http://www.startupcallcenter.com/ (Zaplee Free Trial)

Recent Post:
For anyone that has read any of the posts on this blog, you’re probably used to seeing a review of the business model of an up and coming young company.  Today’s post is different. It’s a Startup ‘Quick Intro’. My goal is to intersperse the usual type of postings with ‘Quick Intros’. We’ll see what reception these quick intros get!

A friend has been working on a startup called Zaplee.com – so given that I’m particularly excited about the company and it’s opportunity, thought I would do a quick ‘drive by’ about Zaplee.

Zaplee has been working on creating consumer software to provide small and medium sized companies with call center functionality via the Skype service.  This gives Zaplee the capability to offer a other companies call center capabilities without painful and expensive setup costs and processes and like Skype, gives users very low monthly costs for ongoing call center services which have tradtitionally been unreachable by many young companies.

There are many exciting elements to the Zaplee business model but as they are still so ‘fresh’ I’ll need to wait a month or two before getting into details.  Zaplee is currently going through an angel investment round. 

http://www.Zaplee.com

Andrew

Related posts:

1. Zaplee: Quick Intro!
2. Geni Speaks Back: Update
3. Aime Street Speaks Back: Update

I wish I could tell you all about Flixor but I’m not allowed to today.  What I can say is that Flixor is a very cool up and coming company focused on tools that have both consumer appeal but also the potential to revolutionize the advertising industry.  I recommend you go to http://www.Flixor.com, bookmark it and watch as this company moves from stealth to a very compelling young company. If you are a potential angel – reach out and I’ll forward on your contacts – you won’t be disappointed…

Andrew
Founder – Advisor Garage
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com/Community

Related posts:

1. Zaplee: Quick Intro!
2. Zaplee: An Update
3. Ning: A $500K Virtual Investment

For anyone that has read any of the posts on this blog, you’re probably used to seeing a review of the business model of an up and coming young company.  Today’s post is different. It’s a Startup ‘Quick Intro’. My goal is to intersperse the usual type of postings with ‘Quick Intros’. We’ll see what reception these quick intros get!

A friend has been working on a startup called Zaplee.com – so given that I’m particularly excited about the company and it’s opportunity, thought I would do a quick ‘drive by’ about Zaplee.

Zaplee has been working on creating consumer software to provide small and medium sized companies with call center functionality via the Skype service.  This gives Zaplee the capability to offer a other companies call center capabilities without painful and expensive setup costs and processes and like Skype, gives users very low monthly costs for ongoing call center services which have tradtitionally been unreachable by many young companies.

There are many exciting elements to the Zaplee business model but as they are still so ‘fresh’ I’ll need to wait a month or two before getting into details.  Zaplee is currently going through an angel investment round.  This is one of those ‘once in a decade’ opportunities so if there is anyone out there that wants to explore this opportunity…send me an email and I’ll pass it on.

http://www.Zaplee.com

Andrew
Founder – Advisor Garage
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com/community

Related posts:

1. Zaplee: An Update
2. Flixor: Stay Tuned!
3. Geni: A $500K Virtual Investment

Andrew
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com/community

++

 Aime Street recently responded to the recent post ‘Aime Street: A $750K Virtual Investment’ with the following important point:

” Lucas Feb 23rd, 2007 at 12:03 am Edit

Hey Andrew,

Thanks for the 750K. Guess we’ll have to see what happens when that situation pops up. An important point along those lines is that we don’t tie down artists who upload their music with any sort of exclusivity agreement. The more people that hear the music, the better.

Lucas”

Thanks for the clarification and update Lucas.  The fact that Aime Street is focused on the good of all sides of the customer equation is clear.  Its great that a company is putting its customers first and this should ultimately ‘pay off’ for everyone.

Have your say here: http://www.andrewive.com/mdsg-forum/

Andrew
Founder
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com

Related posts:

1. Aime Street: A $750K Virtual Investment
2. Geni Speaks Back: Update
3. HireThings Speaks Back: An Update

Business Model:
HireThings has a nice and simple business model…if the item you put up for rent is rented by someone, you pay HireThings either a percentage or a percentage plus cash combination depending on the value of the hire.

Value of booking*     Proposed success fee (incl. GST)
Up to $100               5% of hire/rental fee charged. Min charge $0.50.
$100 – $250              $5 + 4% of hire fee over $100
$250 – $500              $11 + 3% of hire fee over $250
$500 – $1500            $18.50 + 2% of hire fee over $500
$1500 +                   $38.5 + 1% of hire fee over $1500.

Max fee per booking = $100.

In my opinion, simple and transparent business models are always the best and this one is nice and clean given that people only pay when they have secured a hire and make money themselves.  No speculation investment required. This should help adoption…oh yeah, and they do not seem to be getting involved in the visually distracting adsense model. Thanks Guys!

Some Core Functionality:

• Members can created a ‘trusted network’ and can choose to only offer items within that network or the broader full site network
• Listing, photo upload, multiple categories including services and place hire…
• Customers can view listing’s details and submit a quote or booking request
• The Hire Things website calculate an estimated cost for the booking
• Renters are notified by email of the new customer request, and can confirm or respond with a firmer quote.

Likes:
A nice and simple concept, business model and execution -

• I like HireThings UI and the clean, fun graphics – it was a simple site to figure out and use
• The ‘Trusted Network’ is a nice angle that could help adoption and friend referral
• If a person rents an item, the renter has the fee deducted from their topped up account – simple

Dislikes:
Not so much dislikes as potential ‘watchouts’ or concerns:

• If the fee is deducted from the topped up account when the transaction is confirmed, what happens if there are challenges with the rental? i.e. item not received, received but not functioning, item not returned, item returned broken – you get the idea. 
• Are any of the above challenges on HireThings to resolve? If so, hope they have a big admin staff…
• The ‘Trusted Network’ is a nice idea but assuming you add your ‘friends’ and ‘contacts’ to this network – why wouldn’t they just contact each other outside of the system and offer to lend them the articles without incurring the commission?
• Keeping the quality of the listings is going to be a challenge as this grows…for example, there is already a listing for “Soft or Hard Hugs” in the services section – now I like hugs as much of the next guy but to hire a 3rd party? Hummm….see that blue flashing light yet? Shame there’s no photo…

One little suggestion for the HireThings guys…the front page of items is hard on the brain given the range and categories of products meshed together…you may want to create a categorization or perhaps quick read icons for the different categories.

My Virtual Investment:
With my virtual $1M, I would ask them to ‘Let’ me virtually invest $350K. 

http://www.hirethings.co.nz/

Andrew
Founder
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com

Related posts:

1. HireThings Speaks Back: An Update
2. Bringsome: A $200K Virtual Investment
3. Social Flowers: A $150K Virtual Investment

Farecast is a new way of approaching online travel purchasing that could change how we all shop for online travel. This could be a real winner if they can get the average consumer to buy into the concept. 

It’s about time that there was some real innovation in the online travel space.  My personal experience when jumping between Expedia, Travelocity, Opodo and others is the difference is often marginal (a few bucks) and often a few bucks more expensive than going to the airline directly.  My established habit is to find the best flight using these online services and then to go direct to the airlines and buy the flight. Am I the norm here?

Anyway, Farecast analyses fare changes of airlines over a significant period to ‘predict’ what will happen with ticket prices between 75 airports and makes a 75% accurate (?) recommendation regarding what is likely to happen with that ticket price.  i.e. wait, or all time low – buy etc.

There are a number of elements and value adds to this site that I wouldn’t do justice to here. I recommend you check it out. But a few key points, Farecast covers the top airlines, can save you money, you book directly so keep frequent flyer miles that other sites take and there is no booking fee.  I good deal no?

Business Model:
As there are no FAQs within the Farecast site, it’s a little challenging to determine the exact long term business model.  What’s noticeable is there is a shortage of ‘advertising’ and there is no margin added to the purchase of airlines tickets as consumers buy them directly from the airline.

They may have relationships with the airlines which give them some kind of monetary benefits for tickets purchased , such as through an affiliate program but that is unclear. 

One neat and obvious revenue stream is what Farecast is calling Fare Guard – with Fare Guard you basically lock in the lowest price of an airline ticket between two locations for a week.  This pricing ‘hedging’ costs you $9.95.  Book your ticket with any airline at any price within the week and if there is a price increase against your locked in lowest rate, Farecast will give you a refund of the difference between the lowest price and your ‘guarded’ price.

Given many could purchase this ‘option’ and not exercise and many could purchase and the price may not increase, this is money for peace of mind and involves no outlay that I can see from Farecast.  Great business model no?  They may decide to take out ‘insurance’ which will cost a fee but I would be surprised given the quantity of deals they will be involved with…my guess is they have just run the numbers and believe they can make a decent margin.  They may well be right.

Some Core Functionality:

• Fare Prediction
• Arrow: An indicator showing the price ‘trend’ for the flights you are interested in.
• Confidence: A percentage based on Farecasts accuracy of predictions for flights of the kind you are evaluating.
• Average Fare Change.
• Buying Tip: Farecast’s recommendation which is supposedly 75% accurate.
• Fare Guard: The ability to pay $9.95 to lock in the price of the lowest priced ticket for this flight against a guarded rate.  This hedge mechanism will give you a check refund. See below for more details. 

Likes:
Any site which can give me some indication that I can wait 24 hours and save money is worth using.  It’s annoying to purchase a ticket to find the price has halved two weeks later, this may be the answer to that consumer frustration.

Fare Guard is also a great idea and I would even use it, especially for personal travel.

It’s nice and simple which is especially good given how complex it could be. 

Dislikes:
A few little dislikes:

1. Will the average ‘Joe’ or ‘Joanne’ use this site?  Given the average is often a pretty low common denominator – I still wonder if its a little complex for the ‘average’. (Hopefully they don’t read this blog ‘cos I’m not sure I could cope with the hate mail)
2. Business travelers are often price insensitive – they would prefer to buy the darn ticket then focus on the key business issues and emergencies.  If this is the case, Farecast may have to rely upon the occasional personal travel of the business user that has suddenly become more price sensitive, or the Joe’s and Joanne’s outlined above.  But, if they are regular business travelers, they will likely have significant air miles and may not be in the market for waiting around for price shifts.
3. Farecast has something special here – I almost expected the site to look quite different to get the message home…but it looks similar to all the rest.  I guess there’s a fine line to be walked between being and looking too different.

My Virtual Investment:
With my virtual $1M, I would use $500K to predict Farecast’s success.

http://www.farecast.com/

Andrew
Founder
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com

Related posts:

1. Geni: A $500K Virtual Investment
2. Ning: A $500K Virtual Investment
3. Auction Ads: A $500K Virtual Investment

Auction Ads is a company which has just launched some new technology which places items within eBay auctions within blogs according to the blogs content. I LOVE this business in terms of the potential win/win for customers and the company and the potential revenue stream for the investors.

Business Model:
Auction Ads business model is compelling:
1)  EBay has an affliate marketing channel which pays affiliates when they refer customers to their site
2) The eBay affiliate program is tiered.  As the affiliates monthly revenue increases, so too does the percentage of revenue. It begins at 40% of the fees ebay earns and caps out at 65%.  But to hit 65% you need to refer at least $1M to eBay.

Ebay Tiers:

Some Core Functionality:

• Cut and paste ad codes straight into your blog
• Customized ads based on blog subject matter
• All ads include a referral link so if anyone signs up you get credit 

Likes:
There is so much to like even though its such a headslappingly obvious business model:

• By consolidating the monthly revenue made across multiple blogs and sites it should not take took long to hit and pass the $1M monthly revenue number.  It should therefore be possible for Auction Ads to give their blogging channel a higher monthly payment than they could capture directly through eBay.
• As all ads have a referral link their channel partners (the blogs) can also gain revenue from other blogs who sign up via their ads. Another incentive to stay with the Auction Ads program
• There are viral marketing elements to the business model which should spread the Auction Ads program quickly and ensure the highest monthly tier rate is achieved within eBay.
• In a previous article I mentioned how I believe people are mentally blanking out adsense ads on the web.  This is an alternative that will not be instantly categorized as ‘adsense ignorable’ and should have better click through rates.

Auction Ads in Action:

Dislikes:
The only concern I have is eBay sells alot of stuff, but how much of it is absolutely relevant to the breadth and depth of subjects covered by blogs and are the blog readers in the market for whatever is being sold?

For example, let’s say there’s a blog about cars…easy to have an eBay ad.  No problems at all to imagine.  What about a blog on cat neutering – I know, perhaps one of my more obscure examples but that’s the point.  Yes you could sell eBay books on the subject, but are cat neutering readers going to be interested in bidding on an eBay book on the subject? So, a great model for obvious and mainstream’ish blogs and sites…maybe not so for quite a few blogs out there and even if they do place ads, will they generate any volume?

Saying that which blogs have most traffic?  Are there 100 blogs out there that have the lions share?  If so a)  this ad program makes sense especially for the top 100 b)  but why would they use Auction Ads rather than just having their own affiliate links?  Because its easier than doing it themselves it probably the answer but what’s the difference in revenue for them to go with Auction Ads rather than direct?  If I was Auction Ads, I’d be striking some low margin deals with the top 100 which would also give them further exposure to the wider market.

Another question that makes me hesitate a few seconds is what are the barriers to entry for a company doing the same thing?  The barriers will get higher as Auction Ads gains more and more market penetration but they had better hope an exact competitor does not come out of the woodwork very soon.

My Virtual Investment:
With my virtual $1M, I would hope my bid to invest $500K would be accepted by Auction Ads.

http://www.auctionads.com/

Andrew
Founder
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com

Related posts:

1. Ning: A $500K Virtual Investment
2. Geni: A $500K Virtual Investment
3. Farecast: A $500K Virtual Investment

” Yakov Mar 2nd, 2007 at 1:54 am Edit

Hello Andrew! Very interesting post as well as the other reviews! Don’t you know that Quintura stands for quintessence or pure essence of searching. Try to make Quintura your homepage for a week and then give us your views!”

Yakov, I did not understand that this is the definition of Quintura, when I searched through the dictionary it had no definitions for Quintura.

As I reconsidered my review, I wondered if I had been too harsh with the zero virtual investment especially as this is a beta site at this point.  Seeing today’s functionality, even with the ‘invite a friend’ element which could drive adoption, I would still not put my virtual cash in Quintura but I could be wrong. I will go back often and see how the functionality and the company develops.  It would be great if Quintura becomes the next hot company with significant revenues…but I just don’t see it today.

Have your say here: http://www.andrewive.com/mdsg-forum/

Andrew
Founder
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com

Related posts:

1. Geni Speaks Back: Update
2. Aime Street Speaks Back: Update
3. Quintura: A $ZERO Virtual Investment

 

Business Model:
This is a beta site launched in the last few days so its not too surprising that there are not too many obvious ways of generating revenue for Quintura.  There are a number of tabs beneath your search terms…web, image, video and AMAZON. So if your interested in finding out how your search for a particular subject parleys into a related Amazon product, click away.  So far…that seems to be Quintura’s business model.

Some Core Functionality:

• Type in your search term, hit enter and *poof* you have a tag cloud in half the page to navigate
• Your cursor hovers over one of the words and *poof poof* sub clouds of words appear
• The words seem more or less bold…perhaps that means something? I know, perhaps each words estimated relivance to the original search term.
• The second half of the screen is left for actual search engine standard format responses or images or video or Amazon goodies.  Yum!

Likes:
Quintara are courageous to try a different way of delivering search engine results and navigating through those results. 

One thing I particularly like is if you consider ‘ordinary’ search engines, most users have a limited attention span and expect the best results to be served up in the first few paragraphs.  If what they are looking for is on page 2…tough… it will probably never be found except by a few tenacious searchers.  We live in a ’give it to me now’ society after all!  Quintura allows some of those ‘deeper down’ results to be captured within the visual snapshot circulating the search term. It could be better for the searcher and for the information being searched if they can visibly see results that ordinarily appear on the bottom of page 1 or ugh…perhaps even page 2. 

Dislikes:
So in the ‘likes’ section I mentioned a searcher being able to see results ‘circulating’ the search term and perhaps see results more easily that would have been missed in the results from ordinary search engines. True. 

But because of the tag cloud metaphor combined with appearing and disappearing sub words, its somehow challenging to really understand what you are seeing from a results perspective.  However, late at night, with a few drinks inside, it probably makes much more sense.

Its hard to explain but unless you know the subject matter well already, the tag cloud results seem so strangely unrelated. Good for novalty value, not so good if you need to find something and fast i.e. Give it to me now!

The other personal dislike is the name – like the swirling search result terms, Quintura just doesn’t mean anything…at least to me.  Does it mean anything or is it just another one of those web 2.0 company descriptors that sounds ‘hip’ but are nonesense?  Anyway, because it doesn’t seem to mean anything, I keep forgetting it and keep needing to look up at this blogs title to get the spelling right.  Not a good quality for the name of the search engine…perhaps when I forget the exact spelling I should use Google to find out the name of that new Russian search engine and while I’m there perhaps I should click a few adsense ads – perhaps a partnership between Google and Quintura along these lines would drive more revenue for them?

I have to say that this IS a beta and I love startups so hate giving this a ZERO virtual investment.  Anyone that has the courage to start something new and put their dreams on the line deserve success! I really wish this concept and Quintura well and much success but…

My Virtual Investment:
With my virtual $1M, I would stay searching for ‘that Russian Search engine thing’ on Google and invest $ZERO in Quintura.

http://www.quintura.com/

Andrew
Founder
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com

Related posts:

1. Quintura Speaks Back: Update
2. HireThings: A $350K Virtual Investment
3. Ning: A $500K Virtual Investment

Ning is a new’ish company with some recently released technology that will skyrocket this company into the stratosphere. 

It’s the first company that I’m aware of that has created an easy to use, drag and drop, easy configuration site for users to create their own Social Networking site.  Literally within minutes you can have your own Social networking site with video & picture functionality, forums and a host of other features that allow the non-tech savvy out there to potentially get in on the Social networking action.

Business Model:
Ning’s business model is simple:
1)  They add ‘Adsense’ to the right hand column of every Social networking site so as people promote their new networking site, it should, in principle create a multiple effect Ning’s ad revenue
2)  People who want to get the benefit of the Adsense on their own site can pay a monthly fee, currently standing at $19.95.  They can obviously stratify that later so the more popular sites have a rev share and the less popular pay the fee or take Ning’s ads and just get on with running their site

Some Core Functionality:

• Social Networking:  Invite, meet new people, privacy settings, address book importing
• Full Customization of Theme or take existing template and configure.  Add your own logos, photos and branding
• Photo sharing, video sharing, forums
• …and the list goes on. Not bad for FREE! 

Likes:
There are a number of reasons why Ning will sing from an investment perspective:

The user interface is VERY easy to use and intuitive, I set up a social networking site in under five minutes and was…with a shy smile…relatively happy with how my very own social networking site looked (Check out the results:  http://amateurs.ning.com/)

With a couple of hours – it would be possible to make the site really work as some of the existing sites within Ning show.

As people promote their site, they promote Ning, this gives them the magic fairy dust needed for companies like this to go from 2, 200, 200K in months.  Their adsense revenue should be pretty obscene soon. 

I am starting to wonder if people are starting to mentally phase out adsense and these ads become a almost invisible to the human eye. What do you think?

As members of Ning can seach the different Social Networks there’s the potential to pick up stray but interested members…not bad!

Dislikes:
OK, so I used Ning and built my site based on a crazy little idea I had a while ago.  Thanks guys…I have finally seen my idea live. 

I know Ning has done one side of the hard work for me…the tech side, but I still have alot of the hard work ahead.  How to get people onboard, especially the first few users.  With these kinds of sites, you need a few active members so that the shy and reticent don’t worry about joining too.  The more people onboard the more valuable the system, so you really do need those first few.

That works if the Social networking site is in an area that already relates to a space with which I’m involved…so for me, Startups.  But what if I’ve set up a site because of an idea I’ve had but where I have few contacts?  That is a big stumbling block for this to go viral with all social networking sites created.

I would imagine that 10% of the users sites will hit the volume big time, 20% will do pretty well and the rest will perhaps exist but in name only.  Just a guess! But if the 80/20 rule works here…the majority of adsense revenue will come from the large volumed 20% and those will be the ones that convert to the $19.95 monthly fee. They would be mad not too and where does the revenue come from then?

Also, if I do create a site that really starts to rock and roll…iId like to port it to my own server and do it for myself.  Arguably if I did that then I couldn’t take advantange of Ning’s new functionality releases but it would still be mine.  Ning does not seem to have that on their roadmap.  If they don’t someone will come along who will offer that.

It would be good if Ning could figure out a business model to allow that to happen and keep some of the revenue. Perhaps a premium service would be to host the site under a separate URL but share the revenue or charge a higher monthly fee.

Last point – how long until the Social networking site market is completely saturated?  When the point arrives (if it hasn’t already) then this functionality becomes a glorified Yahoo Group type service.  I guess that still gives them the potential to be acquired by Yahoo or Google sometime ahead so another reason for a big virtual investment.

My Virtual Investment:
With my virtual $1M, I would stop inviting all my friends to http://amateurs.ning.com/ to invest $500K in Ning.

http://www.ning.com/

Andrew
Founder
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com

Related posts:

1. Geni: A $500K Virtual Investment
2. Farecast: A $500K Virtual Investment
3. Social Flowers: A $150K Virtual Investment