Time to Fade 'Freemium' and 'Biz Dev'?

Too much free shit on the web and too many ‘Business Development’ people. If you call someone business development, you are giving them free reign to social network all day and take meetings. That’s just wrong at this point.

If you are starting a web business today, how about a ‘Chief Revenue Officer’ and ‘Chief of Burn Rate Control’ – that reports to the founder and investors

Too many biz plans with ‘free’ as the basis for building a business around eyeballs that will some day lead to ads that nobody clicks on.

I am not saying that ‘Freemium ‘, as Fred calls it, is dead. BUT, if you don’t have MAJOR VC backing or lightning strikes your genius application, than really, why bother.

I don’t have the energy anymore to start or back a business that relies on building eyeballs first and no click throughs later.

If WordPress had a ‘Chief Revenue Officer’, someone could at least be ‘FIRED ‘ for not calling me to ask me to pay SOMETHING, ANYTHING (I will pay $240 if someone from WordPress just picks up the phone and calls me to ask for it) for all the wonderfullnessessisness that this software has brought to me. If they are just expecting to me to pick up the phone and donate, I won’t.

Waaaaay to much revenue being left on the table by Web 2.0 companies and way too many Web 2.0 companies being started and funded without revenue number one on their mind. It is really time to start caring if you are a founder and a VC.

UPDATE – Since the above won’t happen, check out these 101 freebie sites that Business Week highlights …woooo :) .