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.
Posted: December 19th, 2009 | Author: Chim | Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Startups, Tools | Tags: Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship, Social Network, Startups | No Comments »
http://sprouter.com/
Sprouter is a social network that connects entrepreneurs around the world. It is one of those website for grass-rooting campaigns for entrepreneurs to share their ideas. I’m not sure if that’s effective given that there are many social network dedicated to the same thing.
Posted: December 19th, 2009 | Author: Chim | Filed under: Fun, Groups, Startups, Tools, Web 2.0 | Tags: Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship, Fun, Interesting, Social Network, Startups, Tools | No Comments »
http://tinychat.com/
Tinychat provides free video and audio chatroom for the mass. People can use this tool as a DJ room, virtual meeting presentation room or live interactive TV. I like this website because it’s free and for startups, this tool can connect our team member even if they are in different parts of the world. I think this is a Webex competitor only that Webex is focused on corporate customers and Tinychat is focused on the consumer customers.
If this service catches on, it would be a great acquisition target for big companies like Cisco, Google, Microsoft and even Yahoo. I believe that with the adoption of higher speed internet network and the integration of video and audio into gadgets, the reality is that people will prefer to use video and audio to communicate rather than writing, SMS or IM.
Posted: December 17th, 2009 | Author: Chim | Filed under: Education, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Links, Startups, Venture Capital, Web 2.0 | Tags: Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship, Facebook, Food for thoughts, Internet, Private Equity, Social Network, Startups, Valuation, Venture Capital, Web | No Comments »
Zynga is the company responsible for all those spam like games, such as FarmVille or MafiaWars. All these games are targeted to Facebook and they make money by showing advertisements. All these social type of games target the very basic human emotion of achievement. Most people play these games because they want to receive a higher status or position in their character or their skill level. In Facebook, players can show off their “new virtual and acquired ability” and get recognition from friends and other players. This is a big driver for the success of these games.
Zynga
I wonder why Facebook doesn’t merger or buy these game companies. It is part of Facebook anyway. It should acquire and get the game revenue. Currently, game companies can show ads from AdSense or any other place. Facebook loses ads revenue because of this.
The impressive thing is that the company is receiving more $180 million. I wonder what they are going to use that money for.
More at http://www.businessinsider.com/zynga-takes-180-million-venture-round-from-dst-others-cue-russian-mafia-jokes-2009-12
Posted: July 19th, 2009 | Author: Chim | Filed under: Food for thoughts, Fun, Groups | Tags: Food for thoughts, Fun, Google, Interesting, MBA, Networking, Presentations, Social Network | No Comments »
Thanks Googlers!
Last Friday (July 17th) was my last at Google as a AdWords Product Specialist in Brazil. It was a fun, growing, interesting, deep, challenging and awesome experience.
As a Google fan, I was lucky enough to work in the product development, engineering, marketing, project management, education, training and sales sides of this great company. I was able to see the wholeness of how this behemoth company works and the more I knew the company, the more I admired Google.
Besides that, I admired Googlers the most. Googlers are extremely smart, intelligent and nice to work with. They do have a really high standards about any kind of work. That environment challenged me to do my best and to grow even more.
It was sad my last day, but I believe I will see my coworkers from Google someday again.
Now, I’m focus on my MBA in Canada.
Some of my Google experience left on the Internet:
Novos Recursos do Google Analytics (in Portuguese only)
Google University – AdWords Além da Busca? – SMX Sao Paulo
Google Developer Days 2007
