Ganz guter Laden, wenn die Saison mal wieder losgeht.
The german tech szene has a dilema - we don’t have an independent tech magazine which is soly focused on startups and gets great content delivered. Unarguably one of the most interesting magazine is Gründerszene. - They have only one problem: They are owned 75% by TeamEurope. Obviously they claim that TE is not influencing them on the way the write but this sounds somehow ridiculous knowing that the Gründerszene Management has regular Strategy Meetings with Team Europe. To be honest: How independent can a journalist be if he has to report to his biggest shareholder on a regular basis. - call it ” Strategy blabla”.
Even though it’s not 100% to scientific standards i took a look at some numbers on Gründerszene.
TE has currently 34 investments listed ( i also inlcuded b4f and Hitfox, b4f now exited but major company in TE portfolio), compared to 1800 startups in the database. Thats 1,9% of all startups.
There are roughly 400 articles covering TE Startups out of 6300 articles. This is 6,4% of all articles. If you exclude categories like HR, Finance etc. you get up to 7,0% of all articles are about TE investments - recent and already exited. This excludes former bigship StudiVZ.
Even looking at all indexed pages of Gründerszene you will see that it gives you 16.900 pages. All pages covering TE investments are roughly 450 pages, that is 2,6% of all indexed pages. - compared to 1,9% of all Startups.
What is the solution?
Lets crowdfund an independent magazine. The idea is pretty simple:
- We found a new company
- We take in around 200 shareholders, each investing 500€ to 1000€
- We also take in Investments like office space, legal advise etc
- Out of the 200 shareholders there is a board that controlls the journalist and gives advise
- The board changes on regular basis, so no influence on content and stories can be done.
- With 200 shareholders out of the techscene the journalists have an unlimited information flow with great inside stories.
- The magazine should not be a PR trumpet of any kind and write very critical stories with information that matters.
The other day german startup blog www.deutsche-startups.de published an article about us “loosing” qype.com as a partner and our competitor “won” qype.com as a new partner. The so called journalist proclaims that we lost an interesting traffic driver.
One question: How the fuck do you know what traffic brings qype.com?
Truth is:
Lieferando decided to terminate the contract because the partnership had close to no value!
Funny fact: the “journalist” didn’t even bothered to call/email us about our decision.
Also something to think about in regards to the relevance of qype.com for our business:
- How many people are actually still on qype.com?
- How many are looking for delivery services?
- Fact: qype.com doens’t rank in SERPs for anything about delivery services
I love my industry. I love how everybody in Berlin is building something up, some in incubators, some, like my flatmate in the middle of the living room, turning living and dinning room into a small ecommerce warehouse with 5 people working and sitting there already working when i leave the bathroom in the morning.
Lots of my friends work or founded something in the startupsphere amongst them very small companies but also big ships with 450 employees. - But there is something happening at the moment, maybe for a long time and i just recently got fed up with it:
People are starting to take themselves too serious.
One of the worst examples and things going wrong is the CEO Dinner of Team Europe Ventures. Okay, the basic idea is nice, meet new people from the industry and sit and talk in a relaxed athmosphere. So far so good. - You could also have that at a coffee place and if you want to meet someone its almost always possible to have a coffee with them, just ask for an introduction by someone.
Looking at article of Team Europe’s PR trumpet Venture Village this whole thing is getting ridiculous.
“Tickets cost €1500 and the bar for selection is high – typically founders of companies with €10 million funding or 100 employees”
Are you dead fucking serious?
1500€ that is:
- Flight to San Francisco - € 850
- Woche AirBnB - € 470
- Coffee for meeting interesting people - € 180
Okay - lets fly to San Francisco. Lots of interesting people over there… And again the most interesting people of our industry are not to be found at these events. They are out there working on new things, trying to change something, solving problems - Not wanking at each other in some 5 star hotel/restaurant. These events seem to have to substitue for something by some pseudo exclusivity.
Is there a english word for “Fremdschämen”?
Groupon is dead. Or at least declining in the german market. Looking at different traffic sources like alexa.com ( http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/groupon.de) or Google trends for websites ( http://trends.google.com/websites?q=groupon.de&geo=all&date=all&sort=0).
What are the reason for the declining success of the Groupon Business Modell?
- Overused Mailing Lists
- Shitty Deals
- Customer Frustration
Let me get more into Detail:
1. Overused Mailing Lists
People kept getting up to 5 emails from various deal sites every day. At the beginning it might be fun to search for new deals but in the end you just get bored. I know first hand that Groupon has problems from people not opening newsletter anymore. Which brings me direct to the shitty deals.
2. Shitty Deals
Why don’t you open your emails? Because they will just show you more and more shitty deals. Don’t believe me? Check this deal out: 
Why is it shit? Because the deal is a sixpack of juice( why would I buy my random fruit juice on Groupon anyway?) for 4,99€ and then another 4,90 shipping. So the total price is 9,89 and the actual saving is…. wait for it….. 25 Cent!!!
So why working with these shitty deals? Because Groupon has problems gaining good deals… 12month ago Groupon asked a deal commissions of 60%, this july Groupon went down to 20% deal commission. That is a revenue decrease on commission of 66%! A former Groupon Manager told me a week ago ” What Groupon hurts most is loosing a partner. So they try everything to keep you.”
You might arguee: ” Groupons BM is not the commission, it’s the vouchers customer don’t use.” - Ironically this is the part in the BM that will kill Groupon.
3. Customer Frustration
This is the most important point about the declining success of Groupon in Germany.
Imagine this:
You go into a foodstore, you buy this really nice looking pizza - because its on discount. You go home and forget about it. Then after ten days you remember the pizza and its gone bad.
2 days later:
You go into a foodstore, you buy this really nice looking pizza - because its on discount. You go home and forget about it. Then after ten days you remember the pizza and its gone bad.
2 days later:
You go into a foodstore, you buy this really nice looking pizza - because its on discount. You go home and forget about it. Then after ten days you remember the pizza and its gone bad.
What will happen? The next time you walk into the shop you will definitly NOT buy this pizza, even if it’s on discount.
Smart people said: ” Christoph, the best thing about the BM is that people don’t use the vouchers. And Groupon gets to keep the money for the vouchers. Isn’t that brilliant?!”
Well. No.
What is happening? People bought ( myself included) vouchers. - and didn’t use them.
Groupon: “Hoooorrraaaayyyy - Voucher not used!”
Customer: “WTF - i lost money by NOT using my voucher”
In this case the BM worked for Groupon. Not for the customer. What is happening longterm? The customer is not buying another voucher… Bad experience for the customer by loosing money because of a “working business modell for groupon”.
That’s why the Groupon Business Modell is killing Groupon.
Nice one.
The first time ever i used my 18 months old macbook pros dvd drive… Certainly proof that i don’t really need a disk drive anymore. “DVDs and CDs - surrender yourselfs - your time is up!”
