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Tracing the arc of Facebook’s user sharing model is to identify the biggest case of frog boiling in history. Contrast Facebook’s origins as a dating site limited to students attending a particular college to an exhibitionist’s dream syndicating every detail of a life across of 1000+ friend networks and potentially many more followers.

The question for users is: what is the quid pro quo? What value am I gaining in exchange for my data. Is it a fair swap or a bait and switch? What do you think? Message me on twitter with your thoughts

Amazon operates its businesses at very close to break-even, zero net margin, to win the greatest share and prevent competition from undercutting them. This is as true for their books business as their infrastructure business, AWS. Bezos has explicitly stated this strategy and it’s the one that has led to Amazon’s massive success in many different lines of business.

Over sushi, a friend explained to me that this strategy might also extend to the way the company views acquisitions. If Amazon’s strategy is to run most of their businesses at break-even including acquisitions, then the value of a profitable and fast-growing startup to Amazon is decidedly less than to a another acquirer who will run a business at greater margin if for no other reason than the startup will spin-off less cash under Amazon’s low-margin strategy.

“Blades square,” the coach yelled from the Boston Whaler as he increased the speed on his outboard motor, pursuing the eight man boat as we gained speed. I sat in four-seat, right in the middle of the engine room, the place for the taller, heavier rowers. The eight man team reluctantly complied with the coach’s order and rowed across the Long Island Sound, NYAC jerseys on our backs and the muggy, humid early summer morning sun reflecting in the water, practicing for national championships.

Marketing is one of those words without meaning. Or at least a consistent meaning for most people. Recently, I met a very bright marketer who broke down a few of the different marketing disciplines and matched them to a freemium sales funnel. His framework is a stroke of genius. I’ve drawn it below.

The Four Disciplines of Funnel Marketing

The triangle on the left is a standard freemium customer conversion process. First customers become aware of the product, then they use the free version of the product, then they convert to paid either by themselves or with the aid of an inside sales team, and finally they are retained as customers.

Last night I spoke at the Enterprise Tech VC Panel. We discussed five trends in the seed market and the outlook for 2013. These are the five most important trends for 2013, in my view.

MicroVC Funds Have Doubled Their Assets

Call it micro-VC or mega-seed fund, there’s a new investor class which raises funds between $50 and $100M to invest in seed-stage companies. Felicis manages a $70M fund, Jeff Clavier at Softech invests from a $55M fund and Steve Anderson of Baseline has raised at two funds totaling $100M. These seed investors invest larger amounts than before (both initially and during follow-on rounds) and invest in more startups.

If asked to describe the characteristics of a successful freemium business, I might highlight three things: effective community marketing, command of new distribution platforms, and a paid product users love that is priced by usage.

Look no further than ZenDesk, Evernote, Expensify, Dropbox. Each of them has built a vibrant user base using freemium products.

But what if instead of pointing to SaaS companies as the vanguards of this movement, I lauded The Atlantic, The New York Times and the Financial Times? In fact, SaaS companies can learn quite a lot from the marketing efforts of content companies. In both cases, a great product alone is not sufficient to maximize growth. Marketing plays an essential role.

In HBR this month, two British researchers reported on their study of the impact of competition on startups. In a study of over 2M companies spanning 10 years, the researchers determined that if a startup faced competition in its first year, it was more likely to fail. But if the startup survived its first year, it’s survival rate jumped nearly 30%.

![image](https://res.cloudinary.com/dzawgnnlr/image/upload/q_auto/f_auto/w_auto/image_146_735522163">

This data screams survivorship bias. Of course the startups who navigate hostile waters deftly in their first year will have a higher likelihood of success. These startups' management teams have already proven they can develop marketing and sales competencies while bringing a product to market.

![image](https://res.cloudinary.com/dzawgnnlr/image/upload/q_auto/f_auto/w_auto/image_147_724326134" width="500px">

Successful startups are money machines: they ingest a dollar of investment and produce more than a dollar in revenue.

There are three steps to build a money machine:

1. Find or create a product many people will use.
2. Convince customers to buy the product.
3. Mechanize the two processes above, reducing costs and increasing profitability to finance growth.

Startups repeat these three steps many times during their lifespans. In a team of seven people, there may be five engineers building the product, one product manager marketing the product and one salesperson. But to grow to be a big company, all those teams and functions must be continuously reinvented, tuned and refined.

For sales people, social proof is one of the most powerful forms of influence, as Robert Ciadini proved in his seminal book on the topic. It’s no secret that the best leads are referrals. Second best is the friend who is a customer in common: “Oh, Peter chose Salesforce for his CRM. Maybe I should consider them too.” Social proof confers the trust of a relationship to the salesperson improving close rates.

On a Saturday morning in August of 2006, Sergey Brin and a team of Googlers flew to Los Angeles to meet Tom Anderson and his MySpace team. By the next afternoon, the two founders shook hands on a three year $900M contract. About twelve months later, I found myself as the product manager for the team in Marrakesh, Google’s executive board room, reporting the state of affairs to Eric, Larry and Sergey.