Comments on: Internet Business Models of the TechStars

By: Dennis Hampton

Dennis Hampton — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 19:21:18 +0000

Thanks for the great content and information. I am always browsing the internet looking for good content to get ideas for my home business internet marketing web sites and future articles. You have some real good content here so just keep on doing what you are doing as good stuff like this is always hard to find.

By: David G. Cohen

David G. Cohen — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:23:44 +0000

thanks for reading!

By: Thomas

Thomas — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:27:10 +0000

Ok, now I see it more clearly…. thank you, and keep up the great posts!

By: John Moorhead

John Moorhead — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:56:42 +0000

I found this list to be very interesting. What I struggle with as an entrepreneur is seeing companies started with 2.0 in mind, and not being able to convince brick and mortar companies to get involved. I think that that are a lot of business models for startups that could be easily applied to a traditional company (and should be applied). Great post…

By: Lateef

Lateef — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:47:28 +0000

You are a gentleman and a scholar, I look forward to more posts.

By: David G. Cohen

David G. Cohen — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:30:38 +0000

Valid point. Agreed.

By: Lateef

Lateef — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:26:54 +0000

Right, but you said above that SAAS companies don't bother with try before you buy at all, and that's just not true. My impression is that many if not most SAAS companies do offer free (albeit time delimited) trials. Maybe you mean that there's a distinction between offering try before you buy for all products, even those with the most limited features, and offering distinct products with the limited features ones being free and "full featured" ones costing money.

By: David G. Cohen

David G. Cohen — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:54:04 +0000

Freemium generally has a "free forever" product that is valuable. "Try before you buy" is often limited on a time basis, as with Salesforce. There is no free product that you can use forever (to my knowledge) in that case. I agree that they can all be considered "selling software" - the 58% number I pointed out.

By: Lateef

Lateef — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:38:33 +0000

I'm getting hung up on the criteria of "try before you buy" being a differentiator between SAAS and Freemium. Salesforce could be considered the industry leader in SAAS but they offer free trials (try before you buy). Whereas Fred Wilson's definition of freemium seems to depend on big user aggregation before attempting an upsell. Baydin is in closed Alpha, so I can't quickly tell if they would fit Fred's definition and TimZon seems way too niche to fit. I think these categories merit more discussion/review.

By: David G. Cohen

David G. Cohen — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:52:15 +0000

keep in mind that my goal here was not to be technical about business model definitions. some of these are certainly hybrids. I think in general marketplaces connect willing buyers and sellers, and leadgen models connect potential buyers to potentially unknown sellers.