Scobleizer: The Disruptive Entrepreneur’s Dilemma
James
· 1 year ago
This post shows how behind the times we have become in the US (from a technology standpoint) lately.
Mobile phone payments is not a dream...it is reality.
Using your mobile (cell phone for American English speakers) to make payments is the norm in Asia, Western Europe and now even so called "backwards" countries in Eastern Europe and Africa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_payment
Maybe soon we can get caught up here in the US with the rest of the world.
Or maybe we will continue living in the Matrix...thinking we are ahead of the rest of the world when in reality we are falling further and further behind....where are Neo and Morpheus when we need them :-)
caroline
· 1 year ago
i agree with james. when i was in tokyo. people used their mobile devices to pay for items. there was a scanning device that you waved your mobile phone over to pay for goods. credit cards are not used as often as here in the states and plus, they are not always accepted. cash is the most popular form of payment.
even at a small sushi-ya in a town outside of tokyo, they used wireless devices. when i requested the check an old woman came up to our table with a wand, waved it across our plates and the check magically printed out on a wireless handheld device. quite amazing!
Aaron
· 1 year ago
Hey, you forgot to disclose your affiliation with Seagate.
thomas
· 1 year ago
he should talk to the mobile phone companies first and foremost... they already a billing relationship with the customer and are always interested in making more money. Once you have one or two mobile operators on board the next step would be to get the Starbucks, McDonals etc. of the world.
Aep528
· 1 year ago
It's bad enough Visa, MasterCard, and my bank know where I spend my money, now I need to worry about my cell phone provider too? Given how quickly they hand over data to the government, doesn't anybody else see this as a problem?
David O'Conor
· 1 year ago
The bigger thing to note is how difficult it is for UK startups to raise serious money.
Like Loic Le Meur and Peter Nixey, Europeans need to go west to raise proper money.
Simon Brocklehurst
· 1 year ago
There's really no shortage of venture capital in Europe. If you want to build a billion dollar software tech company in Europe by using European VC money, it's perfectly possible to do it (e.g. see Skype or MySQL).
As for this particular system, I don't know enough about the business issues to comment from a position of knowledge.
However, a few things spring to mind:
1) For me, if my phone is going to replace my credit cards, then it has to be at *least* as easy to use as my credit cards. Otherwise, I'm just not going to use it. This system looked like being a pain to use - lots of key presses and entering numbers I don't know, and then waiting for sometime, and then handing the phone over for a barcode to be scanned. In Europe, a credit card transaction in a store takes five key presses (4-digit PIN, plus hitting the ENTER button). And that's it. About five seconds in total transaction time. If the whole transaction on the phone is going to take longer than that, why would anyone going to bother using it?
2) In London, there are *already* services in operation that let you use your mobile phone to pay for things e.g. parking. Not saying they work well. I'm just saying that there *already* services up and running that do this; and my impression is that most people don't use them (probably because they're too much of a pain to use).
3) In the UK, there are *already* loyalty-based promotional payment schemes that do work *really* well on mobile phones, based around SMS text messaging (SMS obviously works on *all* phones super-reliably, so you don't need anything fancy, like an iPhone of which there are almost none in the market). For example, two for the price of one movie theatre tickets. People do use these services. Why? First, they're super-easy and prety quick to use (maybe adds about 15 seconds to the total transaction time) . Second, the benefit is that you get something for free, which makes it worth people's total transaction time taking longer than five seconds.
Bottom line: if this company's system has some compelling advantages over the existing competition that's already in the market, it's not obvious to a non-specialist like me what they are.
Stu (Clarion Folk)
· 1 year ago
Simon,
Your first point (ease of use) is the big one in my mind. I can see it being _better_, using my mobile to pay stuff .. but how easy is it right now?
I don't know much about the reality of using a phone payment system, here in Australia we seem to be behind even the behind times :).
Well, we do have kangaroos. So that's always a bonus.
D
· 1 year ago
I like the bucket of water versus the ocean anology.
PS: Fastcompany.tv videos won't play in Opera :(
Robert Lee
· 1 year ago
Disruptive technologies not only have to do something differently but they also have to truly be so compellingly useful that users will adopt it quickly and willingly. While the case for making payments with cell phones is convenient and powerful (and already established in many global markets), you'll notice that this application is most popular and useful in countries where credit cards have a lot less penetration than credit cards (read: anywhere BUT North America).
Using PayPal as an example of a disruptive technology is actually a poor analogy. PayPal has always been more of a complementary technology that built itself on the established infrastructure provided by the credit card networks. So rather than trying to generate "buzz" as a disruptive technology, Andrew may well want to re-think his strategy as a complementary - or add-on - idea. Even so, after looking over all of the information on their wesbite, I'm still trying to see what truly differentiates them from any other company that offers payments using a cell phone.
Sometimes, just because you came up with an idea that you haven't found anywhere else yet doesn't always mean it's all that original. The toughest part of coming up with a new product is being coldly objective enough to let it go if you realize a lot of other people are already doing it wall. If you don't do it yourself, the VC's will surely tell you soon enough.
Christopher Coulter
· 1 year ago
What do you think?
Trainwreck, high on ideas, low on fuel, not like they are original ideas anyways, monetizing and spamming mobile phones, gee, great biz plan(s). Not enough standardization and lack of real-world implementation keeping it from being a payment system.
Andrew Mobbs
· 1 year ago
Thank you to all of you for your constructive comments, and thanks again Robert for meeting with me this morning.
The focus of Robert's post is obviously our current marketing dilemma which he covers really well, but the video probably doesn't do the product the justice it deserves if you are watching it from a purely technical perspective.
We are really excited by the interest you have all shown since this went live this afternoon so I have setup a product blog where I hope I have answered many of your tech questions as well as provided you with more insight into the product and our current strategy. Rather than detract from the focus of this post I thought it would be better for us to engage in a conversation about the tech and idea in a separate forum.
Please take a look at http://blog.pocketduo.com and leave your further feedback and comments on that site- specifically about the product and tech.
Thanks again to all of you for taking the time to share your thoughts and please continue to post your ideas regarding our marketing dilemma on Robert's outstanding blog.
Prathees.R
· 1 year ago
"Bucket of Water and the Ocean" - good point for the budding entrepreneurs
Considering the current problems in mobile phone payment(security, spams, transaction complexity) most would prefer the Credit Cards. However the world keeps changing.
In Mobile Phone payment I will have one advantage, unlike waiting till the month end for the credit card statements, mobile phones can be programmed to keep track of all the expenses. Handy Expense Tracker [;)]
It's a Sony touchless IC technology that is being used for train fares, bus fares, paying for goods at convenience stores and other retail outlets and is also being used for intra-Japan airline flights (your phone is your ID and boarding pass.)
We are living in the future, it's just not evenly distributed.
Vincent van Wylick
· 1 year ago
Based on the points above (not the video), I would definitely get out of the entrenchment focus. Not because it's wrong to focus on the big buys, but because you'll need use-cases, cash, and users to develop your solution and convince them. By focussing on small users first (retailers, suppliers, etc.), and working together with them, you can achieve some of that.
As someone mentioned, lots of companies in Asia are doing this kind of thing, I think a recent boston consulting group study (google "local dynamos") lists some of these companies in emerging economies, which are doing quite well. These guys found ways to do it efficiently and cost-effective, I suggest learning from them.
Don't give up! Don't be too stubborn about your strategy either.
Simon Brocklehurst
· 1 year ago
@7 I could be wrong, but as I understand it, 90% of Seesmic's money came out of London, UK (i.e. $5.5M from Atomico in London, and $500K from a group of Loic's friends and angels in Silicon Valley).
Having said that, it's true that some ideas will get funded a lot more easily in Silicon Valley than they will in Europe. That's particularly the case if the startup is working in a domain where there's a big concenration of expertise in Silicon Valley compared to the geographic location they startup is in.
alan p
· 1 year ago
Mobile phones as credit cards is at least 10 years old, these guys need to understand why previous plays failed. In "web 1.0" the "ocean boil" plans failed usually because they needed to use a lot of money to take benefits away from existing incumbents, who predictably said "F*** Off". As others have said, best is to pick a niche and implement there first.
Andrew Scott
· 1 year ago
@Simon "There’s really no shortage of venture capital in Europe. "
Not true. There is no shortage of growth capital. There is no shortage of seed capital. There is a major shortage of Venture Capital for Series A with early stage companies. I dont know if you have raised capital for an early stage company in Europe, but if you have tried you'll know there are literally only a handful of VCs who understand the tech ecosystem fully AND are prepared to invest early stage.
"If you want to build a billion dollar software tech company in Europe by using European VC money, it’s perfectly possible to do it"
I'd challenge you to give me 5 companies in this category who have grown to a billion dollar company, purely on European VC money (let alone UK), other than rolling out the usual suspects such as Skype et al. In contrast, I can probably name you 20 U.S. in the consumer internet sector, without breaking a sweat.
There is problem in Europe - its the equity gap. And its big. There are of course always exceptions to the rule, but in general U.S. seed investment is larger, and VC investment is earlier. In contrast, seed investment in the UK/Europe is smaller and VCs invest much later. That leaves a gaping hole between around £250,000 and £2m ($500k and $4m U.S.)
Everyone knows this, everyone will discuss it private, but nobody wants to spoil the party at European conferences by saying it. Which is a pity, as it needs to be said; because there is so much good stuff going on in Europe in the startup scene, thats its a disgrace that more support and more risk capital is not made available early enough.
Europeans (of which I am one) sometimes ask why there is no Yahoo, Google, Flickr, YouTube, MySpace etc etc of Europe; I believe the reason is what I have just described. Sadly, the same fate awaits us again in 4 years time when the consumer mobile internet services mature, and the same conversation will be had again.
The U.S. is now heavily investing in mobile startups and I believe has every chance to over take Europe in mobile services and take up, within 18 to 24 months. You read it here first.
The European tech sector needs to wake up to this reality and do something about it; until it does the U.S. will continue to dominate North American and European markets with web and mobile consumer brands, because they invest earlier and more aggressively, in more companies.
That was the gospel according to St. Andrew.
Orville Chomer
· 1 year ago
When I watched the qik video, the gears in my head quickly started turning, and out popped this idea:
Andrew, I'm not claiming that Europe is as good a place for a start-up as Silicon Valley for startups. It's not. I am saying, however, that now European tech companies are *starting* to see billion-dollar exits. That's a big step forward from where we used to be. It used to be impossible to do this. Today, it's possible. The exits achieved by the "usual suspects" is starting to raise the level of ambition among VCs for what European start-ups can achieve... and more VCs are getting interested in actually doing what it takes to make this happen. And, you're now seeing the best European VC groups in syndicates with the best US VC groups. So, things have really been improving in recent years.
Also, what I would say is that, very often, I've seen entrepreneurs complain - vocally - that they can't get funded... and the real reason is because what they have isn't good enough and they're not credible as individuals. Not that the money isn't there for the right opportunities. In other words, the quality of start-ups in Europe is often lower than the quality of start-ups in the US.
You're right, though, there are aren't many really good VC groups that get this stuff, and that are preared to lead early stage investments (including seed investments simply for "ideas").
In Europe, for entrepreneurs that are credible, and who have something interesting to offer, the challenge isn't to get an early stage company funded by VCs. The challenge is to hang on to enough equity to make it *worth* taking VC money. The problem I have with European VCs is that the deals they offer to entrepreneurs are often incredibly poor compared to the deals offered in the US. Which means that Europe has a shortage of serial entrepreneurs... after they been screwed once by their investors, entrepreneurs aren't so keen to let it happen again.
Bill Seitz
· 1 year ago
I still don't see a compelling need here.
Andrew identifies
1. places like taxis that don't handle a credit card. This problem is already going away in NYC, I expect it might be easier to solve the problem that way.
2. situations with high credit card fraud problems. Where are those? Paying for online content (or ASP service like 37signals) could be one, since there's no physical good shipped.
Finding the niche audiences with the compelling need seems like the right place to start... (identify multiple options, to find cases with less need to BoilTheOcean).
alan p
· 1 year ago
Simon, thats an argument we hear all the time, but I'm afraid there is a steady stream of these same complaining entrepreneurs who go west and do get funded.
So one can thus believe either that:
(i) Their business plans got a lot better after the "guidance" they got in Europe, or
(ii) US VC's are dumb money who fund any in-credible individual off the plane from the UK
Or, if you believe neither of the above, you are left with....
Simon Brocklehurst
· 1 year ago
Alan, you make an interesting assertion that there's "steady stream" of entrepreneurs that can't get funded by European investors, but do get funding by moving to the US.
It would beinteresting to look a few examples to see:
a) Which companies/entrepreneurs these are that couldn't get funded in Europe
b) and which US VCs invested in them
Do you have any data on this that you can share?
As for the question of dumb VCs... Well, there are plenty of dumb VCs around, in both Europe and the US. And there are plenty of VCs, even the smart ones, that sometimes make appalling investment decisions i.e. even the good VC groups fund plenty of companies that are quite obviously rubbish.
Mark Hendrickson
· 1 year ago
Noca is a micropayments service going up against the big credit card companies that has taken this advice and started at the Facebook app level, hoping to appeal to smaller developers before moving up the ladder.
Andy Freeman
· 1 year ago
> In Mobile Phone payment I will have one advantage, unlike waiting till the month end for the credit card statements, mobile phones can be programmed to keep track of all the expenses. Handy Expense Tracker [;)]
What wait? The websites for my credit card companies show me transactions as soon as they're posted. I'm pretty sure that quicken would download them if I'd let it.
chrisco
· 1 year ago
AdMob was relatively early into mobile advertising game (I believe they beat Google to market), whereas your friend from London does not seem like he's getting in "early."
Maurice
· 1 year ago
oh Micropayments AGAIN!
I have been hear about this anney day now since the Mid 80's
eortiz
· 1 year ago
welcome to the world of mobile payments. at eZee we spent a lot of time and money on this space, and decided to pull out into better areas of mobility. the mobile space, done the right way (i.e. not P2P and i'm not talking about banking) is a bitch due to the ecosystem. the issue is not technology.
All Comments
Mobile phone payments is not a dream...it is reality.
Using your mobile (cell phone for American English speakers) to make payments is the norm in Asia, Western Europe and now even so called "backwards" countries in Eastern Europe and Africa.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_payment
Maybe soon we can get caught up here in the US with the rest of the world.
Or maybe we will continue living in the Matrix...thinking we are ahead of the rest of the world when in reality we are falling further and further behind....where are Neo and Morpheus when we need them :-)
even at a small sushi-ya in a town outside of tokyo, they used wireless devices. when i requested the check an old woman came up to our table with a wand, waved it across our plates and the check magically printed out on a wireless handheld device. quite amazing!
Like Loic Le Meur and Peter Nixey, Europeans need to go west to raise proper money.
As for this particular system, I don't know enough about the business issues to comment from a position of knowledge.
However, a few things spring to mind:
1) For me, if my phone is going to replace my credit cards, then it has to be at *least* as easy to use as my credit cards. Otherwise, I'm just not going to use it. This system looked like being a pain to use - lots of key presses and entering numbers I don't know, and then waiting for sometime, and then handing the phone over for a barcode to be scanned. In Europe, a credit card transaction in a store takes five key presses (4-digit PIN, plus hitting the ENTER button). And that's it. About five seconds in total transaction time. If the whole transaction on the phone is going to take longer than that, why would anyone going to bother using it?
2) In London, there are *already* services in operation that let you use your mobile phone to pay for things e.g. parking. Not saying they work well. I'm just saying that there *already* services up and running that do this; and my impression is that most people don't use them (probably because they're too much of a pain to use).
3) In the UK, there are *already* loyalty-based promotional payment schemes that do work *really* well on mobile phones, based around SMS text messaging (SMS obviously works on *all* phones super-reliably, so you don't need anything fancy, like an iPhone of which there are almost none in the market). For example, two for the price of one movie theatre tickets. People do use these services. Why? First, they're super-easy and prety quick to use (maybe adds about 15 seconds to the total transaction time) . Second, the benefit is that you get something for free, which makes it worth people's total transaction time taking longer than five seconds.
Bottom line: if this company's system has some compelling advantages over the existing competition that's already in the market, it's not obvious to a non-specialist like me what they are.
Your first point (ease of use) is the big one in my mind. I can see it being _better_, using my mobile to pay stuff .. but how easy is it right now?
I don't know much about the reality of using a phone payment system, here in Australia we seem to be behind even the behind times :).
Well, we do have kangaroos. So that's always a bonus.
PS: Fastcompany.tv videos won't play in Opera :(
Using PayPal as an example of a disruptive technology is actually a poor analogy. PayPal has always been more of a complementary technology that built itself on the established infrastructure provided by the credit card networks. So rather than trying to generate "buzz" as a disruptive technology, Andrew may well want to re-think his strategy as a complementary - or add-on - idea. Even so, after looking over all of the information on their wesbite, I'm still trying to see what truly differentiates them from any other company that offers payments using a cell phone.
Sometimes, just because you came up with an idea that you haven't found anywhere else yet doesn't always mean it's all that original. The toughest part of coming up with a new product is being coldly objective enough to let it go if you realize a lot of other people are already doing it wall. If you don't do it yourself, the VC's will surely tell you soon enough.
Trainwreck, high on ideas, low on fuel, not like they are original ideas anyways, monetizing and spamming mobile phones, gee, great biz plan(s). Not enough standardization and lack of real-world implementation keeping it from being a payment system.
The focus of Robert's post is obviously our current marketing dilemma which he covers really well, but the video probably doesn't do the product the justice it deserves if you are watching it from a purely technical perspective.
We are really excited by the interest you have all shown since this went live this afternoon so I have setup a product blog where I hope I have answered many of your tech questions as well as provided you with more insight into the product and our current strategy. Rather than detract from the focus of this post I thought it would be better for us to engage in a conversation about the tech and idea in a separate forum.
Please take a look at http://blog.pocketduo.com and leave your further feedback and comments on that site- specifically about the product and tech.
Thanks again to all of you for taking the time to share your thoughts and please continue to post your ideas regarding our marketing dilemma on Robert's outstanding blog.
Considering the current problems in mobile phone payment(security, spams, transaction complexity) most would prefer the Credit Cards. However the world keeps changing.
In Mobile Phone payment I will have one advantage, unlike waiting till the month end for the credit card statements, mobile phones can be programmed to keep track of all the expenses. Handy Expense Tracker [;)]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suica
It's a Sony touchless IC technology that is being used for train fares, bus fares, paying for goods at convenience stores and other retail outlets and is also being used for intra-Japan airline flights (your phone is your ID and boarding pass.)
We are living in the future, it's just not evenly distributed.
As someone mentioned, lots of companies in Asia are doing this kind of thing, I think a recent boston consulting group study (google "local dynamos") lists some of these companies in emerging economies, which are doing quite well. These guys found ways to do it efficiently and cost-effective, I suggest learning from them.
Don't give up! Don't be too stubborn about your strategy either.
Having said that, it's true that some ideas will get funded a lot more easily in Silicon Valley than they will in Europe. That's particularly the case if the startup is working in a domain where there's a big concenration of expertise in Silicon Valley compared to the geographic location they startup is in.
Not true. There is no shortage of growth capital. There is no shortage of seed capital. There is a major shortage of Venture Capital for Series A with early stage companies. I dont know if you have raised capital for an early stage company in Europe, but if you have tried you'll know there are literally only a handful of VCs who understand the tech ecosystem fully AND are prepared to invest early stage.
"If you want to build a billion dollar software tech company in Europe by using European VC money, it’s perfectly possible to do it"
I'd challenge you to give me 5 companies in this category who have grown to a billion dollar company, purely on European VC money (let alone UK), other than rolling out the usual suspects such as Skype et al. In contrast, I can probably name you 20 U.S. in the consumer internet sector, without breaking a sweat.
There is problem in Europe - its the equity gap. And its big. There are of course always exceptions to the rule, but in general U.S. seed investment is larger, and VC investment is earlier. In contrast, seed investment in the UK/Europe is smaller and VCs invest much later. That leaves a gaping hole between around £250,000 and £2m ($500k and $4m U.S.)
Everyone knows this, everyone will discuss it private, but nobody wants to spoil the party at European conferences by saying it. Which is a pity, as it needs to be said; because there is so much good stuff going on in Europe in the startup scene, thats its a disgrace that more support and more risk capital is not made available early enough.
Europeans (of which I am one) sometimes ask why there is no Yahoo, Google, Flickr, YouTube, MySpace etc etc of Europe; I believe the reason is what I have just described. Sadly, the same fate awaits us again in 4 years time when the consumer mobile internet services mature, and the same conversation will be had again.
The U.S. is now heavily investing in mobile startups and I believe has every chance to over take Europe in mobile services and take up, within 18 to 24 months. You read it here first.
The European tech sector needs to wake up to this reality and do something about it; until it does the U.S. will continue to dominate North American and European markets with web and mobile consumer brands, because they invest earlier and more aggressively, in more companies.
That was the gospel according to St. Andrew.
click to see video where I explain that idea:
http://www.kyte.tv/ch/29320-chomercom-webcam/11...
Also, what I would say is that, very often, I've seen entrepreneurs complain - vocally - that they can't get funded... and the real reason is because what they have isn't good enough and they're not credible as individuals. Not that the money isn't there for the right opportunities. In other words, the quality of start-ups in Europe is often lower than the quality of start-ups in the US.
You're right, though, there are aren't many really good VC groups that get this stuff, and that are preared to lead early stage investments (including seed investments simply for "ideas").
In Europe, for entrepreneurs that are credible, and who have something interesting to offer, the challenge isn't to get an early stage company funded by VCs. The challenge is to hang on to enough equity to make it *worth* taking VC money. The problem I have with European VCs is that the deals they offer to entrepreneurs are often incredibly poor compared to the deals offered in the US. Which means that Europe has a shortage of serial entrepreneurs... after they been screwed once by their investors, entrepreneurs aren't so keen to let it happen again.
Andrew identifies
1. places like taxis that don't handle a credit card. This problem is already going away in NYC, I expect it might be easier to solve the problem that way.
2. situations with high credit card fraud problems. Where are those? Paying for online content (or ASP service like 37signals) could be one, since there's no physical good shipped.
Finding the niche audiences with the compelling need seems like the right place to start... (identify multiple options, to find cases with less need to BoilTheOcean).
So one can thus believe either that:
(i) Their business plans got a lot better after the "guidance" they got in Europe, or
(ii) US VC's are dumb money who fund any in-credible individual off the plane from the UK
Or, if you believe neither of the above, you are left with....
It would beinteresting to look a few examples to see:
a) Which companies/entrepreneurs these are that couldn't get funded in Europe
b) and which US VCs invested in them
Do you have any data on this that you can share?
As for the question of dumb VCs... Well, there are plenty of dumb VCs around, in both Europe and the US. And there are plenty of VCs, even the smart ones, that sometimes make appalling investment decisions i.e. even the good VC groups fund plenty of companies that are quite obviously rubbish.
What wait? The websites for my credit card companies show me transactions as soon as they're posted. I'm pretty sure that quicken would download them if I'd let it.
I have been hear about this anney day now since the Mid 80's