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Tom Chapman is a consummate entrepreneur; having founded 8 companies over the past 25 years, and has also been a senior executive for a Fortune 100 company. His current company, Net Content Creations, Inc.(NetContentCreations.com), was founded in December 1994, the same month Netscape released its first Internet browser and client server software solution. His complete bio can be found on his personal site @ TChapman.com

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Leveraging Big Brother Alliances

Written on
July 3rd 2008
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by Tom Chapman  |
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holdinghands.jpgADOTAS EXCLUSIVE — Whether you are a small Internet business, a larger corporation or a venture capital firm, experiencing exponential revenue growth is a priority. So, what are the character traits of highly successful companies that achieve $1 Billion in sales?

Allow me to introduce you to David G Thomson, management consultant, speaker and best-selling author of “Blueprint to a Billion: 7 Essentials to Achieve Exponential Growth.” Thomson did three years of detailed research of American companies that have IPO’d since 1980 and grown to at least $1 billion in revenue in order to identify the most important traits of highly successful companies. His study and analysis included 7,454 public companies, but only 387 companies made the $1 billion list.

Here is his list of 7 essentials to achieve exponential growth:

• Create and sustain a breakthrough value proposition
• Exploit a high growth market
• Focus relentlessly on cash flow
• Leverage big brother alliances
• Pack your board with industry experts
• Use blue chip customers to gain credibility
• Build an inside — outside leadership team

For the purpose of this article we will focus on only one of those 7 traits, since I believe it might be the most important for Internet businesses, which is to “Leverage big brother alliances.” Let me explain.

In 1995 I bought a domain name called SinglesOnline.com and proceeded to spend several years and more than $1 million dollars to develop my brand, develop 400 software applications (making the service feature rich) and building the member base. However, at the end of the day I could not compete with the largest players in the online dating space, companies like Match.com and Yahoo Personals.

So what did I do? Well, I shut down the SinglesOnline.com site and sold my domain name for six figures at one of the domainer’s auctions and basically decided “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!” I partnered with match.com and together we now power my company’s large portfolio of US/Canadian local dating domains. e.g. SanFranciscoSingles.com

Why change horses in the middle of the stream? Well, think about it. Match.com spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year building their great brand, building their member base and developing their excellent product. How can a small company compete with such a great brand and product offering? You can’t! Thomson got it right when he emphasized the importance of leveraging those big brother alliances.

Are you an Internet entrepreneur with a great domain names portfolio? Figure out who’s the best in that category and then go partner with that company.



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Reader Comments.

Hi Tom,

You got me thinking on this one :)

Posted by Manoj RS | 5:58 pm on July 8, 2008.

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