Get away from 10.09 Venture Forum

This was not the first time I went to Venture Forum, but I got a lot from this venture forum. This experience made me feel so good about venture forum, what I did not really get involve with. 

Since we are all doing business model and trying to run our own ideas, this experience came just in right time. I remembered that the first speakers said we need to keep track of the head questions. This is what we need to do when we make our hypotheses into real. Actually I used this method already on our business plan—deliver service. I asked several friends about what questions they generated after hearing our business model. And I realized that the question they asked most frequently is that how we can differentiate with existed delivery companies since they also provide online service, re-deliver, and pick up DIY services. Then we discussed about this question and then conclude that we need to give our customers most convenience---distribute at walk distance for most of target customers. Then another question came---how can we cover the high storage cost if distribute so intensive? This question helped us finally decide to cooperate with gas stations and some retail stores to build warehouses inside gas stations and retail stores.

For the second part, I think MoMe would have huge potential market if it gets a good start and operate. I remembered some people asked a question about how to do research in early market, especially some brand new products which had no similar product in market. That would be a question in front all of marketing people. And the answer we got from that was really instructive: data from whole industry, data from parallel industry, or simply talk with people. For the angel invest part, I have to admit that I got somehow lost. (I’m really not a financial person) But I Google angel invest and found that 1 out of 10 projects will fail for angel investors. I couldn’t help but wondering how many profits they can get from on success project can drive them take risk of 9/10 failures!

The man sat beside me, whose name is David, is a really kind person. He took WPI’s courses every year in last 32 years!! Holly! Do we have that many courses in WPI？I found that he is doing the same business with what my families trying to do in China. And I’m pretty sure that venture forum is really a good place to build network and lean from each other. 

Internet, Santa or killer?

Image a day without internet, what will you do? No online music, no online movie, no online chat, no online shopping, no online homework, no email, no facebook, no e-book, at all, what will you do? How long can you live without internet? For me, I guess, just one day can drive me crazy!

Believe it or not, internet is already part of our life, and whatever you like it or not, you cannot deny that internet is changing our life styles. Just as the article we read before, Google made us stupid, I blame this to internet. After all, Google, as a single cell of whole internet, cannot influence us without internet. We do be changed by internet as a single person. How about whole society? Still, we can see the change! Economic Value of the Advertising –Supported Internet Ecosystem gave us very convictive data to show what internet bring to whole society.

The data didn’t surprise me. Internet is not a simple product in our modern society. It is a tool connects all industry and customers. It generate 2 million employment opportunity in 2011 and will create more positions in the future, for sure. This number not only comes from the employment from IT and online marketing department, but also from increasing small entrepreneurs. In my memory, holding a company and being a true boss is a really hard thing. I admired all the people who owned a company when I was a child. However, ten year past, when I went into college, I found that some classmates started to run their own online stores. They became small companies’ owners. Some friends even gave up high salary jobs and insisted their own business.

Some people earn while some people lost, however. We can see a lot of industries are struggling while internet is shining. Newspaper is dying, the only thing people need is news; album is dying, the only thing people need is music; retail stores are replaced by online stores; traditional books are replaced by e-books. Large amounts of staffs in traditional industry are being worried about losing job someday somehow while large amounts of younger people find their suitable position in online industry.

History wheel never stop turning. We watched so many products or industries sparkled one time and vanished other time. Will internet be replaced by something else? Of course it will. There must be another more stable and faster system showing up. And we need to definitely be careful, catching the opportunities while avoiding being replaced.

Reference：
http://www.iab.net/media/file/iab_Report_September-24-2012_4clr_v1.pdf