Late yesterday, Stefan Topfer and I had one of our regular catch up calls. Exciting stuff I can’t talk about but then we got onto the business of managing hypergrowth and how to grow the ecosystem. He’s gone from 5K to 35K registered users since February.
Software vendors that throw sales people at the problem build an admin overhead that has to be fed and watered. Online service vendors that offer simple products can home in on solving single problems. Stefan is doing something different. He’s looking to provide the infrastructure that helps small businesses survive.
Stefan’s model is complex because over time, there will be a series of strategic relationships with organisations crucial to business. Like: retail distribution, finance, office supplies and telecommunications (of all kinds.) These types of organisation can deliver very large numbers of customers.
Microsoft is seeking to become the software hub around which other service providers will cluster. Given Microsoft’s relative gravity, that’s not surprising. Winweb is the antithesis of Microsoft as a SaaS vendor. It’s pull is weak. So how come it is doing so relatively well in making unexpected partnerships? Winweb delivers the core applications services no business can be without, so it is attracting interesting significant attention.
Unlike Microsoft which wishes to acquire market dominance, (assuming it can), on the back of the bigger brand, Winweb is satisfied with being the almost anonymous organising hub around which business is done. While all the time providing the essential personal assistance people need from time to time but which is difficult to find under one roof. But, but, but.
But hypergrowth situations are dangerous. Customers require assistance with the foundational accounts work. That means providing book-keeping services, recruiting enough professionals to take on the work or outsourcing. It’s already proving challenging to find professionals who are prepared to take on the challenge. So. If you’re a professional reading this then read the next bit very slowly and thoroughly:
Winweb is collecting and distributing data for A LOT of businesses. Not a huge, huge number – yet – but A LOT. Like Freshbooks, Winweb controls the best market data you can get. From your perspective, this offers the potential for you to learn how clients benchmark themselves against others. That helps you advise. You could get market trend data. Better still, you might get access to the best intelligence about gross profit, expense profiles and other valuable information that helps you fight tax investigations. Assuming of course that Winweb is prepared to let you into that kind of deal.
Winweb holds the most valuable data of all. Source data. Microsoft doesn’t. Neither does Sage. Nor Google for that matter. How long before each wakes up to the implications of that fact? More important,
it seems to me that gravity isn’t always about physical size, but about responses to addressable markets.
If I was Winweb, I’d be concerned about Google, Verizon and possibly Intacct. If I was back in practice, I’d build a very different looking business to the one from which I retired.
Technorati Tags: FreshBooks, Google, Microsoft, SaaS, Sage, Winweb
