Anti-lean Entrepreneurship--industry analysis and Competitive analysis: assessing business

Absrtact: If you want to build a sustainable and long-term profitable enterprise, we have to evaluate whether our business model is going through or not, consider the competition game of competitor's products, and compare, analyze and study with them, so we need to carry out

If we want to build a sustainable and long-term profitable enterprise, we have to specifically assess whether our business model is going through, but also consider the competitive game of rival products, as well as with their continuous comparison, analysis and learning, so need to conduct business model deduction. A number of basic concepts have been introduced in the article "business model Canvas" in the previous fourth chapter. For example, each business model, the center has a product/service, we know this is called "value proposition", so before evaluating the overall business model, we need to ask ourselves several questions about value proposition and customer segmentation.

is asking how useful the "value proposition" can be to target customers. For example, a diabetic wants to find a doctor on a mobile medical platform that makes him feel satisfied to consult his own unique condition. The standard of success, then, is how well the platform meets the needs of the patient. Assess how many people/companies have the same needs. This will tell you the total market capacity, but also for the entire industry and the company's business growth in the forward-looking forecast, so you have to analyze the industry and research, can do it themselves, can also entrust a third party. Evaluate the importance of this requirement to the user, and whether they have enough budget and are willing to pay. In other words, who will pay for the products and services you want to provide, in the end is a real demand or pseudo demand, strong demand or weak demand, even if the main use of other stakeholders to transfer payment mode, is the same.

The answers to these three questions for our project to grow in the market competition is critical, if the long-term business model does not make sense, even if you have the best products, there will be very strong resistance, so we should not only stare at product iterations, but ignore the entire business model deduction. However, such lessons are most often found in the "lean Entrepreneurship" brainwashing team and leaders, and even repeatedly lean entrepreneurship several times, the second failure is summed up some of the details of the problem, regardless of this may be a systemic problem.

In fact, in theory, lean entrepreneurship often from the outset based on the local, too much emphasis on "pain points", and then leaders and teams will be obsessed with product details and update the iteration to extricate themselves, and the long-term business model vague or unclear, the most common saying is, as long as there are enough users and traffic, The business model is all coming, don't worry about how to make money!

This naturally leads to a tendency to brush the user's volume in a desperate way and then "ABC-round financing" as a business model. There is indeed a group of people who use this method to finally obtain financing and development, and become a model of the successor, the successful enterprise each have the "killing pass", but a=10 is equivalent to 10=a? We know from the large sample statistics that every year in fact only 1–2% enterprises to get the VC, most of the other must rely on their own, then if the "ABC round financing" as the core of the business system, usually with the probability of playing roulette to Macao Casino is similar!

Therefore, one of the core viewpoints of the anti-lean entrepreneurship is to make a long-term business model deduction from the beginning, and adjust it according to the market intelligence and the actual situation.

Here we will start with these 8 questions to assess the business model. Can quantify the score, such as the use of 10 points, 0 = very poor, 10= super stick, the final weighted data analysis.

How much conversion costs are available to prevent customer churn

The cost of converting a customer from one product/service provider to another, including time, energy, and money, is called "switching costs." The higher the conversion cost, the higher the customer's stickiness to the product and service.

I bought an Apple ipod when Steve Jobs said it was "a thousands song in a pocket." It was not until recently that I realized that this was actually a business model. Because I've copied countless songs I love to hear and put them in my ipod, as a result, because of the cumbersome migration, I would never want to use the other music players on the market, especially the CDs that can only hold 10 songs, which I think is the credit of "switching costs". From the very beginning, Apple set up its operating system with the download of its App store as its core, eventually changing the business model of digital music.

How strong is the scalability of the

business model?

Scalability is the ease with which business models can be malleable without the need for equal cost increases. The business model of software engineering and the Internet industry is more malleable than in traditional industries. The best example is Facebook, which has only thousands of engineers, but it creates the value of serving and communicating for a billion of of users.

Can the

business model generate repetitive income?

What are the benefits of repetitive income? First, the cost of sales occurs only once; second, it can enhance the stickiness of the core users; third, you have a better prospect of future income and development.

Many of the existing SaaS companies subscribe to this pattern to achieve recurring revenue, for example, this is different from Microsoft's model, which is mainly selling copies to sell software, and they are using a similar leasing method, through the number of users and the length of the use of the ladder to charge.

There is another side to the recurring income, which is to sell the derivative income generated by a product. For example, you buy a printer, and then you will continue to buy ink cartridges, you buy a blood glucose meter, you will continue to buy strips. Look at the Apple, it makes so much money from the hardware, but also from the software to generate recurring revenue, the establishment of a large ecological.

business model is to pay first or first

Some business models may be before money is spent, but before money is spent, the more income the better. Dell has taken this model to the computer hardware industry-collecting money and reproducing it, thus avoiding the cost of inventory depreciation in a large hardware industry. Millet pre-sale system is actually this mode, so even if the gross margin is relatively low, but the cash flow is very abundant.

your business model is to let users work, you benefit?

This could be a big kill in a business model design. Is there anything better than a business model that lets customers work and we count money? Look at Ikea, we buy furniture also need to install their own, the United States, the name of DIY, the actual end they saved a lot of money. Look at the micro-letter, hundreds of millions of of users in the above hair photos, hair friends circle, tired half to death, a mobile phone all day, enjoy, so the value of micro-letter is entirely created by users, penguins they just built a platform.

is

business model immune to competitors?

What I want to say is that a great business model should be sustainable and protect you from vicious competition for a long time, not just a good product. So I think Apple's competitive advantage comes from its strong business model, Samsung or other manufacturers may easily imitate some product design, and can make some stunning products in many ways not worse than Apple, but it is absolutely difficult to build an ecosystem like the Apple App Store.

But if the technological advantage can create strong barriers, of course, it can be a competitive advantage.

is your business model based on a disruptive cost structure?

One of the long-term advantages of almost all businesses over competitors is that they can cut costs, so some business models are based on disparate cost structures. Like Skype, which we can now use to make a phone call, now feels no different from a traditional phone. In fact, Skype has a very different cost structure than traditional telecoms companies, its business model is based on software and the Internet, the cost is mainly from people and bandwidth, while the cost of traditional telecommunications companies include a huge amount of infrastructure investment and replacement costs.

How does your business model design behave?

No business model can play the full score on each of the above issues, in fact, some of the low scores of enterprises can also be successful. Although balanced development is also important, if your business model can be a very high score on some issues, then your business enjoys a much higher chance of sustained competitive advantage, this is the current more popular "anti-barrel theory" or called advantage theory.

Of course, in the end, only the market is the best judge!