Startup: Kwedit – a promising way of payment, how about Habbo?

Posted: February 7th, 2010 | Author: Chim | Filed under: Education, Food for thoughts, Fun, Startups | Tags: Business, Business plan, Education, Entrepreneurs, Fun, Interesting, Internet, Money, Social Network, Startups | No Comments »

Kwedit is a strange name for a payment company. This is a startup that offers a new form of payment to social and interactive games that allows people to buy virtual goods. The strange thing is that it allows people to “promise” to pay for a virtual good and the user can pay the promise later with a bar code in a 7eleven store.

Even though this seems to be a great innovation, the idea of printing a bar code and pay it in a retail store is nothing new to date. The strong differentiator of Kwedit is the idea of promising to pay later. I wonder what would happen if everybody promises to pay but none of the actually pays anything. I believe that the CFO of the company would be scare of the increase in the account payable of the balance sheet.

This type of payment for virtual goods reminded me of Habbo Hotel. Habbo is a Finnish company that started its virtual goods operations before the internet boom. It is probably the first company to have a business model based on selling virtual goodies to users. Interesting enough, Habbo targeted in a very narrow market segment. Its targets on teenagers that love to chat in pixel-lated environment.

Habbo and its many forms of payments.

Habbo offers 7eleven payments too. OK, they sell pre-paid cards and Kwedit doesn’t.

In my humble opinion, Sulake could have grown much more if it had focused on the virtual good market as a whole market instead of just that niche teenager segment. It could have created a strategic plan of reaching all types of games and services based on virtual goods. Well, other companies grew upon this model and they are newer than Habbo. C’est tant pis.

Spudaroo.com – an outsourcing marketplace for documents in general

Posted: December 29th, 2009 | Author: Chim | Filed under: Startups, Web 2.0 | Tags: Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship, Interesting, Market, Productivity, Startups, Tools | 1 Comment »

Spudaroo.com

Spudaroo.com is a website that allows people to pay 3rd parties to create website documents, business plan, blog content, slide presentation, and even resume for lazy people. This is a Canadian startup and I wonder how effective is to outsource this type of work to others. I can’t imagine someone who doesn’t know me to write up my resume. Even worse, it is not a great idea to ask someone else to write a business plan for you if that other person doesn’t know the business or the industry at all.

Lastly, I think the name is really hard to spell and search on Google. Though, it is creative.

Bookhu – Top books for women and men

Posted: December 23rd, 2009 | Author: Chim | Filed under: Food for thoughts, Fun, Startups, Tools, Web 2.0 | Tags: Books, Internet, Productivity, Startups, Useful, Web | No Comments »

Bookhu is a book review website that shows if a book is read more by men or women. It is a food for thought website. It shows if I have more male or female preference. In my searches, most of my books related to entrepreneurship, venture capital and languages are read more by men. However, my books related to culture are read more by women.

Canadian Innovation Exchange – Top 20 in Gallery view

Posted: December 22nd, 2009 | Author: Chim | Filed under: Education, Entrepreneurship, Food for thoughts, Startups, Venture Capital, Web 2.0 | Tags: Business plan, Canada, Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship, Food for thoughts, Internet, Venture Capital | No Comments »

Another Great Startable Tip: Making a great business plan pitch

Posted: December 20th, 2009 | Author: Chim | Filed under: Education, Entrepreneurship, Framework, Startups, Venture Capital | Tags: Articles, Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship, Startups, Venture Capital | No Comments »

I should be studying for my final exams, but I couldn’t resist reading posts from Startable. This time, they are sharing a neat and simple framwork to make a great business plan pitch. After reading it, it actually gives us tips to how to write and organize a business plan. I was very interested in the marketing part where it gives an idea of what VCs are looking for marketing data in the business plan.

Quick summary of the post:

1. Passion - training and training will lead to a passionate pitch.
2. Simple, Short and Concise - grab your audience attention in less than 10 minutes.
3. Pictures are worth a thousand words – avoid putting all your business plan in one slide, use images instead.
4. Convey what your business is in 90 seconds – tell your audience what you are offering to the market in 90 seconds.
5. Keep text in a slide to no more than three lines – don’t put all business plan in one slide!
6. Target market and market size – who you are selling to?
7. Marketing - how are you going to sell to those people?
8. Competition – list 3 competitors and why you are better then them and barriers to entry.
9. Product - what makes your product unique? Any IP?
10. Revenue potential – project and assume with pride, don’t be over consevative nor creative.
11. Costs - identify cost and provide scalability savings.
12. Team - why your team is the best to run the business?