Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Ad-Supported Business Models Are Unsuitable for Early-Stage Startups

Eric Feng · 20VC: Kleiner Perkins GP, Eric Feng on How The Best Funds Use Tech and Data To Find Companies, Why Entrepreneurs Start The Fire and VCs Add The Rocket Fuel & Why Consumer Is Harder Than Ever Today · Jul 3, 2017 · at 17:12

Eric Feng, General Partner at Kleiner Perkins, explains why early-stage consumer startups should avoid ad-based monetization and embrace transactional revenue models.

0:00 / 0:14exact quote · 14.1s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Advertising just takes an immense amount of scale, and you get incredibly low ARPUs because It just requires hundreds of millions of users to actually build a meaningful ad business these days. So that's really hard for a startup to have to rely on that as the only way to make money.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Eric Feng

Opinion
Tech Incumbents Are the Most Nimble in History, Says Feng
“They're not afraid to directly compete with companies, copy companies, do whatever it takes because they have grown up in this next wave of innovation, and they are the savviest Strongest, most nimble, fast-moving group of incumbents that I think the world has…”
Eric Feng Jul 3, 2017 ▶ 12:05 20VC: Kleiner Perkins GP, Eric Feng on How The Best Funds Use Tech and Data To Find Companies, Why Entrepreneurs Start The Fire and VCs Add The Rocket Fuel & Why Consumer Is Harder Than Ever Today
Opinion
Venture Timing Is Wrong for VR and Autonomous Vehicles
“And I think for a lot of those big categories, the timing is likely not now in terms of making smart investments that deliver meaningful returns or LPs.”
Eric Feng Jul 3, 2017 ▶ 15:12 20VC: Kleiner Perkins GP, Eric Feng on How The Best Funds Use Tech and Data To Find Companies, Why Entrepreneurs Start The Fire and VCs Add The Rocket Fuel & Why Consumer Is Harder Than Ever Today
Insight
Consumer Tech Startups Are Binary; Entry Valuation Does Not Matter
“Consumer companies are binary. They work or they don't work. And when they work, it just really doesn't matter what your entry price is.”
Eric Feng Jul 3, 2017 ▶ 20:12 20VC: Kleiner Perkins GP, Eric Feng on How The Best Funds Use Tech and Data To Find Companies, Why Entrepreneurs Start The Fire and VCs Add The Rocket Fuel & Why Consumer Is Harder Than Ever Today
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Snapchat Was the Last Breakout Consumer Tech Company, Says Feng
“The last breakout iconic consumer company that's proven today is Snapchat, and that launched in 2011, so it's been almost six years since we had that level of success on the consumer side”
Eric Feng Jul 3, 2017 ▶ 9:42 20VC: Kleiner Perkins GP, Eric Feng on How The Best Funds Use Tech and Data To Find Companies, Why Entrepreneurs Start The Fire and VCs Add The Rocket Fuel & Why Consumer Is Harder Than Ever Today
Opinion
Autonomous Tech Is Overhyped, Climate Tech Is Underhyped
“Most hyped, I would say autonomous. Autonomous everything. We've got autonomous chairs, we have autonomous water bottles, everything is autonomous these days. Under-hyped, climate change. I wish that we would pay more attention to the great things coming on ar…”
Eric Feng Jul 3, 2017 ▶ 21:39 20VC: Kleiner Perkins GP, Eric Feng on How The Best Funds Use Tech and Data To Find Companies, Why Entrepreneurs Start The Fire and VCs Add The Rocket Fuel & Why Consumer Is Harder Than Ever Today
Assertion Partly supported
John Doerr Answered Flipboard Support Emails During Launch Crash
“I remember at Flipboard, for example, when the service first launched, The load was so tremendous that it actually took down the back end for a few weeks, and our board member John Doerr came by and actually answered customer support emails all night. He even …”
Eric Feng Jul 3, 2017 ▶ 8:56 20VC: Kleiner Perkins GP, Eric Feng on How The Best Funds Use Tech and Data To Find Companies, Why Entrepreneurs Start The Fire and VCs Add The Rocket Fuel & Why Consumer Is Harder Than Ever Today
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 1,200 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.