109th Roundtable Recap: December 22 – Free Apps, Ad-Supported Business Models => Dangerous!

At today’s roundtable, the last for 2011, we had four different countries represented and an intense set of discussions on five very interesting businesses – a fabulous event to end the year with.

BootstrapToday
Anand Agarwal from Pune, India, pitched BootStrapToday, an Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) SaaS solution from his company Sensible Softwares. Anand already has 100 beta customers and fifteen of them are paying Rs. 1000-2000 (~$20-$40) per month to access advanced workflow logistics and intelligence in the area of software testing and productivity improvement.
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Roundtable Recap: December 8 – Three Open Opportunities For 2012

At today’s roundtable, we discussed three major trends and opportunities for 2012 and also worked with an entrepreneur from Europe.

Social Contacts
Our audience of readers is full of entrepreneurs. And what do entrepreneurs do? They market and they sell. Well, at the very heart of the marketing and selling problem is the concept of lead generation. Once upon a time, it was a rather straightforward exercise of collecting names and mailing addresses, and then running direct mail campaigns. As the Internet became mainstream, this was largely replaced (at least in the universe we live in) by email marketing campaigns, so the key information was the email address of a lead.
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103rd 1Mby1M Roundtable Recording

In case you missed it, you can listen to the roundtable here:

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Roundtable Recap: October 13 – FREE Is Not A Business Model

At today’s roundtable, we had a chance to discuss a topic that continues to bother me endlessly – the Internet’s obsession with FREE.

MyStream
Richard Zelson, from New York, New York, discussed MyStream, a music streaming app that allows multiple people to listen to the playlist of one individual, serving, roughly speaking, the function of a headphone splitter. Richard is currently offering the app for free but will begin charging $1.99 for it in November. He currently has 30,000 customers. He asked if waiting until November to start charging was a good idea. I think he should start charging now. Giving stuff for free is a dangerous game, and it is difficult to sustain operations that have large numbers of free users. You then become dependent on outside financing, and that is a slippery slope. It is much better to grow organically with revenue. So Richard, please move forward with your plan to charge money for the value you offer.
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October 6 100th Roundtable Recording

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99th 1Mby1M Roundtable Recording

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Roundtable Recap: September 15 – Do Your Homework First

At today’s roundtable, we had entrepreneurs presenting from Brazil, Israel and India. In fact, I was pleased to even see an entrepreneur from Kolkata, India, the city in which I was born and raised.

Estate Lister
First up, Siddhesh Joglekar from Mumbai, India, pitched Estate Lister, a real estate portal along the lines of Zillow, targeted to the Indian market. Siddhesh has already validated his business and is catering to home buyers, sellers, and brokers, generating revenues from advertising and sponsorships as well as brokerage revenue sharing.
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September 15 1Mby1M Roundtable Recording

In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording here: