Tim O'Reilly Quotes

The business model for content is to be paid for it. You can be paid for it either though advertising or subscriptions or some new invention, but right now what we've got is advertising revenue and subscription revenue as the only way to be paid for content.

The digital apocalypse continues to blight the lives of television producers, music-industry executives and newspaper publishers, all of whom are scrambling to figure out how to reconfigure their business models in such a way as to allow them to make an honest buck.

The cable model is just a better model. Dual revenue stream: advertising-supported and subscription-supported revenues.

My company is in the business of content, delivering content, so whether you see it or taste it or hear it or smell it, that's what I do every day.

There are literally tens of thousands of very good content providers in the world that don't distribute their content through TV channels.

The thing about startups is you can make it, and if it's wrong you can remake it, and you can build a team that you want to have, a product that you want to have. You're utterly focused on your users or your customers and their needs, and trying to figure out how to meet those needs.

Once you understand business models you can then start prototyping business models just like you prototype products.

Digital platforms are worthless without content. They're shiny sacks with bells and whistles, but without content, they're empty sacks. It is not about pixels versus print. It is not about how you're reading. It is about what you're reading.

Look at MIT—the smartest people in the world. They start up 50 companies a year. Only 1 makes it.

There is room and time for multiple tracks to flesh out in the web space. I enjoy this format.

My job, originally, was to write blog posts for their 'HubSpot' blog. They have a business model built on content. Then I was writing e-books for them, and after I came back from L.A., they had this new plan to launch a podcast.

My dream is to build a tech company that helps people discover content.

The television business is actually going through a tremendous transition, but I think at the end of the day, television is still paramount.

Publishing magazines for yourself is not good business, man.

The one thing I didn't do that was kind of controversial was go work for a daily paper, because I didn't like that kind of journalism, and I'm glad I didn't because that's the business model that's going totally extinct.

Newspapers with declining circulations can complain all they want about their readers and even say they have no taste. But you will still go out of business over time. A newspaper is not a public trust - it has a business model that either works or it doesn't.

When you build a product, you make a lot of assumptions about the state of the art of technology, the best business practices, and potential customer usage/behavior.

Newspapers are busily experimenting with different models. Traditionally, and I suspect in hindsight very mistakenly, online news was free. And once given free access readers felt it was their entitlement.

What I tell founders is not to sweat the business model too much at first. The most important task at first is to build something people want. If you don't do that, it won't matter how clever your business model is.

When most people ask about a business growing, what they really mean is growing revenue, not just growing the number of people using a service. Traditional businesses would view people using your service that you don't make money from as a cost.

I'm just more excited about helping new entrepreneurs create the next Facebook or Google.

In a way, publishing in 2005 was similar to publishing in 1950. Nobody kept blogs; that was still optional. I didn't even have a website then.

Yes, the disruption of the Internet can be blamed for the destruction of the business model that once made journalism a thriving, well-paying enterprise, but it has also created an array of new tools for reporting. Somebody will eventually figure out how to make online newspapers profitable - I hope.

When trying to start a company, your enemy isn't criticism, anger or insults. Your enemy is apathy.

If you think about photo sharing sites, the mobile photo sharing and social, there's no competitive advantage, there's no obvious business model, so I never play with anything like that. I avoid it like the plague.