Shifting Mental Models

During this week’s roundtable, we started off with a discussion about the Funny Money Unicorn Business and what entrepreneurs need to be careful about when contemplating financing and navigating the current highly irrational market environment.

MDbN
As for the pitches, first up, Stewart Lowinger from Palm Springs, California, pitched Crescendo MDbN (Music Database Network). MDbN is similar to IMDB (movies), which was acquired by Amazon. There is clearly precedence of the idea working in films, so perhaps it could work as well in music.

eClincher
Next, Gilad Salamander from Mountain View, California, pitched eClincher, a competitor to Hootsuite for social media campaign management including scheduling, analytics, and other capabilities. My hunch is that this service, offered to SMBs as a Saas Enabled BPO / Do It For Me capability would be a better business to build, rather than trying to compete head-on with Hootsuite which is a formidable competitor.

mficient
Then, Ranjana Nath-Magnani from Geneva, Switzerland, pitched mficient, a mobile platform-as-a-service (PaaS) company that she wants to position to build applications for Indian SMBs. I don’t think that’s a good idea. I would focus on the European market, since Ranjana is based in Geneva. The Indian SMB (and enterprise) market moves very, very slowly.

As I said to Ranjana, it is hard to make a mental model shift on a dime. So advice and feedback I provide is something to think about, investigate, and determine for yourselves where you want to go. What I offer is just perspective based on my experience and having seen huge numbers of entrepreneurs and businesses in action.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

As always, I would very much like to hear about your business, so let me invite you to come and pitch at one of our free 1M/1M public roundtables. We will be holding future roundtables at 8 a.m. PDT on:

Thursday, June 4, Register Here.
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