CEO 3.io: A paper book for $250, Kindle $2.99, 6 questions = free download

Nitin Kumar and I wrote a book which we priced at $250 for the paperback$2.99 for the Kindle and if you answer 6 questions then you can download the book for free. Why this rather absurd pricing?

The pricing is a reflection of where we were yesteryear, where we are at present and towards where we are going. In the pre-digital world selling a subscription product would often be for $20/month or more. Think about you mobile bill or any other service as a point of reference. This amounts to around $250 per year. Let's call this pre-digital world, version 1.0.

In the digital world, version 2.0, you would offer a solution via a mobile app, a SaaS service, a Kindle book,... Prices would be starting around $2.99 in that case.

Where we are going is the 3.io world. A world of Web3 in which repetitive business tasks get automated via the use of smart contracts and AI. We are entering a world where three people can start a company, raise money by launching a new crypto token, and start offering products. This way of working is extremely cost effective. So cost effective that they can actually give their work away for free, as long as they put in place another way to make money. The way they can make money can be old models like advertisement, selling your data, offering consulting services,...

However there are also other models. The partner revenue sharing model for instance in which partners sell value on top and the company gets a revenue share, e.g. the Kindle book store is a free to launch book store and Amazon does not produce any books. The app store is another example of this.

Another model often used is the freemium model. Revolut offers free trading for a limited number of transactions per month, hoping that more frequent traders will pay once they have a portfolio already setup. Slack allows anybody to use their product for free but you will loose access to messages after you reach 10K of them. You are now so bought into the platform that you have to pay.

A third model is the ecosystem creator model in which you allow others to create value creating ecosystems on top. For example, instead of creating one app store, you can create a service to create and manage app stores. Snappy Ubuntu Core, which I launched in 2015, is an example of this model where you can create apps for devices, have a free community app store but can pay to run your own app store.

At the same time pre-digital 1.0 companies are moving their legacy systems and data to the cloud. They are launching their first mobile apps. They use some AI often for the first time. Many have packaged this all into a digital transformation model. Most of the time these exponential technologies are applied to the current business model without changing the core concept of doing business. This leads to the creation of a "Digital Blockbuster". A mobile app to order, AI to predict demand, Bitcoin to pay, drones to deliver,... However all are applied to DVDs so Netflix still bankrupts them.

Let's take car insurance for example. By creating a special webcam and ODB-II module [standard protocol which allows a device to be plugged into your car so the insurer can see your car data] car insurers are offering "digital insurance". They get basic data about how you accelerate, break, where you drive,... On top they can offer products for instance for high-risk market segments, e.g. young drivers, and manage the risk.

Unfortunately a car manufacturer like Tesla can offer a Netflix-type product by embedding pay per drive insurance inside the car control system and at time of purchase. They can offer insurance paid per kilometre/mile, with a low fixed monthly fee [to cover theft and other risks which can occur even if you do not drive] and influence your behaviour, e.g. pay 10% less if you switch on autopilot on highways, if you keep on driving this close to the car in front then you will start paying 25% more going forward,... Even claims can be handled easily with the car automatically booking a tow truck and getting emergency help in case of an accident where airbags had to be deployed. By including the insurance when you purchase the car, Tesla has almost no cost of sales, compared to competitors who can often pay 20-30% in advertisements. All of this preparing for a world in 3 to 5 years where car owners can send their Tesla into a robot taxi network to make some extra money or even no longer owning a car altogether and just subscribing to transport as a service. Neither of these models can be easily offered by car insurers and can be an existential threat to them.

The end result is that the whole "digital insurance" project most car insurers are working on, which will take 2 to 3 years to be fully rolled out, will be available at the same time that Tesla will start offering a superior insurance product and make the traditional market irrelevant. CEO's are going from a pre-digital 1.0 world to a digital 2.0. When they actually should be taking a jump and go directly to a 3.io world.

How to do this? Read about the basics in CEO 3.io - driving exponential change. Either get the Kindle version for $2.99 or answer 6 questions and download the book for free. Please leave the $250 version for others to buy :-)