Publishing profitably rather than just publishing

One of my most talked about topic at this blog is enabling creatives or artists to do their own thing and earn a living while doing so. Examples of what I have written include the following:

• How startups can help the comic industry
• Empowering creative talent in next generation media
• 4 ideas for empowering fans
• Is it possible to create a Rockband equvialent for photos?

Seth Godin sumed it up well when he says that:
In a world in which just about everyone is a writer and just about every writer wouldn’t mind benefiting from their work, there’s a huge need for people who can help us publish profitably. Or, failing that, figuring out a way to get your own words published profitably. Some people will happily remain amateurs, but history shows us that the real explosion in content happens after people figure out how to make money.

Is it time for us to start moving forward with our publishing platforms? Is it time to think of them as markets for creatives or artists, rather than mechanisms to create content. What should such a new platform look like? What are its components?
Built in payment
We need a platform that can enable creatives to collect money. Witness how Scribd has easily turn itself from a platform to a market by simply enabling authors to price their works and collect payment. Similarly, many mobile services have become viable revenue sources for creatives because they have built in payment systems.

Build in revenue mechanisms
Related to payment is the issue of revenue generation. Paying for stuff is just one option to collect revenue. How can we build in other revenue mechanisms that cater to each creative industries? For photographers for example, why can't they organise a photography tour from theirs blogs and charge people for it? For bands, why can't they create and sell their merchandise on their blogs through a zazzle-like interface? For authors, why can't they allow their fans to engage them for public speaking through their blogs?

Some of these services might already exists. However, the point is that why can't they be integrated into a publishing platform like a blog? Let creatives focus on their works and forget about adding a widget here or creating a service there.
Community tools
Andrew Chen articulated a problem that is becoming clearer to me. We don't have good community tools in our publishing platforms. Take blogs for example. We don't have ways to store contacts of readers so that we might contact them personally. We don't have an easy way to check out the profiles of our readers so that we can understand them better and know how we can be more useful to them (many commentors for example don't have a Disqus account). Without all these, it will be challenging for publishers to connect meaningfully to their community.

Network tools
An artist or creative can generate only limited exposure. However, if they can cross promote each other, the network effects will be much greater. Today, I don't see that happening. There are no simple ways that an artist can encourage his/her fans to take a look at other people's works. More importantly, there are no viral revenue mechanisms to encourage artists to cross promote each other.

I think there is much we can do to enable creatives to publish profitably (Bandcamp is an early example). We went into creating publishing platforms without due considerations for the incentives, the models, and the business processes of enabling people to thrive. This is ok during the early days of the technology but I think we are a stage where these things are becoming important.

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Exploring attention markets

I blogged about Digg clones before and how they failed to understand the true economics behind services like Digg: attention markets.

Here is a new startup from the Ycombinator (Wintor 09) that begins to explore different market structures for attention markets.

The voting on thesixtyone is combined with some concepts learned from video games. Listeners cannot just indiscriminately heart up any song they want. They are given a limited number of heart points on a daily basis. More points can be earned for identifying good music early or recruiting friends to the service. Songs can only be given positive heart points, however. They can’t be demoted for being really bad. But the fact that the number of points are limited means in theory that only the most deserving songs will get enough to make it to the home page or the top of any given category.

Their experiments will be interesting to watch: to learn about different market incentives, to see what strategic variables will truly matter in attention markets. I think learning from games is a great start. Games have always been about managing scare resources (which is what attention is): how they create artificial scarity, how they link resources to encouraged actions et al. Hence, applying games mechanisms to attention markets is a good start for experimentations.

A related post also talks about how the lack of down voting distorts incentives for attention markets. This is again another learning in how attention markets and their efficiencies are shaped by market structures. If attention markets are going to be important in the coming age of abundance in content, we need to pay attention to how these markets work.

Next step: self correcting markets.

Related articles by Zemanta

• I can't believe we are still having Digg clones in 2009! The sad state of Singapore startups (ac-idealog.blogspot.com)
• Digg - Spammers Play on Economic Fears (tsurch.com)

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Organisation innovation, and its opportunities, are vastly understated

We are shifting from the industrial to the hyper connected economies. The latter is marked by high speed changes that are affecting how we live, communicate, consumer, produce, distribute etc. Unfortunately, most of our current institutions including corporations, government et al are ill-configured to handle the changes that hyper connectivity has brought. The end result is an implosion. Witness how:

- Our family system still caters for one-size-fits-all nuclear family when it is commonplace to see long distance relationships, divorces, single parents, elders living by themselves et al

- Our education system still takes a factory-style approach to learning when creativity , innovations, thought independence, collaborations are going to be key survival skills for the 21st century

- Our companies are getting into more and more serious decay when they choose not to engage with their customers on what they really want

- Our government, with its command and control system, is facing difficulties handling the loosely networked cell-organization of terrorists.

Going forward, the command and control systems need to give way to new forms of collaborations, and here lies the opportunity. Imagining news ways to coordinate and organise resources in our new economy can potentially yield rich returns. It is not that this has not been done before but we underestimated and under celebrated their contributions.

Take for example, the invention of the limited corporation. It was world changing (can you imagine our world economy without it?) but hardly anyone remembers the inventor. Similarly, the first cooperative, the first mutual fund, the first insurance, the first auto club etc were all organisation innovations that has a remarkable impact on our lives but we don't remember who their investors are.

So, there is a great opportunity for clever and bold enterepreneurs to rethink new forms of coordination that create better value than what our current insitututions are providing. Need examples? Here are several models that I think are radical

- Australia's Department of Human Services pioneered a programme where a group of coordinators helps the government to buy and allocated a mix of services for familites with kids with disabilities. This reinvents the notion that family services have to be one-size-fit-all.

- Guild in MMORPGS are a powerful examples of how people can self organised to solve chaleenging tasks. They have big implications on how work teams and even learning will be managed in the future. Imagine classes organised in such a manner.

- Threadless is a classic example of a community powered way of organising how goods can be produced and manufactured.

- Kidney exchange is a using a market approach to solve the issue of allocating scare resources. ReceviablesExchange is using this approach to create liquidity for short term assets.

There are many more examples if you look hard enough. If you want a rich area for innovation, rethinking new organisations and new ways of coordination is a good mine.

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5 ideas for mobile ebook applications

With the rising popularity of the ebook readers on mobile, I think the ebook market might finally be taking off. If you are interested to do something in this area, I have listed some ideas for your you to consider.


A marketplace to create and sell non-text based ebooks: Japan has shown that novels which are written on and intended for mobile is a viable market. With the new touch interfaces, it is now possible to create a non text based authoring system on mobile for users to create image intensive books such as children's books, picture magazines, calenders et al. Attach the authoring system to a marketplace and you can create a Wattpad equivalent for non text based ebooks.

Mobile advertising in ebooks: Advertising on the mobile can be personal, engaging and useful if done correctly. Blyk has shown how successful mobile advertising can be with its user co-created advertising (pls read the 7th mass media for a detailed case study). Creating this form of advertising infrastructure for mobile ebook creators can lead to a thriving ecosystem that benefits content creators, advertisers and consumers. Imagine reading a emagazine on cars, and getting engaging car advertisements that is based on your preference of brands, car models and prices. Best of all, the reader can click the ad directly and booked a test-drive if he/she is interested.


A social ebook reader application: Seth Godin has pointed out how Kindle can be made more social. The opportunity here is to create an ebook reader application, rather than a physical reader, that reflects what he has stated.

--Let me see the best parts of the book as highlighted by thousands of other readers.
--Let me see notes in the margin as voted up, Digg-style, by thousands of other readers.
--Let me interact with hyperlinks and smart connections not just within the book but across books

In addition, the application should offer integration with the user's blogging platforms (wordless, blogger, twitter, tumblr et al) such that any highlighted text can be rebloged as a post or tweet. Fred Wilson has also echoed similar sentiments:

Its becoming more natural for readers to want to interact with the content they are reading. Computers have allowed this to happen and mobile devices need to support it. Its not just commenting, its tagging, sharing, reblogging, and a host of other interactions that make consuming content online a better experience than offline consumption.

It's gotten to the point that if I can't interact with content, I don't want to consume it. When I read books, I underline certain passages so I can blog about them later. If I were reading on a connected device, I'd simply reblog on tumblr and be done. I don't think I'm unusual in this regard but I do think I'm in the leading edge of behavior and that more and more people will feel this way.

Ebook readers with built in content for verticals: There are thousands of free ebooks on the web. You can built a ebook reader application that has already aggregates and organises free ebooks in vertical sectors such as travel, cars, gadgets, economics, science friction et al. In addition, ensure that each vertical has the relevant contextual services to enhance the book reading experiences. Some examples:

• For tourism related ebooks, link to applications like hotel finder, travel search engines etal. This will create potential affiliate revenue for the authors

• For cooking guides, link to online groceries services for users can purchase ingredients.

• For fanfiction, mangas, comics and celebrities' biography, link to wallpapers, ringtones, videos, merchandise et al where users can click to buy these items;

• For novels like science friction, integrate your reader with a related online community so that whatever the user has read, rated, commented, reviewed can be shared with the community, i.e. user generated context.

• For investment books, a CNN News ticker (scrolling news headlines on the bottom of the 24 hour cable TV news on screen) like mobile service where relevant stocks or investments that is related to the ebook's investment themes can be scrolled across the bottom of the screen. Users of course have the option to turn the service off if it is too much distraction. This can be a Zemanta type of play where authors have to first insert a script into their ebooks.

A playlist.com equivalent for reading list: Reading list to books is what playlist is to music. It is a powerful way to create and share context for books. What is needed is a way to share reading lists from ebook readers, both within the same application and across different readers. Such an service is more powerful on mobile because of its built-in payment channel. Readers can now look at the reading list from friends, and buy any title that they like immediately. It is magic!

Be a topspinmedia equivalent for authors for ebooks: Create applications that help authors better connect with their fans. These applications should be easily integrated into ebooks such that their services are embedded, rather than requiring readers to download another application. How are a few examples

• Mobile is, first and foremost, a communication device. Leverage that to create real engagement between reader and authors through real conversations enabled by the phone. The idea is to create Twitter widget that any ebook author can embed with their ebooks. Using this widget, readers can converse with authors in a Twitter like manner. Authors can also use this channel to send relevant links, short stories or blog posts and even answer questions from their readers;

• A book tour mobile mapping service that alerts the reader if any of their favourite authors are visiting their nearby locations;

• A mobile meetup application for fans to organise meetup sessions either between themselves or between fans and authors.

• A DIY ecommerce mobile site for authors to publish and market their ebooks. Imagine mobisiteglore but with a focus on authors.

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A loose network for exchanging traffic

One of our invested companies is in the area of analytics for applications including games. In the course of our discussion in developing a unique value proposition, we realise that current analytics don't do much beyond reporting statistics. That is all fine and good but we think there is an opportunity to do more.

We realise that many developers, including those we funded, do not cross leverage on each other's traffic. We think that if the right infrastructure, mechanisms and incentives can be developed, we can enable an open exchange where developers can collaborate to cross promote each other.

Our starting point is to treat analytics as a social object that can be shared. An exchange can then be built on top where developers can ask the relevant partners to grow their traffic. For example, say you are doing well in Singapore but is seeking to further your growth in Taiwan . From the exchange, you noticed another startup that is doing well in Taiwan. You click a button to offer to promote his application in exchange for him to do the same thing. The taiwan developer receies your offer and checks out your analytics. He thinks it is worth an exchange and clicks ok.

These are our current hypothesis. We are not sure this makes sense or not. However, we think that enabling developers to help each other grow is a good direction. While there are currently such deals being made privately, we think an open and transparent exchange can bring greater value.

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Markets as new organisation design: case studies

Markets, networks, communities. The 3 new organisation designs that Umair Haque has argued

Among the three, I have been most fascinated by markets. As a result, I have been studying examples of how such an organisational design can be applied in industries that needs transparency and a more efficient way to manage scare resources.

Markets are difficult to built because you are trying to solve a simultaneous equation of bringing together both demand and supply. However, once they are created, they unleash powerful incentives that spurred more innovations. Just take a look at the current markets we know: Apple App Store, Ebay, Google Adsense, Carbon trading et al. Not only have they created more value in themselves, they have enabled entire sub industries to be build on top of them. Just think of analytics, research, risk management, trading platforms, and other feeder businesses.

I am paying attention now to new forms of markets that being created. I think there are a wide spectrum of opportunities for any startup if they pay enough attention of these new markets:


organise resources more efficiently than firms. It is something I have been learning over the past year and is one of my goals to continue gaining a deeper understanding in 2009.Market for healthcare services: Carol is creating a centralized health care market place for consumers within a given regional community. A market place as defined by a centralized place where by consumers can shop, compare, and purchase health care services in an open, transparent way. They empower previously disjointed healthcare providers to form partnership to create healthcare packages with full price transparency. As a result, many different types of packages have formed and consumers now have the option to choose the one with the most value.
Markets for Water: Australia is the leading edge country in creating a water market. It has become a powerful tool to solve the water shortage crisis in a sustainable way. If people have the incentives to profit from better water management, they will actually do it. Once that happens, think of all the research, risk management and other forms of market enhancement businesses that will be needed. Waterfind is a good example.

Market for fishing stocks (and implications for food resources): Fish stocks have been eroding due to over fishing. What once was considered an abundant resource is now facing depletion. The birth of the Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs) was an effort to reorganise the resources using a market approach. So far, the results look promising.

What other new markets have you seen developing?

Related:
Idea generation #5: Creating new market exchanges
Startup Idea #68: Personal carbon trading
Idea generation #50: Markets for energy

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Startup Idea #100: Improve virtual world merchandising

As virtual world items becomes the default business model for many free to use social networks, games and virtual worlds, there is an opportunity to improve the sales conversion through a sophisticated merchandising platform.

In the real world, there are many product strategies that are devised to improve sales ratios.

A 'razor and blade' strategy, for example typically involves selling a item for less than its costs in order to sell more peripherals that this item needs to operate. We can use this technique in the virtual world as well. Why not give away a virtual radio or game console, and then charge for music or games to be played in these machines?

Packaging is also important to a physical product but why is there no effort made to package a virtual good? This is especially important when virtual items are given by players to other players as gifts. Why not make the 'revealing' of these gifts an experience, with music, animaiton et al?

Recommendation system, pioneered by the likes of Amazon, have proven to be useful in improving sales but they are not used to in virtual goods. Why not? I can see, in clothing virtual items for example, that such a recommendation system will be popular among users, especially in conjuction with in-world events where users want to look their virtual best.

Loyalty points, special event promotions, coupon redeemption are also fairly common promotional techniques. Again, virtual world items have seen very little of the above being used.

I believe there is an opportunity to build better tools to help virtual worls, games and social networks monetise their virtual items better. All these tools should provide simple APIs for developers to plug into their products and then see the magic happens. With development tools getting more and more simple to use (see MetaPlace as an example), we will see more independent small scale projects that need simple tools to help them sell more virtual items.

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Startup Idea #97: A marketplace for volunteers and charitable organisations

If you like to be a volunteer, where would you go? That is the question I was asking myself when I thought about volunteering the other day. There is no information source where I can assess where can I volunteer, what kind of help are organisations looking for, the organisations' environment, the type of people I am helping et al.

There should a marketplace of sorts where these information can be assessed and volunteers can be matched to organisations looking for them. Moreover, volunteers should be able to share their stories, be they words, images or videos such that these stories can be told to the rest of the community. In fact, volunteers and organisations can even rate each other to create some form of reputation mechanisms.

Such a marketplace is exciting to me because it is a form of resource organisation that actually creates value for everyone. Whether this can be a form of social business is something I am not too concern with. If you create something of value, there are many ways the value can return to you.

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Startup Idea #92: Ad insertion for self publishing

Ever since I learn about Topspinmedia, I have been researching for such equivalent in other media sectors such as games, video and books. One company that caught my eye is Lulu, the platform for self publishers. Beyond providing a publishing tool, Lulu understands that getting attention, not distribution, is what self publishers need to monetise their work in this age of abundance. Let's look at some of the tools they have put in place.

First of all, they understand the importance of search. Tools like online marketing and Google book search enables authors to easily leverage search to gather more attention for their work.

Lulu also enables viral distribution via a comprehensive set of tools such as widgets, banners and linking to social networks and social news sites. Again, these help the authors to easily spread their work across the web and increases the probability of their work becoming a snowball.

Finally, they also provide tools for authors to create press releases, websites et al that assists in the traditional marketing side of the equation.

Overall, if I am an author, all these tools provide a real service to help me gather attention to my work. However, in this age of abundance, the most effective way to gather attention might be giving something away for free is a an effective way to gather attention first. To do this however, you need an easy way to get advertisement. This is where advertisement insertion technologies are needed.

The difficult thing in this business is to gather the statistics and aggregate them in a way that is meaning to advertisers. For the near term, I see a federated media approach might work best, where a startup can gather the best independent authors to create high quality inventory for advertisements. In the middle term, an auction system akin to Adsense might evolved.

Whatever the model, I think advertisments are necessary to provide an alternate way to help self publishers monetise their work. While Lulu is great as it is, I think ads are needed to make this an evenmore healthy ecosystem.

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Idea generation #51: How to do good with 2.0

Image by

Tim O’Reilly / Flickr

via CrunchBaseTim O'Reilly had a great post on what has been posted here quite frequently: using 2.0 in to organise information to solve real problems.

Instedd's approach to early detection of infectious diseases, Ushahidi's approach to crowdsourcing crisis information, Witness's harnessing of consumer video to report on human rights abuses, and AMEE's APIs for exchanging carbon data between applications

All the above are first steps in collecting and organising information for real problems. What is important is to recognise is that we need markets, networks and communities to derive and unlock the value in these information. In order words, we need to use these information to hack real world processes to solve real world issues.

We need to hack infectious diseases. We need the information to build a network of medical suppliers, transportation, temporary hospitals to provide nimble responses to disease outbreaks.

We need to hack carbon emissions. We can channel the information into the creation of a vibrant market for carbon reduction enterprises in developing countries. A microfinance market that funds innovative enterprises that reduce carbon and uses the resulting carbon credits to repay the loan. Microenergy is one great example. More can be done.

We need to hack the weather insurance market. We need to have a open initiative where creative and cheap insurance products can be created, shared and built upon to provide better coverage for those in developing countries.

We need to do a lot of things. Let's get cracking.

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Startup Idea #89: From consumption to investment

If you have not been reading Umair Haque's blog, I suggest you do it NOW. His recent articles offered a new way to think about strategies: from consumption to investment. This is quite a powerful lens to to create startups ideas if you think about it.

Most businesses want users to consume somthing. What if we flip that idea around? Rather than endless consumption, how do we form businesses that encourages users to invest in things like environment, education, health, skills et al?

Let's take fashion. How do we go link up the many independent fashion designers to not only sell their latest collection but to form an initiative to teach other people how to create fashion pieces themselves? Is there money to be made? Of course there is. Just look at the market for informal training. What we need is some simple technologies to structure the educational content from these fashion designers and to form communities around them.

Another simple idea: form a sellaband or kiva equivalent to raise fund for park building. With the continusous devastion of our natural environment, especially within dense cities, such a project will gather many supporters. Business model? How about converting the carbon credit generated by the park and trading them on carbon exchanges?

Changing from consumption to investment model requires an act faith. A belief that what you are doing matters. Sometimes, I think business models will not be as evident as the examples I have given above. However with sufficient exploration of strategic experiments, I am confident that this is a very rich area for startups to experiment.

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Idea generation #50: Markets for energy

I believe in the age of markets and that price is an important mechanism to govern their workings and realise their true potential. Hence, it is with great interest that I am following the progress of smart grids and dynamic pricing in the electricity market that is happening around the world.

On the research front, the GridWise Olympic Peninsula Project is a year-long smart grid research project on price-responsive household technology, dynamic electricity pricing, and consumer behavior. You can read the summary in this NYtimes article. One of the most interesting outcome is the people are behaving like day traders in managing their energy consumption:
Every five minutes, the households and local utilities were buying and selling electricity, with prices constantly fluctuating by tiny amounts as supply and demand on the grid changed.

"Your thermostat and your water heater are day-trading for you," said Ron Ambrosio, a senior researcher at the Watson Research Center of I.B.M.

If this is going to the future, then there is opportunity for a new set of monitoring, trading, information tools for users to manage their energy consumption. There could even be a WeatherBill equivalent to let people hedge their energy risks. Once the electricity market really becomes a truth marketplace, there is room for plenty of smart ideas to be done.

On the more near term end, the smart grid technology space is growing. The NYtimes article has a nice article overviewing this recent market:
Some analysts expect so-called “smart metering” to boom nationwide. ABI Research, a technology firm, estimates that the market will jump to 52 million by 2013, from 560,000 this year — which would be more than a third of the nation’s meters.

I think the next step is be to push these technologies to automate the costs savings, rather than focusing on pure information display. This is akin to the implict web idea, i.e. users need not focus their attention to enjoy the benefits of mining their own data for personal use.
Can it be programmed to respond autonomously to price signals? Can it be programmed to respond to some other type of communication that the consumer can receive under his/her contract with his/her retailer? Can the consumer access the device remotely to change its settings?

In summary, electricity markets are interesting fields to study how a typically government-owned insitution can be transformed into a marketplace that allows for true pricing and innovative products/services. I will keeping my eyes open on this area.

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Startup Idea #80: More sports business 2.0

I blogged in 2007 about how new markets such as tickets, sports, virtual worlds et al will bring about the need for a new Bloomberg, Fastsearch, Monitor101 (which unfortunately has closed down) et al.

It is good to see this happening in 2008 with the announcement of Ticket Stumbler, a search engine to find the best deals on the various secondary ticket markets. This is very smart as every new market needs a robust and powerful search to help users find the best deal. So what else can be we do here, specifically in the tickets market?

I think there are still lots of opportunities to aggregate all these market data and build something useful on it.

How about a Farecast to help predict the probability of a ticket price coming up or down? As more data becomes available, it is now possible to find relationships that can help in modeling the predictive model.

Alternatively, there is also opporunity to develop a algorithmic trading platform for people to trade tickets. While there are currently people trading tickets online, to my knowledge, there is no trading tools built to serve their needs. We can further expand on this idea by layering in the social element where traders can share their trading history. This is the Covestor model. The payoff for such a trading tool can be big.

Finally, how about a Seatguru.com to let users know where exactly will they be sitting. If 3D models can be made for every stadium with users reviewing their seating experiences, a powerful tool can be created. If a search can be built on top of this, where users search by the best view, rather than by price et al, it can be a killer application.

See the first post on sports 2.0.

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Idea generation #43: Uninsured, beyond subprime, danger in student loans

Millions uninsuranced: Another article on people not getting enough treatment due to the lack of insurance (See related post here). What is going on? If a BOP insurance market can be created where people pay 13 cents per month, why can't a simlar market be created for the Americans? I need to study the Narayana Hrudayalaya to understand their model and hopefully come up with a working model for developed countries.

One way is to tap on the medical hubs popping out of the globally to create a lower insurance premium. I blogged about this idea here.

Markets for landing slots: Whenever there is scarcity, we need to use price mechanisms to regulate demand and supply. As technology makes markets out of previously impossible situations such as landing slots, we will see explosions in value creation.

Danger lurks when shopping for student loans: This is definitely crazy. Who in the right mind will not want to shop around for something as important as a study loan? I am sure there is business here for peer to peer lending for study loans. Alternatively, how about a data driven comparison site that helps students get the best deal?

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Startup Idea #78: Small idea-Marketplace for websites

This NYtimes article on flipping websites inspire a thought: if websites are becoming more like virtual properties, what startup ideas we can employ from the real estate properties?

Search Engine: If more and more people are selling their sites, there will be a need for an Indeed equivalent to help users find the best deal.

Pricing: Liquidity is going be important in a young market like this. Hence, there is an opportunity to create a Zillow for pricing websites. Alternatively, creating an Igglo for websites is also a good way to generate pricing information.


Intelligence services: A favourite theme of mine - create a Reuters alike to service the traders of this market. Aggregate information and trends to help traders decide whether site is under or overvalued. Charting prices, volume et al is also helpful.


Social networks: Create a Covestor service for traders with good record to help manage the investments from other users. The increased funding can assist these traders to purchase bigger sites with more growth potential.

I am sure there are plenty more ideas on this theme. Drop a comment if you have any : )

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Startup Idea #77: Sports business 2.0

The global sports market is now a sizable aspect of the economy. As this market continues to grow, there are plenty of opportunities to get into the game. I have developed some ideas on what a startup can do. Here is the list;

Player Trading: Player transfer between clubs is not new. What is astonishing is the value of those deals and yet little sophistication in the trading tools. This is a huge opportunity. Who is going to be the Markit for the player transfer business? To supply clubs with vital market information, player statistics as well as all the necessary documentations and compliance reporting.

What about an exchange platform to coordinate the buying and selling of players. Player transfer is currently a time-consuming and close door affair. Is it possible to make it open, like an stock exchange where the value of the deal is open to anyone and trades can be executed effortlessly?

Thinking a step further, how about a derivative product based on player transfer to allow clubs to hedge their risks of non-performing players? Using data mining techniques to properly price and allocate the risks can be a compelling value proposition.

Investment bank for sports: There is a viable business to build technologies that help businesses that are exposed to sports risks (i.e. ticket sellers, hotels, sports merchandise, venue holder et al) to manage those risks (hello WeatherBill) . A sports merchandise store, for example, should not face the risk of slow moving inventory simply because it selected to sell merchanides of a losing team. Its business in selling, promoting et al of merchandise, not in picking winners of tournaments. Hence, that risk should and can be properly hedged.

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Startup Idea #75: Comparision site for drug order

Image by Getty Images via DaylifeRisks in ordering drugs online: A clear case for market design principles. With rising health costs, it is reasonable to expect more and more people going online to source for cheaper alternatives. Unintentionally but not unexpectedly, there will be a corresponding increase in the number of counterfeit drugs.

So, what kind of opportunities are open to a startup to help rectify the problem?

I see an opportunity to build a JellyFish type of comparison sites for online drugs with a built-in reputation system for information revelation. It is also important to create a risk index for sites that have not been rated, similar to what Zillow has done for housing: creating liquidity in the market. Designing such a market driven incentive will be more productive than a top down approach IMHO. Besides doing good, there is of course the $75 billion market that you can tap into : )

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Startup Idea #74: Small idea: Market for API access

As web services move toward open access, the use of web APIs inevitably will follow the same trend. As a service becomes popular, the burden of API calls will cause slowdowns and even crashing of the main service. While it is possible to remedy this problem by using additional servers, another approach is to design an economic solution: markets for API access.

I see this market evolving similarly to Amie Street. The initial batch of API access is free. As demand increases, the subsequent user has to pay a certain amount of fees. The fee will increase along with each additional user, until the point where the limit is hit. This is where it will get interesting.

Imagine now that there is a market where developers (or speculators) can start trading their access right like shares on the financial exchange. The opportunity here is to manage these exchanges, akin to how Intrade provides free prediction markets.

Business model? Give the software away for free. The revenue will come from aggregating the price information from these markets. Who will want these information. How about investors? The price information can be a good forecast for what are the potentially successful web services.

Alternatively, there is also an opportunity to build a derivative market on top of these exchanges. Sell these derivative instruments is going to bring in quite a large sum of $$.

Updated:
This article talks about how Twitter is relieving its access problem by restricting access. I think a better solution is the one I highlighted above.

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Startup Idea #68 (Part II): Personal carbon trading

See part one of the post here

We are definitely seeing more and more companies providing tools to the research and rating side of the market. Carbonflow is one such company, providing solutions which automates the verification, delivery and distribution of GHG or CO₂e offset credits for renewable energy and energy efficiency-based programs. I also came to know about World Energy, a dominant player in the exchange part of the game.

The question in my head is: where are the 2.0 players in this space? Am I missing anything?

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Idea generation #38: Tim O'Reily on 'be good' and other 'be good' ideas

Great week as there are a couple of interesting reading materials that surface to my attention:

Tim O'Reily on 'Be Good': It is good to see high profile bloggers like O'Reily getting behind Umair Haque's vision of bringing 2.0 to solve real issues. Below is a nice list of issues that warrant a 2.0 makeover. I have blogged about a couple of ideas on some of these topics:

• earth monitoring,
  
• carbon markets, (opportunities on personal carbon trading, first post on personal carbon trading)
  
• energy efficiency of electronic devices,
  
• home energy management
• collaborative scientific research,
  
• early detection of infectious disease outbreaks, (post on early detection system)
  
• personalized medicine,
  
• resource discovery,
  
• new materials
  

Financial literacy: Great article by the economist on the need for financial literacy. I fully agreed, and looking at the mess of the current markets, have to concurre this is a real issue waiting for a 2.0 solution. What are the best 2.0 startups out there in the education market? Can we apply their models here?

Small businesses not giving healthcare coverage to employees: I blog about this a couple of months ago and suggested that a network model is the right one to use. This article just confirms the need for it. See also my related post about group purchases

Questionable practices at rating agencies: One market that is clearly in need of a disruption. This should not be hard. If people can build an encyclopedia through collective intelligence, I don't see why we cannot do it for rating agencies.

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