Banking & professional services

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TruGenetics understands that the value of genetic profile analysis lies in the combined data of a large group of people. Therefore they decided not to charge their users for individual genome reports in contrast to several competitors. During the first phase of their business, the company will offer this service for free to at least 10.000 users. These people will be asked to send TruGenetics detailed profile information together with a salvia (spit) sample. In exchange for their support, users will receive a service in return in the form of a detailed personal genome report. For Truegenetics all this data will hopefully lead to new findings in phenotypes that could be used to patent new products. Such products can then be sold to biotech, pharma and medical companies. If nothing comes out of this expensive research, they could still sell the data, but this will not be the main goal of the company.

This is a good example of a free business concept that doesn’t rely on advertising or charging premium users. By means of crowdsourcing, they build up the true value of the company. The service for service transaction in their system is also remarkable. The service Trugenetics offers to its users is so personalised (what is more personalised then your own DNA?) that more then enough value is created to encourage people to participate. For many it will even be an unique experience to be part of this global research program that could be beneficial for society one day. Overall this concept shows us once again how consumers are evolving when it comes to privacy and how this creates potential to all sorts of health 2.0 businesses.

Internet & media

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During the most recent edition of Pitch Arena, we presented our business model framework to the entrepreneurs and start-ups that were present. The concept of Pitch Arena is rather straight forward. Several start-ups present their new venture to an audience of innovators and technologists in order to get valuable feedback and meet interesting people. We didn’t pitch our platform but fueled to the Q/A session with our view on the business models of the 4 presenting start-ups. With the theme of this Pitch Arena being ‘Social Applications‘, we clearly distinguished four different models being used. Let’s have a look at two of them today.

Wantz.it : dowant!

Wantz.it offers a simple wish list service to their users. People can easily submit products and services they wish to receive to their list by tagging web pages via twitter, facebook or via their own wantz.it page. Then Wantz.it gives those users different means to actively spread/expose their wish list to their friends. When such a friend decides to buy a gift after clicking on an item in the wish list, a part of the money will be sent towards the wantz.it company as a form of commission.

Tweetag : Twitter clouds!

Tweetag’s social app gives users the possibility to create specific tagclouds. The first part of their service is a form of donationware. When used in a non-commercial context, Tweetag asks for a donation fee. The biggest revenue is planned to follow from a second revenue stream though, as commercial companies will be charged when adding a cloud on their web page. While there might be limited value in knowing what everybody is talking about, it could be very interesting to see what a specific group of people is saying. A newspaper for instance could wish to add a tweet cloud to give their readers insight in what a selection of politicians is tweeting all day. By doing this tweetag creates value.