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The Future of Work? There's an app for that: Airbnb!

IT World

But Airbnb was founded as a service for business travelers. The company began in 2007. Then called AirBed & Breakfast, its founders' business model was simple: Buy three air mattresses, and build a website at airbedandbreakfast.com. People associate Airbnb with vacation travel.

Travel 69
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Instacart

Andreessen Horowitz

a16z has long had an investment theory that we should invest behind strengths of a business model and opportunity, not lack of weakness. The more I got exposed to the details behind the Instacart business, the more it reminded me of OpenTable (where I had been CEO from 2007-2011). Instacart is a case study of this.

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Recession Planning & Maintaining Growth

OPEXEngine

We have been asked quite a bit lately how companies navigated the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and what companies can do today to protect against a downturn. To improve the average company CAC ratio, they compared benchmarks against peers and market leaders with the same business model to identify where they needed to improve.

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The decade software ate the world

Intercom, Inc.

What was perhaps less predictable was the ensuing prevalence of the subscription-based business model. And so we end up with juice companies , meal-kit companies , underwear companies , to select just three, seeking to mimic the “as a service” aspect of SaaS.

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Reflections on the early days at Zendesk (part 2)

The Angel VC

I was quite optimistic though, since I thought we had a pretty good pitch: a well-rounded team of three complementary and experienced founders, a beautiful product, a proven business model, paying customers and nice (yet early) traction. So why did all European VCs pass?

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Top 10 Tools to Get Your App PLG-d

Frontegg

This philosophy applies to both low and high touch business models, where the vendor has to eliminate all potential usability problems that may arise. ZenDesk basically keeps your business in sync. Founded: 2007 Known customers: MailChimp, Tesco, Uber, Siemens, Khan Academy Price starts at: $49/month per Agent.

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Be the Up in a Downturn: Advice From SurveyMonkey’s Tom Hale

OpenView Labs

But during that time, we adopted a kind of “let’s transform the business” rallying cry—it was a super creative time. We came out with new products, new branding, new packaging, new GTM, new business models. And we introduced a subscription business model. Both of these ideas are visible at Adobe today.