A few more points about customer segments and the different kinds of business models that there are different kinds of customer segments. The first point, which you should have some appreciation for by now as we dig in to what's in a customer segment, is that customer segments are different. Every customer segment has its own business model. Some potential customers want to buy, some want to rent, some want to buy it in a store, some want to buy it online. Some want to hear about it from their friends, some want to hear about it from a blogger online. Every customer segment has its own business model. And unless you understand the business model of the segment you're selling into you, you're, you're going to be in trouble. The more segments there are, the more complicated. Which means that, all other things being equal, you want the simplest customer segment and the simplest business model that you can find. It's worth dwelling a little bit on a special case here, which is multi-sided markets. A multi-sided market is a market, is a it's a situation where there are several customer segments that are involved in the same product. So, you'll have a, advertising sponsored businesses are probably a good example of this. Third party payer businesses, like in health insurance is probably a good example of this. Doctors and patients is a pretty good example of this. And charities is a good example of this. Multi-sided markets are troublesome because they're complicated. Let's consider a famous multi-sided market Google. Google has two main customer segments. Customer segment number 1 is users, and what do users want? The value proposition to them is all the world's information. The revenue model, it's free, and the product is a Google search box. Customer segments, users couldn't be happier with this. Of course it doesn't pay the bills for Google. Google gets payed by customer segment number 2, which is advertisers. Advertisers have a different value proposition. They don't want all the world's information, they want highly qualified prospects. That's what they want. Their revenue model's not free. Their revenue model is they bid on clicks. It's emerged over time, it's a work in process, but today it's still largely bidding on clicks. And the product that Google offers is AdWords, which is specialized search results that are for pay, and AdSense, which is ads that are placed on websites that are for pay. It's a multi-sided market. In order to succeed at this market, Google has to amass a critical mass of users, and they have to amass a critical mass of advertisers. So unless they sell to both customer segments at once, their model fails. And, in fact, Google was around for some years, doing a very good job of sufficing customer segment number 1, without having any kind of idea about how to make customer segment number 2happy. It was when they stumbled on that, that a star was born. Lets consider a different case study, Red Cross. Red Cross is a charity. And Red Cross also has two customer segments, but they're different than the two customer segments that Google serves. Customer segment number 1for Red Cross is donors. Donors value proposition. I, I, I don't know how Red Cross thinks about it, but I think about it as help the unfortunate. That's the basic value proposition for donors. And the revenue model is tax-deductible donations. If the donors couldn't get the tax deduction for the, the donations, they probably wouldn't give. And if they had to do a subscription, they probably wouldn't do a subscription. But they will give a tax-deductible donation when there's some event where it looks like there are a lot of unfortunate people and they want to help them. The product, a website, applic, apps, text messages, there's all kinds of ways that Red Cross gets its message across, the product for delivering donations from donors. That's customer segment number 1. Customer segment number 2 couldn't be more different. It's recipients. Their value proposition is disaster relief. Something terrible has happened to them and Red Cross helps them. They bring blankets, they bring food, they bring medicine, they rescue pets. The revenue model here, it's free. Google, Red Cross is doing this based on donations from their donors. And the product is not a website or apps or text messages, it's a huge supply chain. For Red Cross to get those blankets and food, and, and, and, supplies to the recipients, they have to jump through hoops that make Walmart's job look pretty simple in some ways. So, it's two different customer segments, they need to work on them both, if they don't have one of them the business doesn't work, it's another multi-sided market. The problem with multi-sided markets is they're complicated. Unless you get both sides right you, you're going to have a hard time building the business. And it, it's hard enough getting a business going if there's only one customer segment you gotta take care of. So, generic advice, all other things being equal, steer clear of multi-sided markets. Each side in a multi-sided market is its own customer segment. It ha, it has its own customer types, and they think differently, and you gotta, and you gotta work with them differently. So the main points here are that each customer segment has it's own business model, and you have to understand it in order to do business with that customer segment. They can be somewhat similar or they can be quite different. And multi-sided markets, where the business has to simultaneously have several customer segments, are tough. Although, some very profitable companies and some very successful companies have been built in tough multi-sided markets. Thanks.
