Business models for startups

Yesterday was another great start-up day in London as we spent the morning getting to know the 5 winners of Seedcamp London a little bit better and in the afternoon, headed to Techcrunch Geek ‘n Rolla . Out of the 350 in the audience, probably 70-80% were early stage startups so we knew we had to deliver a relevant message to this group particularly. The speakers were mostly local startups (Ian from Songkick and Lesley from Hubdub and experienced founders and advisors like William Reeve and Fred Destin and I think that’s what made the presentations so powerful. This means that from a speaker point of view, we had to deliver useful and significant value and knowledge, and from the audience point of view, we could relate and trust the speakers. This is one of the secret sauce elements that drives momentum in the Valley ecosystem and I am immensely pleased to say, we are seeing that same momentum here in London. The quality of the presentations I saw were excellent, succinct, and very useful.

I gave a 15 minute presentation on Business Models for startups. As per request, here it is below. My main objective was to spend as little time talking about Advertising as possible, and to give a lot of examples of emerging companies and success stories of bigger companies that utilize the business models that best leverage the customer and the value proposition by the company. Here are a few key takeaways:

• Talk to other startups – learn from each other. Share best practices and those horror stories
• Find your “best fit” – don’t just throw out buzzwords b/c they’ll impress someone. What model fits the long term growth of your company and meets customers’ view of the value you are delivering
• Think through the biz model early on. It not just focuses you on the viability of the business but focuses you on the customer/user and what value you’re bringing to them
• Talk to other startups 🙂

What I’d like folks reading this to do is provide more examples in the comments of startups that are using each of these models and off course feel free to list others that aren’t here. I was not trying to be exhaustive in my list. Am sure your co-startups will appreciate any advice

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