charles in charge

As I gear up for a summer gig at foursquare that I couldn’t be more stoked about, I find myself preaching the power of the business model fairly regularly. Largely out of necessity, as I wouldn’t necessarily describe my parents or their friends as “early adopters” per se.

Throughout these conversations, whether they be with classmates, friends or family there is one common theme that I find striking. It is very easy for me to explain the power and potential of the business model.

Many of these people are older, don’t use Facebook or Twitter, and never will. Explaining the revenue-generating futures of these businesses to these people is a challenge.

Foursquare is different. Explaining the power that comes from engaging with the user as they live their lives instead of just writing about them is something most people understand immediately, and this is why the platform will resonate in a big way with small and medium size business owners.

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry wrote this morning in a post from the Business Insider:

“At a dinner party with successful web entrepreneurs, one of them said to me ‘Foursquare is just a game, there’s no business model.’ I nodded politely. A few days later I was with a friend who owns a restaurant. This friend is in his fifties and didn’t use any social networks. When I showed him Foursquare, he instantly got it. When I explained the concept of a mayor, he laughed out loud and told me he would get that mayor free coffee and asked me if it was possible to run ads on Foursquare.”