Enterprise 2.0 - some great posts on the beauty of edge-in adoption

Nic Brisbourne at Esprit has put together a really concise post about the market entry strategy of Enterprise 2.0 companies. I totally agree with his premise and have thought it's one of the most exciting opportunities in the current arena. Maybe I've just missed it, but I'd really like to see a great example of this having worked. Please point me to any great examples, excepting perhaps Salesforce.com, which seems to be used as an exemplar for every enterprise software strategy in the last five years!

Yuuguu present free browser-based screensharing at DEMOfall

The Yuuguu guys did a great demo of their free service, and the new browser-based viewing at DEMOfall in San Diego yesterday. They've had a great reaction and have been really pleased with the response they've had.

What type of web startup are you?

Rail Mail Sorting Slots
Originally uploaded by Potjie

I had a very thought provoking conversation yesterday with Lee Strafford the former CEO of Plusnet about web companies. One part of the conversation I think might be interesting was around classifying the different types of such companies by the way in which they build competitive barriers:

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?

Yuuguu off to DEMOfall

I'm delighted that Yuuuguu are presenting some great new stuff at Demo in September. I think it'll be really well received. If you're thinking of going there's a useful discount if you click via the following Yuuguu off to DEMOfall 07.

Business plan obfuscation: Twitter style

Scoble points out that there's a difference between "not having a business plan" and not telling the world what your business plan will emerge to be. I like the term "Business plan obfuscation" too- that's a handy label! However I'd suggest that there's a halfway house between investors backing the eventual business model, and investors backing the public business model: it's not that uncommon for a company to have several business models available to pursue, some more ambitious and flaky, others more concrete and modest.
I've seen investors back the same company, but on different expectations of which business model will pan out- that can be OK if there's enough cash to properly reach a decision, but generally it's better if everyone has the same goal.
Sometimes the plan VC's actually bought into at the start is the same as the plan the company wants to tell the world about at that time, and the same as the plan that produces first revenue and also the plan that results in the big exit. However, often it doesn't quite work out that way! I think most VC's get this; I'm sure that when Fred Wilson quotes what he said about Del.icio.us being the same for Twitter: "The question everyone asks is "What is the business model?" To be completely and totally honest, we don't yet know.", then the key here is the "the",Twitter may today show the world only a "geek-trendy" product, but I'd suggest that they may be several business models in the works, with different revenue streams, different risk profiles and different work profiles.
However, it's interesting to note that when Yuuguu launched its truly free screensharing service there was suspicion from some potential users about the company's business model. If you're "free" it can be important that people understand if there's some "hook" that will kick in if they start using the service. Now that Yuuguu has launched it's low-cost international conference call service everyone can see their long-term business model, or maybe they are just seeing the first revenue model...