Case 8
1. What do you believe led to Richard Rosenblatt becoming a serial entrepreneur? He experienced a failure with the Dr. Koop company. After that happened he didn't want to raise money from anyone. He opened some nightclubs and his online company Superdudes. Then he was hired by Demand Media.
2. Would you have made the decision Rosenblatt made to take Dr. Koop into bankruptcy? I probably would have made the same decision. He had already laid off the workers and he could have launched if it hadn't been for the 9/11 incident. The company didn't have any access to capital and he didn't want to put the money in that the investors had. I wouldn't have trusted it ether. It was a smart move because no one sued the company because they knew he had made a good decision.
3. What is Demand Media's business model and competitive advantage? It is a leader in a new Internet-based model for the professional creation of high-quality, commercially valuable content at scale. It identifies, creates, distributes, and monetizes in-demand content through two distinct offerings: content and media, and domain registrar. There competitive advantages are 1. proprietary technologies and processes, 2. the freelance content creator community, 3. rapidly growing content library of more then 3 million articles and 200,000 videos, 4. more than 94 million unique visitors a month, 5. the second largest doman registrar, and 6. a highly scalable operating platform.
4. How does Demand Media justify doing a public offering when it is not yet profitable under GAAP rules? It could go become a joint company with Google. Or it could sell to Google.
2. Would you have made the decision Rosenblatt made to take Dr. Koop into bankruptcy? I probably would have made the same decision. He had already laid off the workers and he could have launched if it hadn't been for the 9/11 incident. The company didn't have any access to capital and he didn't want to put the money in that the investors had. I wouldn't have trusted it ether. It was a smart move because no one sued the company because they knew he had made a good decision.
3. What is Demand Media's business model and competitive advantage? It is a leader in a new Internet-based model for the professional creation of high-quality, commercially valuable content at scale. It identifies, creates, distributes, and monetizes in-demand content through two distinct offerings: content and media, and domain registrar. There competitive advantages are 1. proprietary technologies and processes, 2. the freelance content creator community, 3. rapidly growing content library of more then 3 million articles and 200,000 videos, 4. more than 94 million unique visitors a month, 5. the second largest doman registrar, and 6. a highly scalable operating platform.
4. How does Demand Media justify doing a public offering when it is not yet profitable under GAAP rules? It could go become a joint company with Google. Or it could sell to Google.