It’s always great experience to communicate with start-up people. They have the most creative and ambitious mind among us. By luck, I have the opportunity to talk with many undergoing start-up project owners. Frankly, I think they all have brilliant ideas. However, many times it is just frustrating as I get to know they suffered from the same start-up myth.

“I run a web 2.0 start-up. I think to get users has priority over profit. After I have users, I can have all sorts of monetization models.” Actually, most of the start-up owners embrace this belief, despite the fact that facebook’s or twitter’s case is just one out of a hundred. In reality, the other 99 web 2.0 start-ups die out in silence because they fail to feed themselves before a rich daddy adopts them.

Let’s see the classic examples:

Specimen A, an ambitious travel social network “T”

Network – Strong (multi-national team, in association with a global student NGO)

Market – Whole World

Idea – Brilliant (travel social network with “Glocal” knowledge)

Product – Sleek and well focused

Specimen B, a SNS targeting on OL (office ladies) “L”

Network – 4 people (with no outside network & limited resource)

Market – Taiwan

Idea – Brilliant niche market (single OLs consume the most in the demography)

Product – Disorganized compound

You might wonder “T” would be the favorable by the market as it seems to have better advantage. Somehow one year later, “T” is more or less a typical internet carcass. I recalled when I talked to one of the co-founders about their monetization plan. They told me it’s not their priority at that moment. When the time is right, they would think about it.

When the time is right? Unfortunately, they did not manage to survive for that long to see the right time. On the contrary, the start-up “L”, with their disorganized compound, they have manifested profit and expanded to another country. What is the successful secret of “L”? To be honest, it’s really simple. They tried to monetize all sorts of their products and discovered their users did not reject the idea of micro-payment. They then integrated mobile payment as part of their interactive application design and voila! they hit the goldmine.

It’s complicated of course the factors involved in the success or failure of a start-up project. But it’s obvious, when you open up a business, you plan your income sources and the more sources of income, the better it is. In the virtual world, the production of virtual service or goods costs virtually nothing. Don’t sell it in the way as selling material goods as you will also virtually get nothing. Embrace the idea of micro-payment. Fortumo empowers your creativity.

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