

TC Teardown: 13 Ways To Get To $10 Million In Revenues (Part I) - cwan
http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/10/teardown-13-ways-10-million-revenues/

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callmeed
_"assuming you have a good product that the market wants"_

Oh yeah, that ...

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garply
The goal of reaching an amount of revenue instead of profit makes me think:

"Buy 20 million dollars worth of products and sell them for half-price."

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dzlobin
The only model displayed here that has to do with physical products takes
costs into consideration.

Other than that, surely if you're making 10M a year on any of these business
models you won't have operating costs of anywhere near 10M a year.

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callmeed
I wouldn't be so sure. I'd venture to guess there are plenty of startups who
only break even (or worse) when you add their operating costs + customer
acquisition costs.

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dzlobin
I'm sure you're right. Just as any restaurant might be kicking ass while one
down the street barely, if at all, breaks even.

They'd appear to be executing the same business model, but the devil is in the
details, as always

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stevencarpenter
Hey guys, this is the author of the Teardowns. Happy to talk more about the
cost structure of different models, if you find it helpful. Just let me know
what kind of biz you are thinking abut doing and I can help out.

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Murkin
_Clicks on paid links - 5%_

Can anyone confirm this statistic ?

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JonM
Nope. All approximations, but it doesn't sound crazy; considering that someone
has inputted a search term and the link will be related to that term.
Obviously there are loads of variables but it's probably of the right order
(single percentages)....

I've inserted all my company data into the "Social Network" model to see why
we aren't netting $10MM yet.

Our main discrepency is Pageviews per UV and sell through rate.

I've got plenty of ideas on how to improve the Pageviews per UV. Sell through
rate and CPM are more of a challenge.

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jeffreymcmanus
I love the implication that there are only 13 kinds of consumer startups, as
if nothing else could possibly exist. My reaction is to run screaming from
anything on that list.

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byrneseyeview
_(Before you post in the comments about how unique your startup is, this list
is not meant to capture every consumer business permutation. There are always
going to be exceptions. And the breakaway companies like Zynga, Groupon,
Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare, to name just a few, inevitably introduce
nuances to pre-existing models.)_

The point of the article is to illustrate how different kinds of businesses
make their money. The main exceptions I can think of are:

* Ad arbitrage. (Lots of people nobody has ever heard of.)

* Free analytics monetized through data sales. (bit.ly, lots of ambitious but ultimately failed startups.)

* White-labelable features. (bit.ly, Geezeo.)

* Email newsletter management.

* Ad networks.

But most of these stretch the definition of "consumer" startups.

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ryanwaggoner
White-labelable features and email newsletter management would both fall under
"provide paid service". And ad networks could be viewed as a type of lead
generation.

