Dave McClure's expletive-laced rant that you need to hear
If you're an entrepreneur, chances are you were just called a lazy, ad-happy Web-Tard. I find myself agreeing substantially with a lot of the points that Dave McClure makes in his assessment of recent entrepreneurship on the web, a space in which I've been playing a small part.
McClure's PayPal experience influences his article when he gets into a discussion about K-Y Jelly password friction. It's a valid point, one that (for the most part) can be resolved fairly easily by using third party authentication services like Google, Twitter, or Facebook Connect. Dave dives into this in some detail, under the heading "Assertion #3: In 2015 the default login & payment method(s) on the web will be Facebook Connect, Google Gmail, or Apple iTunes." Makes sense.
McClure's second assertion, that "the default startup business model for 2010 and beyond will be subscriptions and transactions" is something that I've been leaning towards for Wetoku -- though I remain adamant that there must always be a free version of Wetoku. The barrier to entry for creating compelling content in formats that viewers will enjoy consuming and find convenient to access needs to be low to ensure that we have an interesting wilderness of content out there. No disrespect to the venerable New York Times, TechCrunch, and MSNBCs of the world, but I'm glad that the big media guns out there aren't the only ones who decide which stories need to be told. It's a really big haystack out there on the fringes, but lots of great needles can be found in it. I digress.
Back to McClure's point about subscriptions and transactions supplanting ad-happy Web-tard-ism as the default business model for 2010 and beyond. I think this is more of a frank assessment of the inability of most startup ideas and their execution (both, independently) fall short of the standard necessary to be frequent-use products, than a substantial point against pursuing ad-happy Web-tard-ism. For those companies that can create frequent-use products, in particular those that benefit substantially from scale (ummm.... isn't that most of us?), freemium and ad-happy Web-tard-ism is your friend. But really... how many startups just really aren't cut out to be successful ad-happy web-tards? Chances are, your product and your company sucks (if we use Twitter, Facebook or YouTube as the standard for non-web-tard-ism.) Ouch. Throw 'dem stones, I'm ready.
So once reality sinks in and you realize that, despite offering your product for free (or partially for free, as a part of a larger attempt to get some of your users to pay), not many people want to use your product. So, for those entrepreneurs, subscriptions and transactions are what's left. It's much more efficient, which is necessary when you're looking at a smaller market than, ummm, everyone in the universe, à la Google, Twitter or Facebook. (Unless you're in Korea, which means you live in a different universe... )
My point is, ad-happy-web-tard-ism works if you're Facebook, Google, Twitter, or God:
0.04% to 6.49% of infinity users @ $0.47 = a gazillion dollars
vs. subscriptions and transactions, for lesser beings (like me):
2,000,000 @ $4.99 per month X 12 months = $119,760,000
Jeez, I wish I was Facebook, Google, Twitter of God... I think I'll have to settle for a more humble goal, like $120 million.
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