| Class of barrier | Characteristics |
| Tech Heavy | Some piece of technology is strikingly difficult to do, perhaps requiring realtime communication or tricky client software to make it work. These companies can take a little longer and can raise money earlier in the adoption lifecycle due to the inherent IP. We've got a couple of these in the works, but they're in no hurry to tell the world what they're up to! |
| Execution orientated | In these cases the company is not doing anything that technically that groundbreaking, but they're getting the business model, user experience, pricing etc. right in a way incumbents with more inertia would struggle to do. Here the key is about speed and quality of execution. I think I'd probably put Yuuguu in this category at the moment... |
| Critical mass orientated | Lots of web1.0 gravestones here! This is where you have to find ways to get the kind of critical mass of users which means that the service can gain a strong lead. This is more like the Facebook model. To be honest we've only tried this once and we ran out of capital before we reached critical mass. You can't sell these early and the key is probably to find ways to reach that early audience cheaply. I believe that Facebook did this early by getting links with US colleges. |
Perhaps it's interesting to think which model fits your company best, and then what that implies for strategy?
