like I’m meeting two types of people who work in and around Internet businesses:
1. Someone who believes that many Internet businesses have gotten away from running businesses with clear monetization models and are just great products (i.e. twitter, digg, facebook)
2. Someone who believes that the Internet is an opportune platform to build great products and if that product fills a need that’s great enough for enough people, the monetization model will naturally come
Wokai delivers an internet microfinance platform that allows individuals to provide Chinese microentrepreneurs with loan capital. Our organization acts as an intermediary in this process, transferring funds from contributors abroad to microentrepreneurs in China through our field partners.
Who does Wokai support?
A typical Wokai microentrepeneur is a female rural inhabitant, living on less than $1/day. Her microfinance loan, ranging from $150-$300 dollars, provides her with the capital to start a small business. Her business varies by location, raising sheep in a rural grassland or operating a small fruit stand in a city center.
With her income, she accumulates savings, which allows her to allocate money towards long-term investments like education and health. By the end of her loan cycle, she has experienced increased financial independence, bolstered self-confidence, and a strengthened sense of community.
I read a post today by Larry Cheng of Fidelity Ventures today that really resonated with me. The post is about what motivates people to work. I’ve been thinking a lot about my career these days and contemplating if I’m motivated and realizing my potential at my current job. I’ve been thinking about what motivated me for a while and I came up with 3 things and in this order of importance:
1. Being challenged and learning – When I reflect on my favorite times at work; when I was excited to wake up and get to work asap, it was when I was doing things that were HARD. It was when I had to do things that I had never done before and sometimes under immense time pressure to get it done and get it done right. Unfortunately, I can only think of 1 or 2 instances that this has occurred in the past 6 months.
2. Increased responsibility – I think this motivator is somewhat tied to the 1st one. Once you’ve done something that’s higher up in the “stack”, you want to keep doing it. So it’s a combination of improving one’s position in the company and being challenged with bigger and more challenging tasks.
3. Money – Money is actually the very last factor for me. I find it unfortunate that management seems to forget this. More often than not, employees are motivated by more than money. Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos gets it. He realized that creating an entrepreneurial, collegial environment that encouraged learning allowed him to build a best-in-class customer service team for below market pay and benefits.
I’d like to end this post with an except from Larry’s post:
After hearing this and many other answers through the years, I am left with the impression that there’s a reason people work that sits above all of the specific reasons they give and ties them all together. While at any given moment, answers like money, learning, enjoyment, or others may feel like and may in fact be the dominant reason – I think they all tie into a more subtle, constant, overarching reason why people work. The impression I have is that people work because it gives them a sense of significance that would not otherwise be there.
I think many times in my career, I have forgotten this point. We think by organizing the right comp structures, the right bonus plans, etc. we are “motivating” people. But, really, I think the better motivator and long-term retention vehicle is to give someone a sense of significance. If someone feels significant, many other “important” things become secondary. Given that, maybe I should change my question to: What gives you significance? Never mind, that’s way too hard to fit that into an hour interview.
I came across a Bessemer presentation, made by Philippe Botteri and Byron Deeter at this year’s DreamForce, which I found to be really insightful for SaaS companies.
The presentation is long but it’s worth it. The first 20 minutes is on valuation metrics for SaaS companies and the next 20 are on the macro-economy. I didn’t watch the final 20 minutes which was on accounting topics relevant to SaaS companies. A pdf of a similar presentation can be downloaded here.
This post will cover Customer Acquisition Costs and how the current economic climate has affected the ability for SaaS companies to acquire customers at an acceptable ROI.
I was on Killerstartup.com today and the first company OrSiSo.com sounded interesting so I decided to watch a video about the product on the company’s website. In short, they are a social media aggregation platform, sort of like friendfeed but better. I forwarded the link to my coworker and I told him about the merits of the product.
Now you would think that the very next thing I did was use the product… but I didn’t because there was a problem. The product was absolutely free but I was still unwilling to use it because I had to DOWNLOAD it. I informed my coworker of this minor detail and his response was, “oh, in that case it’s not very interesting”.
My name is Jeffrey Lu and I was born and raised in the Boston, MA area and went to undergraduate business school at Emory University in Atlanta. I am a former investment banker with experience covering early-stage, emerging technology companies. I am currently the Business Development Manager at HealthCare.com. More About Me
