You can think about consumer Internet companies in three major categories. The following three categories of consumer Internet startups and the representative underlying thirteen business models should give you a more than basic understanding of the main drivers of 95 percent of the consumer Internet startups you hear and read about on TechCrunch. The best consumer investors are intimately familiar with these metrics, so make sure you know which business you are in and how you can get to $10 million before meeting with them.
Activities needed to monetize each kind of consumer Internet startup are different.
The 3 Main Ways Consumer Internet Companies Make Money
- Media
- Paid service
- Physical commerce
13 Consumer Internet Business Models
- Search
- Gaming
- Social Network
- New Media
- Marketplace
- Video
- Commerce
- Retail
- Subscription
- Music
- Lead Generation
- Hardware
- Payments
Read Steven Carpenter’s full TechCrunch article here as he breaks down the numbers in Part 1 and Part 2.
Steven Carpenter was the founder and CEO of Cake Financial, which was sold to E*Trade