Core Products Offer: Fill & Download for Free

While QQ has been highly successful as a core product, it is not enough on its own. Different categories of users, including some of which are new users, need new entry points to the Tencent universe. In addition, offering a diverse range of products and activities aid in market segmentation, which are absolutely necessary for monetization.

I don’t know about you, but I’m really big into fairness. So you get 3% and your other two cofounders get the other 97%.Does that sound fair?Good. I didn’t think so.It’s always a red flag when one founder dominates the cap table over the other founders. In your case it might be two founders dominating the cap table.Now fairness doesn’t meant that you’re going to split the pie evenly. Fairness does mean that you should get a reasonable amount for your role. And 3% versus 97% doesn’t sound that fair.You need to negotiate a better deal or not join the company.You’re going to resent your cofounders if you let the current deal stand. In fact, I would go further and say that your company’s chances of success are minimal as it stands because you lose the trust of your team when you aren’t being fair.My hunch is you are not the only person that will be treated unfairly too. Hopefully, it’s just the inexperience of your cofounders leading to this decision.However, you shouldn’t hesitate to say no and move on if you can’t to a fair deal.For more, read:How Much Equity Do Your Employees Deserve? - Brett J. FoxI was advising the two founders of a technology company.  They had no funding, and they were looking to hire a VP of Engineering. They found a good candidate for the position, and they only wanted to give him 1% equity vesting over four years.  I told them the candidate wasn’t going to take the…https://www.brettjfox.com/how-much-equity-do-your-employees-deserve/

Nope.Monopolies are inherently inefficient, timid, and conservative. A monopoly wants to do one and only one thing: protect its monopoly position.For years, Microsoft refused to invest in new ideas because the core of their business strategy, as articulated first by Bill Gates and later by Steve Ballmer, was: “Protect Windows. Protect Windows. Protect Windows. Protect Windows. Protect Windows. Protect Windows. Protect Windows. Protect Windows. Protect Windows. Protect Windows. Protect Windows. Protect Windows. Protect Windows. Protect Windows. Protect Windows. Protect Windows.”They could have invested in cloud computing before everyone else, but they didn’t because they were worried that if you could do things in the cloud, you wouldn’t need Windows on your desktop any more. Protect Windows. So Amazon came along with EC2 and AWS, and Microsoft had to play desperate catchup.They could have invested in better browser software, but the world limped along with Internet Explorer 6 for so long because Microsoft was worried if browsers became too capable, it wouldn’t matter what operating system you were running. Protect Windows. It took Firefox, Safari, and Chrome to re-ignite the browser wars…and now Microsoft’s Edge browser isn’t even home-grown any more, it’s based on Chrome.It’s not just Microsoft. This happens every time a company becomes a monopoly. IBM invented the world’s first workstation computer…then buried it because they wanted to protect their mainframe business. So they fumbled the next wave of computers and gave space for competitors like Sun Microsystems to come along and re-invent the workstation. (Protip for every manager out there saying “OMG WE MUST PROTECT OUR CORE BUSINESS!!!!!!!!”—if you can invent a new widget that threatens your core business, so can someone else.)When a monopoly reaches a certain point, it begins investing more time, effort, money, resources, human capital, and energy in protecting its monopoly business and protecting its core product than it spends actually serving the needs of its customers. When you break it up, now all of a sudden the fragments need to compete to survive. They can’t just “protect, protect, protect, protect.” They need to invent new products, create new niches, offer new services to their customers.Companies that invent new products, create new niches, and offer new services to their customers are worth more than companies that cling to protecting existing products at the expense of doing anything new.