Category: revolution

Mass customization

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Here’s a few categories or Industries which have been revolutionized by Mass Customization:

 

T-shirts (Threadless & Neighborhoodies)

TV (Youtube & Joost)

Handbags (Elemental Threads)

Journalism (Blogs & podcasting)

Newspapers (RSS)

Job Seeking (Aggregation & feeds)

Book publishing (Lulu)

Tourism (the web in general)

Luxury goods (fractional ownership)

Music (itunes)

Networking (facebook & social apps)

 

In fact there’s just too many to mention.

 

But the real question is this: If it hasn’t hit your industry yet, why not and what are you doing about it?

One piece of advice

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

If you could offer entrepreneurs one piece of advice what would it be?

 

Start up blog’s is this:   Don’t die wondering.

 

I’m sure all 20,000 monthly startup blog readers want to hear yours. Add them to the comments or email them to me and I’ll post them on an upcoming blog entry with your name / blog beside it.

Rentoid on techcrunch

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

We finally got ‘crunched’ – with a little spiel for rentoid on Tech Crunch.

In the first instance it’s given us a large membership boost and a very positive response. But it’s also given us our share of negative armchair experts, naysayers in the comments.

We say:

“That’s Ok – revolutionaries like us don’t care what naysayers think.”

But it’s a few thousand more people that know about rentoid.com too.

Actually we do care about what they think as it pertains to ideas to improve the service. We turn their negatives into a positive. But we always ignore an attitude which says something won’t work. It won’t for them – their attitude has already predetermined that!

In fact, some context here: We had many more positive comments and only a few negative. Also, both our membership and listings have been boosted as has our unique visiters today. But I thought I’d make this ‘blatant piece of self promotion’ worthy of a startup blog story by providing some insight!

You can check out the story here.

And add some comments here on the Crunch Base or on the story. We want to hear negative and postive sentiments. We want to improve our offer.

The difference between ‘Innovation & Different’

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

While watching entrepreneurs pitch their business earlier this week at the Pitch Club in Melbourne Australia, and colleague and I were disappointed at what some people believe to be innovation.

   

Shannon from Shannon says and I agreed that what many people call innovation is simply – different.

Here’s a clear delineation of the two which is a startup blog mashup of multiple dictionary definitions.

Different: unlike in form, quality, amount, or nature. Distinct or separate. Unusual or differing from others.

  

Innovation: a creation, new device or process. The result of study and or experimentation which improves the desired outcome / usage of said device, process or creation.

 butter-stick.jpg 

Sometimes we only need to understand the true meaning of our words to determine if we are ‘on track’.

Have an opinion

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Quite often it pays to be malleable, especially in a corporate environment. The powers that be only want to hear about incremental improvements that build on the status quo. Not change it.

Once we leave and get out there on our own. We must make sure do this:

Have an opinion, create change and go beyond the incremental.

‘Game changing’ – Nintendo Wii

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

If anyone ever needs proof that the market leader can be given lesson, Nintendo provides this.

 

From a brand which dominated the 1980’s with handheld games and fell into relative console obscurity during the 1990’s it’s comeback has been astounding as has the performance of the Wii.

And it’s all based on simple consumer insight:

“Games everyone can play”

  

A direct quote from their current advertising. Enough said. 

  

 nintendo-wii.png

  

They are clear console market leader now in Australia. Overtaking the previously thought ‘unbeatable’ Sony Playstation franchise. No incumbent is ever safe. This maxim will only increase in relevance over time.

Often we build complexity into things because the technology allows it. We are better off focusing on what makes sense for the end user, not what’s possible.

Chris Anderson of Long Tail fame has been espousing for a long time that the future of gaming is not in the console, but the controls. He’s obviously ahead of his time.

Start up lesson: The offer with the best user experience, always beats the offer with the best technology.

15.4%

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Only 15.4% of the worlds population have ever accessed the internet.

If we think the internet is ‘world changing’, then let’s imagine what would be possible if ‘the world’ actually had access to it? The idea sharing, the education, the cultural understandings….

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Maybe start ups should be thinking of how to give the remaining 84.6% of the world access to the net rather than working out a new social paradigm to leverage.