

Why has a publisher/distributor model not evolved for startups? - andrewstuart

Startups are often great at developing innovative technology and ideas but fall down when it comes to marketing and sales.<p>Why has a publisher model not evolved, in which "publishers" who are good at branding, digital marketing and sales take to market the innovations coming of of technically excellent but marketing weak startups?<p>A bit like the way games publishers take the games of independent developers to market.<p>Surely a revenue split of some form would work to the advantage of all involved.<p>Perhaps a new generation of marketing savvy startups should be born, startups that have marketing and sales talent but no product, with the objective only of taking to market and making money on the great technology of other startups.  "Bring your high tech startup product to us, we'll take it market and pay you a royalty".
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hga
Well, there's always the stark object lesson of Software Arts (Visicalc) and
their publisher, Personal Software (later VisiCorp). Both companies were
destroyed because the deal they struck, at the dawn of packaged personal
computer software, gave SA too much money. SA refused to renegotiate, PS used
the contract to force SA to create ports of their stuff for every possible PC
(and there were very many back then), it all ended in tears and Lotus ate
their lunch.

So we have these issues and failure modes illustrated:

The market and business model was not well defined, making it difficult to get
the contractual arrangement correct the first time.

The principles couldn't sustain a productive working relationship and focused
on the contract rather than the market.

Games as packaged software have perhaps worked (a bit) better because the
business model and separate roles of each company are fairly well defined, but
that could be changing as their use of the net increases.

But mostly what people are trying to do is uncharted territory (that's
generally where the biggest payoff is) and a developer/publisher model
precludes the process of Customer Development; until that's done, there's not
a clear enough line between technology and ideas vs. marketing and sales.

Overall, the interests of each party are divergent and their game is somewhat
zero-sum, or at least all too often viewed that way. When their interface
can't be well defined at the beginning of their relationship it doesn't look
like it's a good model to follow.

