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Remember when talked about how Flipboard had a bullshit biz plan? Chronotope/388384349642452992
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Now it comes with even more bullshit! recode.net/2016/7/1/12071820/flipboard-mike-mccue-update
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Throwing ads on aggregation does not a multimillion dollar company make. But VCs never learn I guess. Chronotope/751489068572246017
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It's sort of amazing how we keep "disrupting the news" in the same exact way; one in which no one feels a need to figure out monetization.
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Here's my totally unwanted and ignored advice to all the VCs out there: if it is a tech media company whose plan is 'scale' don't buy in.
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That's not a plan. Ad tech is shit. Ads are shit. You can't scale faster than consumers are going to be blocking and scale costs are...
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... ever more eaten into by ad tech middle men and fraud. It's a dumb plan with predictable results. Can we stop falling for it yet?
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Am I crazy? Why does the 'innovation industry' of VC keep investing in various forms of the same idea? Why would version X work?
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Facebook & Google make money off of aggregation b/c they add significant value thru UGC & parse user data for resale. That's a scale plan.
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Aggregating news and throwing ad units on it? The magic of calling yourself an app is not going to make that profitable.
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Vox, for all its flaws, has Vox Cards, which add value & create conversions. RSS Readers are awesome, but not viable biz by themselves.
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Or at least not a $500M business.
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Even plain-HTML Drudge adds value to its aggregation!
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To be clear: I'm 100% pro aggregation. But building a multi-mil business w/that as your sole process is disingenuous and bound for failure.