a canadian startup

Notes from Bill Gross

This has been a series of weeks filled with great learning for me.

Here is some smart advice from Bill Gross from the last issue of Business 2.0:

We started making only Internet companies because we felt this was an incredible new medium that had unbelievably high gross margins. If you could make a Web site, you could sell something online and you could make margins of 90 percent or higher. When we looked back at the ones that were most and least successful, we realized it had nothing to do with their margins. It had to do with how protectable the idea was. Was there a core intellectual property with which you could differentiate yourself and earn sustainable margins? Because you can make good margins online, but if you can’t sustain them, it doesn’t mean anything.

and

Q. How do you figure out whether the market is ready to accept some of these disruptive services?

Well, one of the things we learned is that you definitely want to have first-mover advantage. It’s always great to be first when you have a new idea that is a potential game-changer. But you also want to have the “last mover living” benefit – meaning that if you just go first, if you’re way too early, you’re not going to make it until the market catches up to you.

So I think the biggest lesson we’ve learned is that you need to find a way to raise enough money and spend it slowly enough that you can stick around until everybody catches on to your idea. The race is not to run out of your money first – it’s to be there at the finish line.

via Ajax Girl