Disqus - Latest Comments for Andrew Holt

Re: One Thing You Don't Need To Be An Entrepreneur: A College Degree

Andrew Holt — Fri, 08 May 2009 09:11:56 -0000

As with an MBA, the actual knowledge gained from classroom learning has little value for an entrepreneur. I use about 1% of the knowledge taught in my lectures at school. However, while college certainly isn't a requirement for an entrepreneur, I disagree wholeheartedly with any advice to young entrepreneurs that they skip college. The highly successful entrepreneurs who flat out skipped college are a tiny minority, and you're leaving a LOT up to chance by deciding to forgo a degree.

First, college only "cranks out workers" if you let it. While the actual knowledge taught in lectures didn't help me much, the challenge of working on some extremely hard problems with very smart people undoubtedly structured my thought process. I didn't go into college planning on working for someone else forever, and I didn't leave college with that mindset either.

Second, most of my network stems from colleagues, alumni, or people with whom my degree holds clout.

I'd say an undergraduate degree has the same value as an MBA. If you go to a top school, the clout and the network have a lot of value. If you go to any other school, you're probably better off stopping out or skipping IF you're mature enough to build knowledge and a valuable network on your own.

I always shudder when I hear some young folks boasting about skipping college. A lot of you should think twice, unless you're already working on something you're extremely passionate about. Not starting college and not graduating college are very different things.

Re: http://www.charleshudson.net/thoughts-on-free-powered-business-models-and-why-time-beats-features

Andrew Holt — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:55:20 -0000

I think the choice between free trial and free version (or both) depends entirely on the product and the target audience.

If a product has features that clearly have value associated with them, yet it's possible for users to get a taste for the product without those features, then offering a free version can be logical. For instance, WordPress allows anyone to cretae a blog for free, but charges when it comes time to map the blog to a domain or customize the CSS. Any serious blogger will want, and be willing to pay for, those features. There is a clear upgrade path for a target audience, and their pricing has a correct (in my opinion) cost/value ratio.

Free trials, on the other hand, can make a tremendous amount of sense if the target audience most likely has a budget for the product, but needs to be convinced either of the category (that they need *any* type of similar product) or your particular product. For enterprise software, it's almost a requirement that companies be allowed to try out applications as a part of the sales process. If the product offers real value, companies will be able to perceive the value within the time allotted and be more than happy to pay if the price is right. It's trickier when companies aren't yet convinced of the category value, but a good sales person can usually work through this during the free trial.

Now, the trickiest situations usually arise when the target audience varies, and the product's total value won't necessarily present itself to the adopting user. BaseCamp falls within this category. Users can range from independent contractors and small startups to enterprise customers with big budgets, all of whom will need some time to use the product with their colleagues. BaseCamp's model works very well for them, since the upgrade to paid plans will only be required in two scenarios: 1) a consultant/contractor grows to more than 15 clients, by which point the product has presented a lot of value and a budget has been made available, or 2) the customers already has a large number of projects, and project management software will present immediate value once the group gets on board. So those that started free will upgrade when the time is right, and those that already need paid plans get the chance to try them for free, with no commitment. Those that have no reason to pay are not asked to do so.

The price/value structure is definitely the trickiest part of planning a business, but once you figure out the "will pay for" features, choosing between a free trial, free version, or both, should be easy.

Re: Roundup: “Bubble video” taken down, but singer gets $3M, Bahu, RivalMap, more

Andrew Holt — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 23:38:00 -0000

Thanks for the mention Matt.

RivalMap is actually a brand new and totally separate product. Where Competitious was a free app that allowed web companies to list their competitors and gather some information, RivalMap is very robust collaborative software focusing on market intelligence. We're targeting larger teams and companies with RivalMap, but we also offer free and small pay plans. RivalMap does for marketing, product, and executive teams what SalesForce does for sales teams - a way to manage crucial information and gain knowledge from the collective.

-Andrew, Co-Founder
RivalSoft Inc.

Re: Cue the complaints: 17-inch MacBook Pro without a removable battery?

Andrew Holt — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:53:12 -0000

That's a deal breaker for me. My current Macbook Pro is on it's second battery, which just died on me flying back to North Carolina. Around 25% the computer just dies - same symptoms as the first battery. Considering how many Apple products seem to have battery trouble, and permanent notebook battery is a pretty poor design decision.

Re: VentureBeat partners with DEMO

Andrew Holt — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 10:58:54 -0000

That's awesome, congrats Matt!

Re: Work for VentureBeat — in advertising, sales or as product manager

Andrew Holt — Sun, 17 May 2009 14:18:35 -0000

Congrats on all the growth Matt, it's awesome.

Re: Tracking The Competition, Socially

Andrew Holt — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 09:26:10 -0000

Thanks for the mention and the kind wishes, Paul. It's interesting that you bring up the applicability of RivalMap at various types of companies. We built RivalMap because the competitive knowledge function at most companies seemed like a very under-served area, which was surprising given how important this data can be. The data isn't relevant to everyone at a company, but sales, marketing, product managers, and executives can derive a lot of value from having a single clearinghouse for any new information on their competition.

RivalMap is intended as an information hub for competitive data. It's not healthy for a company to focus intensely on the competition, but it's definitely helpful when making strategic decisions to know everything you can about competitors, from sales' discoveries in the field to a product manager's analysis of a competing product's feature. We've found from current customers, which range all over in terms of size and industry, that RivalMap works well in both companies with a defined market intelligence team, and companies that have nothing defined at all. Essentially, we're replacing email and ad-hoc documents for a particular function, which adds a lot of value and breaks out from other information areas very well. There is always an adoption challenge with any new system, but we're working to go beyond the email integration and bookmarklet we have now to make it even simpler for users to contribute.

We'll also be adding an often-requested news feature shortly to the service, which will collate news items about a company's competitors and industry, cutting down on information overload and making it easier to have peace-of-mind that you're on top of the competition. We're focusing on competitive information now, but have plans to expand into broader information sets in the future.

If you'd like a full account to play with, let me know!

Andrew Holt
Co-founder
RivalSoft Inc.

Re: Marketing for the Web 2.0 world

Andrew Holt — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 08:28:23 -0000

Steven, thanks for mentioning RivalMap, we're glad to hear it's been working well for you!

-Andrew
Co-Founder, RivalSoft