Byu Business Model Competition Evaluation

Team 1

This model is a little difficult for me to grasp.  The problem I see they may have is that they’ll be completely reliant on these tours to provide them with content.  He mentioned that they will not be the sole owner of the content, rather they will lease this content to make it available to potential customers.  At any time these tours can pull access to this content and their whole business falls apart.  Another issue I had was the market potential and the price at which customers would be willing to buy.  There are very few apps that are successful and the price point they are pitching.  While they may have gathered some data from a few customers stating that they would be willing to pay $12-$15 for an app that they wouldn’t even own, I don’t think this would be a viable model to rely upon.  If someone is going to pay that much for an app, they’ll probably want full rights to the content, own the app, and be able to use it whenever they want, not just on a rental.  I think starting this app in the traditional range of $0.99 - $2.99 would be a viable solution.  A lot of people that sign up for tour guides know what they’re getting into, I would’ve like to hear more on how they were going to market the success of the app to the actual customers.  While the idea seems to have some potential, they need to work on their model and maybe reconfigure how they will want to operate.

Team 2

I love the idea of social media analytics and the value it can provide to various companies that use the service.  The glaring issue that I saw with their business model is they will be reliant on the big social media companies, such as Facebook and Twitter, to provide them with content.  That is a huge assumption that Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram would willing provide them with content to run their database.  One of the main issues is that this company has no reputation yet, so there is not a very good reason as to why the big social media companies would provide them with access to their content over larger competitors.  The reason why this would fail over social media management is that at any time, Facebook or Twitter could shut down the feed to their content and make this unavailable.  A larger competitor with a bigger revenue stream could come in, possibly ask to be exclusive and none of these smaller companies would even have a chance to utilize the content social media provides.  Another issue with this business model are the barriers to entry.  He mentioned no other social media analytics company is currently tracking ROI and other financial metrics based off of social media activity, but it does not sound like it would be very hard for an existing company to enter into this space.  While his idea is unique for the time being, I see their competitive advantage being invaded once these other companies realize the value of tracking ROI and revenue for the users of these metrics.  He is correct in stating that social media is a very new to the world and there are some innovative things being produced around this tool, but as he mentioned himself, he is surprised other companies have not tapped into this sector of social media analytics.  I believe this will be a tough model to put forth when it’s only a matter of time where these bigger companies realize they are capable of producing on this team’s sole competitive advantage.