Pretty Interesting…! But then…will only work once…you cant create businesses out of it…!
I have realized, that customers are (much) smarter than you think they are…(or you would want them to be!)! And that creates an impact…a big one…on businesses…especially the ones in the repeat business segment (almost everyone).
These guys can clearly not do a business of buying bicycles cheap and selling them for a profit creatively! Once…it works…twice rarely will.
So value has to be created and it mostly always has to be either tangible or quantifiable. Cost and convenience are the biggest value creators…hands down. And the hardest to create…!
Flashback 2003! A concept named Gmail had launched and I was a strong Hotmail follower back then. But then, remember that those were days when there was no facebook, orkut, twitter and Mark Zuckerberg was still under-age (almost)!
So moving email addresses was no big deal. It just meant an auto forward and it wasnt that I had some 1,000 friends that I had to update on my email change!
So I moved…to GMail (thank god for that!). And within some 3-4 months of use…I noticed something. There were some 4 free invites in my accounts, for the service (it was, for the longest time ever, an invitation-only service!)
As a kind gesture, I sent one to a friend of mine at MSU, only to be told later that he has auctioned that invite for a crazy USD 80!! on ebay!! holy friggin shit…!
Well…I am still friends with that guy (infact I gave him another invite…after what he did…what was I thinking!) and auctioned one more for 45 dollars myself! :)
