Author Archives: Stuart G. Hall

About Stuart G. Hall

Making a positive difference one day at a time. #London #Leicester

ECE Startup Campus launches in Rotterdam

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The ECE Startup Campus, an initiative of the Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship, launched on 2nd March in the city of Rotterdam: “Got the entreprenuerial spirit, join our community.”

It holds flexspaces, meeting rooms, a lecture-room and a workout facility. It is already providing place for these startups, with some pretty interesting and impressive business models:

  • Symbid – Global leader in online equity financing that helped fund other ECE startups (Gambitous, Equidam and Declaree). “Symbid is the only platform in the Netherlands where investors become shareholders via a cooperative. Via financial partner InterSolve, the invested money is under supervision of the Dutch Authority Financial Markets and the Dutch Central Bank,” Eric Recter, Founder Kidswatcher.
  • Gambitious – Global leader in gaming crowdfunding: “The first managed crowd finance platform dedicated to the games industry! Connecting international investors with innovative companies and promising entertainment projects.”
  • Equidam – Valuation of SMEs and Startups: “supports information transparency for the growing sector of online investments in high growth startups by offering a cloud system for financial and accounting services.”
  • EnWake – World’s first Smart, Personal & Portable circadian rhythm solution: “EnWake is an innovative solution presenting an intelligent “pair of glasses”  (incorporating sophisticated light system) connected to your Smartphone, which helps you optimize your sleep/wake cycle and adjust your  energy levels to match your lifestyle.”
  • Declaree – Online expense reporting: “Take a photograph of your expense using the mobile app and it will automatically be stored online.”
  • Intigames, developers of the game Helix (one of the finalists of the ISPO sports business trade show in Munich and available in 10 countries this summer): “We believe that anyone can play passionately, anywhere, anytime! Our goal is: worldwide, playfully encouraging people to move!”
  • Effortless-Housing – Student to student housing provider – that’s it!

How businesses can learn from a growthhacking approach to pricing

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It occurred to me today that perhaps the most commercially important on the subject of the relevance of growth hacking to traditional business, a piece in Harvard Business Review by pricing guru Rafi Mohammed which examines the popular ‘ridesharing’ startup service Uber, and its growth hacking style approach to pricing and whether that works or not in the marketplace (he suggests it needs some serious tweaking). But rather than focus on Uber I want to focus on Rafi’s blog whether there’s a simple explanation of understanding pricing through the eyes of the customer:

“The key to better pricing involves setting prices that capture value. Manhattan street vendors understand the principle of value-based pricing. The moment that it looks like it will rain, they raise their umbrella prices. This hike has nothing to do with costs; instead it’s all about capturing the increased value that customers place on a safe haven from rain.

“The right way to set prices involves capturing the value that customers place on a product by “thinking like a customer.” Customers evaluate a product and its next best alternative(s) and then ask themselves, “Are the extra bells and whistles worth the price premium (organic vs. regular) or does the discount stripped down model make sense (private label vs. brand name). They choose the product that provides the best deal (price vs. attributes).”

And therefore reading between the lines, coupled with the Uber piece, this suggests a pricing strategy for an existing business, adopting a growthhacking data-driven more dynamic approach to pricing, could potentially yield significant commercial benefits. I’ll no doubt come back to this subject and add more thoughts as and when I find useful info/insights. For now see my original blog post on Chinwag which sparked this train of thought to see where I’m coming from: Why ‘Growth Hacking’ Isn’t Just For Startups