Welcome to the Mclowd Community Newsletter
People don’t buy WHAT you do they buy WHY you do it.
Simon Sinek, TED talk, 15 Sept 2009
Introduction
If you were a privately held company whose purpose was to sell hardcopy encyclopedias, then putting those encyclopedias in the hands of every consumer would not be a realistic goal.
The reasons are very simple:
- Not everyone can afford to buy hardcopy encyclopedias
- Depending on your capital structure and operating model, driving price to a level that would permit everyone to own a set of encyclopedias would not generate enough revenue to fund your operations (particularly where marginal cost does not equal zero)
This is the reason that markets have (until now) tended to be oligopolistic, with a small number of firms with different operating models acquiring different segments of a market.
However when marginal cost is zero, microeconomics begins to operate in a fundamentally different manner.
In contrast to the above example, if you were to launch an online encyclopedia using pro-bono contributions from crowd-sourced resources (ie with little if any private capital), then 100% market share becomes an entirely realistic goal.
In fact, if – like Wikipedia – your vision is “a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge”, targeting anything less than 100% market share doesn’t make sense (it is inconsistent with your vision).
Applying this construct to self-managed super (and the Mclowd Community), if your vision is to improve retirement outcomes for self-funded retirees, then it follows that the vision should involve all SMSF’s (and potentially the wider investment management industry).
2020 Vision
Mclowd recently published a White Paper entitled 2020 Vision.
The document summarises the various elements of the Community that need to evolve between now and the end of 2020 in order to support the eventual migration of 600,000 Funds. (While some of these elements have been in place since inception, others – such as the services Marketplace – will need to scale up to serve that many users / Funds).
A copy can be downloaded here.
Accounting Software Update
With a new financial year upon us, the Mclowd Team is focused on delivering improvements that will assist users to prepare their accounts and engage with auditors and other professional service providers (particularly via the Marketplace).
Current priorities include:
- Year end Reports Pack
- Simplification of year end workflow
- Improved integration with our lodgement Partner LodgeIT
- Updates to the calculation of ECPI
Introductory Webinar
A recording of the most recent Introductory Webinar can be downloaded from the website.
Conclusion
Communities do not compete (that’s why we refer to incumbent software vendors as incumbents, not competitors).
Rather, communities exist for a purpose, and in the case of Mclowd that purpose (the WHY) is to improve retirement outcomes for Australia’s 1 million self-funded retirees by driving down the cost of SMSF administration.
However as of July 2018 – and with less than 1% market share – the Mclowd Community could not rightly claim to be “leading” the SMSF industry.
However longevity – and dominance – of an industry do not come about because you are leading at any particular point in time (just ask the shareholders of Nokia).
Longevity and dominance are a consequence of leadership.
And in that respect the Mclowd Community has laid a very firm foundation.
Regards
Ashley Porter
Managing Director
Mclowd Pty Ltd