I think the best businesses are ones where the business model is so ingrained into the product or service that you can’t think about the business and business model separately.  That is not always the case – most businesses are built first and they try to answer their business model question later.
My broad definition of a business model is “How do you separate customers from their money”?  Business models aren’t only about your pricing model; it’s about the entire process, from how a customer finds out about you, to how …

The biggest news in the world of start-ups in the last 24 hours is the announcement that investor Yuri Milner of DST is partnering with famed angel investor Ron Conway on a new innovative start-up investment vehicle called Start Fund.  The Start Fund is offering $150,000 loans to every one of the 43 start-ups in the Y Combinator class.
Some background here.  Yuri Milner runs the Russian investment firm DST, which has already been a force of disruption in the venture capital world by making very large investments in Facebook, Zynga, …

Innovation is about the future.  And the start of every year brings one set of future predictions after another.
The best list I’ve seen I discovered reading Fred Wilson’s A VC blog.  He posted a presentation (that I’ve embedded below) from the marketing firm JWT titled “100 Things to Watch in 2011”.  Apparently they’ve been doing this for years, and appear to be fairly good at their predictions.   I highly recommend going through the presentation (though odds are you already have – as of this writing its been viewed 349,000 times, …

With this last post of 2010, I wanted to write about some of my observations of retailers and products during this holiday shopping month.
Charity giving at the register. When I was making a $50 purchase at the local Pottery Barn, as I was paying the clerk asked if I’d like to donate $1 to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital.  I think this is a terrific way to raise money (and I said yes).  First, I’ve already taken out my credit card, so that barrier is gone.  Second, they didn’t ask me …

Some people stick their noses up in the air at the idea that a company “suggestion box” can be a source of practical innovation.   Amazon would beg to differ.
For those not familiar with the Amazon Prime program, members pay a $79 annual fee to receive free 2-day shipping on most products stocked by Amazon.  According to a BusinessWeek article, Amazon Prime might be responsible for 20% of Amazon’s US sales, which were about $16 billion in the last 12 months.  That means Prime could be a $3 billion dollar program.
Guess …