Linkbacks (1)

• [...] The big missing variable here is what it actually costs to do human transcribing, a number that Antony admits he doesn’t know, and I don’t either. The real problem is that it is a cost that doesn’t benefit much from economies of scale: more users doesn’t mean cheaper transcribing. Antony continues: It seems more likely that the struggling venture market and the difficulty of raising capital in this environment drove the decision. If the free service is bleeding cash and the margins on the paid service can’t fund the expense, the company is not running a self-sustaining freemium model and needs venture capital to fund the loss. At the same time, they are showing investors a model that loses more money as it scales. This is much less attractive than in 2005 and 2006, where growth metrics were more important to many venture investors. [...]

  Thoughts on Jott’s de-freemiuming at… — 1:36 PM on January 14, 2009