But, simplicity applies in all other areas of the business. The above case studies were speaking to high level business strategies. And, guess what? We bought the company! K.I.S.S. All in all, it was very simple in its design and execution. The business was growing very quickly, with a very high conversion rate and many happy repeat customers, both data points which spoke to the high quality of the service and its appeal to customers. And, the company's clear focus showed in their financial metrics. Third, given the heavy B2B services nature to the business, it would be more defensible versus the big ecommerce-only players in the industry, like Amazon, that are not deep in services. Second, all the competitors lead with products and prices, and this company lead with service, as a clear differentiator. Why did that pitch resonate? First, the restaurant industry is large, at approximately $800B a year, so a big business could be built. And, they differentiated themselves with a "free furniture sourcing service", to take work off the plate of busy restaurant owners that didn't have the time to research furniture themselves. When the entrepreneur was pitching their business to us, their communicated mission was very clear: we are the leading ecommerce seller of furniture to restaurants. We recently acquired Restaurant Furniture Plus. Strike three, you're out! And, I didn't even get to drill down on the various B2C complexities here. And, drilling down even further, running an artificial intelligence company is materially more complex than building a simple piece of B2B software, with hardcore data science and machine learning required.
Keep it simple and stupid software#
The former is human driven and the latter is software coding driven, as an example. Then, drilling down even further, running a B2B services business is completely different from running a B2B technology company. The former is more sales driven and the latter is more marketing driven, as an example. Related: Find Your Niche in 60 Minutes or Less With These 4 Questionsįirst, from a business model perspective: the tactics required for successfully running a B2B business is completely different from the tactics required for successfully running a B2C business. And, the problem was: the entrepreneur had no clue there was anything wrong with that strategy. I kid you not, that was the pitch, trying to be all things to all people in their industry.
We are a human services company, and an artificial intelligence company, and an ad sales network, and a consumer marketing brand, and an ecommerce business (in one of the hardest industries to break into). When I asked him to explain his business model, it went something like this. The other day, Red Rocket had a call from a startup seeking to raise capital. Shutterstock A Case Study of What Not to Do Which means not getting distracted by the various "flavors of the month" that can lead you down rabbit holes and stress out your organization in the process.
You have to boil your idea down to one specific thing, and stay religiously focused on that end goal.
But, if you are going to have any chance of success, you need to K.I.S.S. That is why only one in ten startups actually succeed. Building successful startups is not easy.
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