Ah-ha 2.0

So I recently read Lessin’ Lessons written by Bob Lessin. Bob is an investment banker and investor with an incredibly accomplished career including being the youngest partner (at 31) at Morgan Stanley and former Vice Chairman of Smith Barney and now currently Vice Chairman of Jeffries. I have had the opportunity to [...]

So, in my previous post I went over Life Time Value (LTV) of a user of a social game and how the Facebook ecosystem dramatically improves it.  However, this LTV is not exceptionally high given that only 1 to 2% of Monthly Active Users actually pay each month.  LTV of a user for these games [...]

I recently read a great blog post at Gamasutra that examined how social games like Farmville and Mafia Wars are not really social at all:
“It’s also important to understand something about ’social games’: Most of them are not social. They tend to be single or multi-player games that use social networks (mostly Facebook) as an [...]

The third part of this three part series of impulse discount ecommerce companies is focused on pay to bid auctions such as BigDeal and Swoopo.  These sites have really interesting business models.  Basically how it works is that they put items up for sale in an auction format.  In order to bid for an item, [...]

So now to Part 2 on my thoughts on impulse discount ecommerce.  A new category has emerged this past year – Local Group Savings.  The two most popular sites are Groupon and LivingSocial Deals.  If you haven’t checked them out, here is how it works.  You sign up to receive a daily email for one [...]

2009 was the year of emergence for impulse discount ecommerce.  First of all, what is impulse discount ecommerce?  It is when a consumer buys a good or service without originally seeking it and that good or service is heavily discounted (usually more than 50%).  Three categories have emerged (1) Online Private Sale Companies (2) Local [...]

So the social games market has been exploding in growth.  Companies like Zynga, Playfish and Playdom are virtually minting money as they distribute their games via Facebook and other social networking sites.  It is funny as I speak to people about this business, they say to me “I don’t get it”.  And to be honest, [...]

So I just read an ebook titled “Early Exits” by Basil Peters. The book argues that VCs are spurring on companies to go for the “home runs” when it may not be in best interest of the entrepreneurs or angel investors . The book argues that companies should be wary of taking VC [...]

This topic comes up constantly. Facebook has crossed the 300 million active member mark which is staggering but there is still some skepticism that they will flame out like Friendster or MySpace. However, what people don’t realize is how Facebook has differentiated themselves as a social networking site. Facebook has done an [...]

It has been a while since I posted to this blog.  I have spent the last 3 months out in Asia.  I did a little work but it was definitely mostly pleasure.  Great to get away from things and have time to think, reflect and clear the mind.  So I have been back in New [...]