Hey, Ive been a user for awile now... love the site. But thats not my point.

Right now im trying to write an assignment for university, my decided topic is on how Companies that are started by a small passionate group of entreprenuers is normally much more sucessful then one started by a corperation.

I want to use GOG.com as an example to a larger company making a sucessful net venture by being more personal to it's userbase and thus comming off with a more "small" vibe.

I honestly didn't know this was owned by CD Projekt until I looked it up a year or so ago, despite having played the witcher. ANYWAY.

My question is, basically, Why? What made you start GOG the way it is, without your "CD Projekt" logo plastered all over it, or, what made you take a more personal approach then say, steam?

Yeah I know you most likely wont reply to me, but I figure if any website will, it will be you guys. You always seem to stay up to date with the community

I think that steam is an extremely poor example if this is your thesis.

Also how is a company started by a corporation? Do you mean a parent corporation creating a subsidiary or a large corporation moving into new business? Company and corporation mean the same thing in most jurisdictions Probably because they are infinitely smaller. This is the trend for any scalable business.

Which also makes it a double edged sword. When a company is small, it can take a hands on approach to the user base which usually helps it grow. At the same time as the company grows it can't be as hands on and the original user base complains that they "sold out" or "don't care about their customers". Unless you're Steam which for some reason could come to most of the users home, rape their dog and kill their mom and get thank you messages on the forums.

Its not a thesis, its a simple boring old assignment. I wasnt going to meantion steam,

I was just annoyed when I didnt find any "acedemic references" to GOG.com, I did for Woot.com, but *shrug* I suppose thats to be expected.

Trust me, if it was a thesis I wouldnt be writing it about this. XD Shesh. Besides, I realise that steam is a bad example, im thinking more along the lines of woot.com, youtube, neopets, myspace ect tiny sites that were bought out by bigger business

I think you're going to have a tough time proving your position. First off, there are many examples of large corporations making very successful spin-offs that earned a loyal fanbase. Toyota's creation of the Lexus brand is an example right off the top of my head. Second, the greatest percentage of companies that fail and close shop are the small ones: the new start-ups that began as one person, or a small group of like-minded people, sharing a passion and creating a business from there.

Luckily, in this assignment i dont have to "prove" the point.

Just have hypothesises, some examples to say why further study is needed, and how that study may be conducted.

Its just a "research preposal" meaning that it can end up that my hypothesis is completly wrong

The problem is, I had this idea at the start of the semester, asked the lecturer about it tons, and he thought it would be a good idea. so now I feel pigeon holed to the idea anyway

I wouldn't say that a small group of entrepreneurs is ever more successful than a business started by a larger corporation. It only appears that way.

When a large corp decides to try and enter a new market and fails you hear about it because the parent corporation still exists so you know about the failure.

When a small start-up fails or never gets off the ground you never hear about it because there's nothing left to continue. And if you did know about the start-up chances are they wouldn't have failed.

So what happens is you only hear about the successful start-ups but you hear about both the successes and failures of large companies entering a new market. So it appears that start-ups always succeed where large companies rarely succeed and usually fail. When the reality is nearly all start-ups fail you just never hear about them.

Naturally, but my point will be from a business perspective, often buying these already sucessful websites has been better. *shrug* so far im really just trying to find references. If im wrong, it doesnt matter on this assignment anyway. Its more about the making of the research proposal then the doing of the research

If anything you have just given me an idea, instead of writing about what I was going to, I will put it in such a way that the study's goal is to find out if big business or entprenures are more likely for sucess. Simple, hrm, actually that helps fill in the problem ive had. Thats a way I can write this proposal in such a way to expand my referencing capablities, and act less biased hrm

I understand now. From your initial description I thought your premise was that smaller start-ups have a better success rate because of the passion of the small number of people involved.

Now, how are you gauging success?

Ahh that seems to be a shift from your original statement. Not so much that small entrepreneurs are more successful, but that a large corporation will tend to have more success if they purchase an established presence in a new market space rather than trying to form a market presence from scratch?

At any rate, it'll be interesting to see what your research turns up when you're finished. :)

Im sorry to dissapoint, as I said in my initial post. Its a university assignment, not even a thesis. This will never get past the proposal stage.

All I have to write is,
Issue, Motivation, Current Research, Future Research and Research Design. This course doesnt litterally go into DOING the resarch




"I understand now. From your initial description I thought your premise was that smaller start-ups have a better success rate because of the passion of the small number of people involved.

Now, how are you gauging success?"

Im not sure yet, however id guess that id be basing it off the size of the fanbase/customer base, the pageviews, and stuff like that.

But I must again state, I dont have to litterally DO the research, it is not required or expected of this assignment. If it was, it wouldnt just be a simple assignment lol