Jesús Encinar’s advice for Internet entrepreneurs

Here I am clearing my papers and preparing for a move to Barcelona when I find my notes of an event that I liked very much: the presentation of Jesús Encinar, CEO of Idealista, in Suscipe.

Disclaimer: This list was reformulated and reorganized according to my own tastes and reflects my determination of not processing more than 3 ideas simultaneously. Any misunderstanding is due to my brains and because of the lack of context.

Idea

  1. Solve something serious. If you improve only costs, efficiency, etc., nobody will try you.
  2. The more difficult the problem your product/service solves, the better.
  3. Changing people’s habits is impossible.

Service

  1. What can we eliminate? Use only the most important things.
  2. Break the processes into many small steps.
  3. Good design is anonymous: invisible, neutral and toned down.

Clients

  1. You’re new and small. Reasonable clients will delay their purchase.
  2. It is better to sell to companies (rational) than to consumer (irrational).
  3. David’s note: Search for irrational companies?

Business model

  1. Freemium: Free + Premium services. Lots of things should be free in order to charge a little.
  2. Subscription = recurring revenues.
  3. User-generated content.

Marketing

  1. A service that will be talked about by people.
  2. An easy-to-use service that is understood to be critical.
  3. Advertising: radio, television, etc. No! Only Internet.

Team

  1. Hire people who are very good and very different. It’s more complicated to manage but it is best.
  2. Invest in Sales and Technology at the same time.
  3. Manuals are of no use at all. Knowledge is handled by the team. One member may leave but it’s unlikely that all of them leave.

Financing

  1. Small investment: 1 million euros. Advantages: close to break-even, less money is insufficient to do something serious, more money is difficult to raise because there is no market in Spain.
  2. Don’t get obsessed with confidentiality.
  3. Go to people who can lose money and get the money when you can.

If you like this, I recommend Jesús’ blog (rss) where he talks about entrepreneurship, classifieds, projects, usability, etc. See Erase una vez… El Plan de Negocio, an excellent post where he demythologizes the importance of business plans: “In the real world, business plans do not compete. Teams, values and ideas compete.”

Related links:

By David Blanco
Saved in: Entrepreneurs, Internet | No comments » | 17 September 2006

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