The Real-time Opportunity w/Ron Conway and John Borthwick – Pt 1

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Ron Conway invested in over 500 startups. Invested in Google at the $75m valuation.

Arrington: “What is real-time? Is it just Twitter?”

Borthwick: “What this opportunity has done is bring a massive amount of new content to the web….the web is about content.”

Borthwick: Making the web “live” and filterable, sortable.

Borthwick: “Betaworks is an operating company. We build a few things, we invest in a few things, and we bought a few things.”

Conway: “I invest in great entrepreneurs first…then the idea…then how much intellectual property have they got.”

Conway: “Manipulate and monetize” real-time content.

Borthwick: We are still learning about this new part of the web.

Conway: “Whatever this is…it is early, early days….this is Google in 1998.”

Conway’s Top Ten Monetization Opportunities in Real-Time

  1. Lead Generation

  2. Coupons via “Now” Web

  3. Analytics

  4. CRM (they just invested in CoTweet)

  5. Payments 

  6. Commerce

  7. User Authentication

  8. Syndication of New Ads

  9. Context Advertising

  10. Display Advertising

Bonus – Acquiring Followers