Patrick de Laive

Ingredients for a successful web2.0 startup – part 1

There is a lot to do about web2.0. A lot of new companies pop up out of nowhere nowadays. There are a dozen blogs writing about them everyday (some popular ones: TechCrunch, read/write web, WebWorkerDaily, …), more and more conference regarding this topic appear (most well known are Web2.0 Conference™ –US- and The Next Web™ Conference –Europe-), even banks and consultancies try to get a piece of the action (McKinsey and Accenture are trying to get in).

What web2.0 is? Well, I’m not going to push my own version here, but check our dear friends at wikipedia. (if you are a web2.0 savvy this post will not be very new to you, although I’ll introduce probably some new terms that are fun to know/read).

Why do some companies succeed while most others fail?
This is part 1 of a series of posts about the ingredients needed to succeed as a company in the web2.0 jungle. The ingredients are in no particular order.

So lets start with what we call: The Big Dick factor

What’s in it for me? That is the question consumers or users of webservices are asking themselves. So as an Internet entrepreneur you have to ask the same question (but then in the role as if you were a user of your own service). If you want users to feed your database, tag their photos, upload their videos, share their opinion you should give them something in return:

Online Fame!

Everybody wants to be acknowledged for the good work he/she has done. The same with online ‘work’. Check out the top users from Digg (and watch the profile views!!!), or the top affiliates from the Firefox community and also other successful companies show content or profiles from their users (e.g. Flickr, last.fm, and all social networks).

The bigger peoples ‘online Dick’ the more enthusiastic people are about the service.

So, be sure you can answer the question ‘What’s in it for me?’. And the best way to answer it is to make people famous (at least in your community). Make them feel like having a Big Dick!