I have been away from the computer for a couple of days and
just have three comments.

1. I found it totally ridiculous that Rob Nagler (Bivio
CTO) came on this board and posted that a considerable
amount of soul-seaching was done prior to making Bivio a
fee-based business. Spare me the platitudes Rob, and call a
spade a spade.

This leads me to my second point...

2. I think we all have to understand that when Bivio was
created the idea of a fee-based service was the ultimate
goal. I don't think Bivio was created and maintained for
the greater good and welfare of investment clubs all over
the world. It was created to turn a profit, and Rob and
others knew that the best way to build a base of users was
to offer the service for free for an initial period. I am
certain that the people behind Bivio have always intended to
make it a pay for service site, so while I think it royally
sucks, it's hard to complain too much.

Finally, I would suggest that there is an easier way to
manage your club. Prior to Bivio I built a fairly
comprehensive Excel spreadsheet that does all the
calculations and tracking of a club's share price. Of
course you have to enter dollar amounts contributed,
dividends, buys and sells manually, and it won't do the
taxes, but I did everything myself and found this to be
extremely easy. Really the taxes are quite easy to do.
If you don't want to pay the $59, I will gladly put together
a distribution list and send out my spreadsheet. Heck, I'll
even walk you through doing your taxes if you'd like. It's
quite possible that we can even incorporate my spreadsheet
into a webpage that you can have local to your own computer,
and we could make it look just like Bivio's page by taking
their source code. Anyway, I'm all about not giving Bivio
any of my money or anyone else's, so if you're interested in
doing things on your own and want some ideas, help, etc.
shoot me an e-mail...

Chris

tedmetro@yahoo.com

Chris,
 
Rob and I wrote the bivio business plan in early 1999. The model was to "make money by extending the relationship bivio has with clubs to its brokerage partners." Definitely a for-profit model, although we liked the fact that we were making a contribution to the club movement. The July 18, 2000 New York Times had a good summary of our business - you should be able to find it online at www.nytimes.com.
 
The original plan didn't serve us badly. It allowed us to build and then run an innovative website for three years. Back in 1999, you may remember that the best thing out there was the Windows 3.1 NCA program; clunky, expensive, and lots of bugs. In contrast, bivio computes daily valuations for thousands of clubs automatically, often with close to zero user effort (especially for AccountSyncers). We also generated thousands of tax forms last year without a glitch.
 
So what happened? First of all, the economics of the model are deteriorating. Clubs are trading less than half as frequently as they did in the past. The number of new clubs forming has also slowed. Both impact directly what brokerages are willing to pay to be present. We couldn't ignore that.
 
At the same time, AccountSync users seemed very happy with the service, even though it was priced at $95 initially. Over the past year, our source of revenues shifted from brokerages to AccountSync customers. It didn't seem fair, or make sense, to have AccountSync users subsidize the website. We also think AccountSync is a real time-saver, and want more clubs to try it.
 
In this light, I think you'll see that it made sense to swallow real hard, and change our pricing model. For some clubs, this is the wrong answer, and I regret that.
 
The spreadsheet you mention may be a reasonable solution for you. I think that many clubs will recognize that bivio gives them a lot of value for the buck. Like any business, we get paid because we make your life a little easier.
 
Sincerely,
Ion Yadigaroglu
CEO
bivio Inc.
 

Ion,
 
I've read several message complaining about the decision to make the website fee-based. I for one don't have a problem with that. Going in I always felt that at some point the would be the case. There appear to be many people who want to get something for free.
 
Our club has been using the site for the past year and we love it. We don't subscribe to the AccountSync but just enter the data ourselves. It isn't very difficult to do.
 
From our standpoint, $59/year ($5/month) is not a bad price to pay to give each member of our club easy access to our club accounting records. That's a bargain.
 
Our we sorry to see the free ride go away. Who wouldn't be. Are we going to continue to use Bivio. You bet.
 
Thanks for making my life as a treasurer easier.
Jim Tinsman
Treasurer
Auric Investment Partnership
Ion Yadigaroglu wrote:
> Chris,
>
> Rob and I wrote the bivio business plan in early 1999. The model was to "make money by extending the relationship bivio has with clubs to its brokerage partners." Definitely a for-profit model, although we liked the fact that we were making a contribution to the club movement. The July 18, 2000 New York Times had a good summary of our business - you should be able to find it online at www.nytimes.com.
>
> The original plan didn't serve us badly. It allowed us to build and then run an innovative website for three years. Back in 1999, you may remember that the best thing out there was the Windows 3.1 NCA program; clunky, expensive, and lots of bugs. In contrast, bivio computes daily valuations for thousands of clubs automatically, often with close to zero user effort (especially for AccountSyncers). We also generated thousands of tax forms last year without a glitch.
>
> So what happened? First of all, the economics of the model are deteriorating. Clubs are trading less than half as frequently as they did in the past. The number of new clubs forming has also slowed. Both impact directly what brokerages are willing to pay to be present. We couldn't ignore that.
>
> At the same time, AccountSync users seemed very happy with the service, even though it was priced at $95 initially. Over the past year, our source of revenues shifted from brokerages to AccountSync customers. It didn't seem fair, or make sense, to have AccountSync users subsidize the website. We also think AccountSync is a real time-saver, and want more clubs to try it.
>
> In this light, I think you'll see that it made sense to swallow real hard, and change our pricing model. For some clubs, this is the wrong answer, and I regret that.
>
> The spreadsheet you mention may be a reasonable solution for you. I think that many clubs will recognize that bivio gives them a lot of value for the buck. Like any business, we get paid because we make your life a little easier.
>
> Sincerely,
> Ion Yadigaroglu
> CEO
> bivio Inc.
>
>