Amazon may be planning to muscle in on markets for entrepreneurs and startups with a new online platform, according to industry insiders.
Crowdfunders and entrepreneurs have watched the Amazon space with interest for several months as the company has quietly put out feelers and marketing executives and IT specialists with an interest in helping inventors and startups.
Although the global giant declines to comment about the speculation, Amazon watchers have been busy putting scraps of evidence together to form a theory about how the company may be thinking.
For example, Amazon has advertised job vacancies for a senior marketing manager listing these requirements –
- Someone who is inspired by inventors who develop and launch new products
- Someone who can market the world’s best platform for start-ups
- Someone who can link entrepreneurs with Amazon’s global customer base to sell their new products
One of the problems for startup businesses is marketing.
Marketing problems
Having a business idea to develop and take to market is one talent, but then throwing money at expensive marketing campaigns to lure in customers is a completely different skill.
Many established businesses have huge marketing databases for selling new and repeat products into, but startups have to build this slowly or pay through the nose for the privilege of accessing another company’s customer lists.
Amazon appears to be taking advantage of this gap by building a bridge between startups and new customers.
Crowdfunding could be one option for Amazon.
The company has the cloud computing capacity to run a crowdfunding platform and Amazon was a small technology startup before escalating into a global phenomenon.
Quirky inspiration
Many startups and entrepreneurs have hinted at approaches by Amazon to make the online store the main outlet for their products in much the same way as Amazon Books and Kindle have revolutionised the self-publishing market by bringing down cost of entry.
Writers are empowered to sell directly through Amazon by low publishing costs, print on demand that does away with carrying expensive stock and a commission of around 30% taken on the back-end of each sale.
Amazon managers have also revealed the company is looking at funding some startups and mentoring entrepreneurs.
Inspiration for Amazon may be the web site Quirky, which seems to run a similar business model to that planned by Amazon.
i don’t understand why on Earth Amazon wants to help startups? At the end of the day they can rival Amazon. It may also be strategy of learning how the new startups work and destroy them earlier than usual, lol