C. Table and Chart of break-even point analysis
11. Future Scope and Realization
Reid Hoffman, cofounder of PayPal and LinkedIn, said that fast scaling is necessary to platform business for two reasons: Firstly, create values to customers. Due to
Metcalfe's Law, " the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system" (On Digital Marketing, n.d.).
Secondly, businesses require "blitzscaling" to obtain customers faster than competitors and get first-mover advantage (Harvard Business Review, 2018).
11.1 Expanding into new Market
New Customer Segments -- Senior employees:
According to the research as mentioned previously, senior employees who aged between 31 and 40 is anticipated to be the most profitable group as they have higher income than University students and Junior employees, they also are more willing to spend their money on learning new skills to improve themselves. Senior employees will be the target customers after Venture World accumulate sufficient university students, establish a solid customer base, and create strong business partnership with incubators and venture capitals. The reason why Venture World take this group into consideration in latter stage is because that senior employees play the "early majority" role in the product life cycle, only when Venture World complete the whole product and cross the chasm, they will start trusting and joining Venture World.
Figure 8. Product Life Cycle
11.2 Anti - Imitation Strategy
11.2.1 Accept modest profit margin
"Competitors are drawn to markets with high profit margins" (Harvard Business Review, 2018). Accept a modest profit margin could make the market unappealing to rivals. On the other hand, modest price can be a great driver of customer
acquisition. The faster Venture World grow the customer base, the easier Venture World can conquer multi-sided platform dilemma, and generate more value to users.
11.2.2 Continuously Refresh the Offers to customers There will be five stages for Venture World's growth:
Stage 1. Enterprise Education Platform Stage 2. Online Entrepreneurs Community Stage 3. International VC Community
Stage 4. International Open Innovation Community
Final Stage. Entrepreneurial Resources Integration Platform
At the first stage, Venture World will focus on building a decent online learning platform and in-person seminars which provide well-structured enterprise education system to embed entrepreneurial mindset and skills into China's entrepreneurs. Then, an online entrepreneur's community will be created for the people who already have same
"entrepreneurial language" to exchange their ideas. After an abundant entrepreneur base is established, venture capitals, incubators, accelerators, and private investors will be invited to join the community to discover investment opportunities. When a robust entrepreneurial environment is set up, Venture World will launch an open innovation program for new startup businesses, SMEs and large companies to exchange their technics and unused capacity. At the final stage, Venture World will integrate all services and optimize the online platform, where entrepreneurs and investors can utilize resources in the most effective and efficient way. When Venture World reach the final stage, the barriers to imitation will be successfully established, as the main supply chain, distribution channel, incubators, venture capitals,
entrepreneurs, universities will links to each other through Venture World network, the one who work with new entrants will be disqualified from Venture World's alliance and lose the connection.
11.3 Organizational Transition for the Growth
To attain sustainability, business leaders have to adapt the management mode to the needs of the business as it grew and changed (Harvard Business Review, 2018). To cope with changing circumstance during the growth of business, situational
leadership will be adopted (Tec.com.au, 2015). Therefore, different styles of leadership might be used to meet the needs of various environments, the main types of leadership which will be applied in Venture World include democratic
leadership, transactional leadership and laisses-faire leadership. Employees will be empowered to reach their full creative potential, as the empowerment and
participation of employees is extremely momentous to the organizational
transformation (Gleeson, 2017). Furthermore, the funders of Venture World will be invited to join advisory board to provide objective criticism on management and leadership style.
11.4 Exit Strategy – Merger and Acquisition
One of the reasons to have an exit plan for most of the company is to let investors know how long it will take to return their investment (Edwards, 2017). While, the reason that Venture World set an exit strategy before startup is for the future
expansion. For this reason, merger and acquisition (M&A) will be an ideal way for the exit strategy. The target acquiring companies will be the reputable venture capitals or entrepreneurial bases in China such as GSR Ventures, as one of the most valuable assets of Venture World will be the database of entrepreneurs who possess high potential growth. The acquisition can let acquiring company have the control on supply and demand chain in venture capital investment industry. In addition, Venture World will also move into next phase by bringing in professional managers (Harvard Business Review, 2018).