

Ask HN: list of companies, and business models? - sdrinf

Below is a proposal for a very minimal (in terms of development) site, which might still prove to be educational for all of the HC community:<p>For entreprenours, and investors in the startup community, Businessmodels.com (temp name) is an open wiki with a list of the most successfull online / web based companies, and their respective business models. The wiki aims to answer questions such as what basic proposition does the business operates in, what was the critical differentiator to competitors, and what can we learn from them.<p>Putting together such wiki would allow us to take a fresh perspective on what seems statistically advantegous, as well as note trending, and market shifts.<p>I'm not quite sure, if such resource exist per se, so this thread is dedicated for eyeballing the concept.<p>Do you think it has editor magnet potential, and would you contribute to it (anything other, than your own)?<p>(Please keep it constructive)
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ScottWhigham
Interesting? Yes. Able to make the proprietor money? Doubtful. I can't figure
out who would pay for the site - subscribers or advertisers/sponsors? Who is
the target market - MBA students? Enterpreneurs? I'm not sure and, since I
don't know who the users are, I don't know how it makes money. If I can't
figure out how to make money from it before I launch, I wouldn't launch.

Would I contribute? No, because I would get no value from the site. I have to
wonder whether it would be faster for me to google+read your wiki than to just
visit the company's homepage when I want to figure out their business model.
Like many entrepreneurs here, I can eyeball a site and figure out the basics
of their business model fairly quickly. Adding a layer of, "What was that site
again that lets me look at a company's business model?" just doesn't help.
Besides, if it's a wiki then you've got all sorts of editorial stuff to deal
with that a non-wiki site wouldn't have (i.e. lawsuits of confidentiality
breaches, trade secrets, etc).

~~~
sdrinf
Thank you for your feedback. My main motivation behind this project is
learning, thus I'm not expecting this site to be a direct cashflow of any
kind. I suspect, that information gathered systematically to answer the
aforementioned questions could be of great public service.

Regarding the content, there is so much more to learn about each individual
business, than superficial eyeballing. If you start a systematical approach,
writing down, for example the top 1K alexa sites, and their respective
business model, for any given concept you've got hundreds of sites; not even
differentiators defines businesses that sharply. I suspect, that behind each
successful business, there's a mix of differentiators, perspective, and way of
thinking/measuring; grabbing, and noting these less tangible insights would be
the main focus of the site.

I don't really consider lawsuits to be a threat -most of the stuff can be
figured out by a combination of public announcements + general available info
on the net + business logic.

> Would I contribute? No, because I would get no value from the site.

Your answer presumes, that user contribution is a function of value received
from the site; in my experience, this is not so. Yes, there are good-
intentioned hippies, but most people are just pushing their own agenda,
wrapped in a marketing blanket, which sometimes happen to be aligned with
things like "building a global encyclopedia".

So, to re-iterate the original question: do you think there are people who's
business agenda would align with the creation of aforementioned wiki?

~~~
ScottWhigham
"If you start a systematical approach, writing down, for example the top 1K
alexa sites, and their respective business model"

Okay - now wait a minute. You want to review 1,000 websites. Fine. You're
going to do so by figuring "out by a combination of public announcements +
general available info on the net + business logic" their business models? No
chance. You might do 10 or 20 but you aren't doing 1,000.

But let's play a game - let's pretend that you do this project and you make it
through all 1,000. How long does it take? 40 hours per week, perhaps it takes
only three years - I think that's probably a fair estimate. One person working
full-time on such a project could likely accomplish that in 3-5 years. One
person trying to herd cats into helping them might be able to accomplish such
a task in only 18-24 months if they work full-time.

But what of the opportunity cost? What else could you have done - for the
world, for yourself - during that time? This project is of mild interest to a
slim percentage of people in the world. Notice that you posted it on HN and it
got three votes - 1 for free and 1 from me b/c I wanted to see opinions. I
don't think it has merit but it is interesting to talk about and, if I had to
guess, that's sort of everyone else here's opinion. We'd rather work on our
own business models than pore over others'.

I'm not trying to come down on you - not at all. But I don't see how it can
make you any money long-term. And if it can't make you money long-term, then
it's a time-suck; it's taking time away from something that could be making
you money. Now if you just enjoy doing it, great - I understand completely.
But don't fool yourself into thinking you're going to have the time to create
this great database of up-to-date business models. The internet has plenty of
abandoned projects; it doesn't need another.

The best way to learn is to do. Go create your own company with your own
business model. It will be wrong. You'll learn or you won't. Reviewing the top
1k alexa sites will not help you learn how to create a business model for your
own company.

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gasull
I just created the wiki for you in less than an hour:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=648223>

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gasull
Interesting, but nslookup businessmodels.com returns NXDOMAIN. Also, please
submit with the working link and put the comment in the home page of the wiki
instead.

~~~
ScottWhigham
?? The way I read it, he/she is submitting a proposal - a request for feedback
on an idea. I think the format of the question was fine and I didn't think at
all to try to go to the domain.

