Market Focus of a Startup

As I attempt to brainstorm new business ideas, I constantly find my mind wandering and lacking focus.  I sometimes find myself wondering how to completely dominate a particular market, when in reality this is the wrong approach.  A common misconception is that large successful companies such as Microsoft or Google started with a broad focus to dominate the entire market space.  This is far from the truth.  Almost every succesful business starts by filling a void in a small niche.  More specifically, a good niche is a market that is small enough that larger competitors are not already going after it, but big enought that if you are successful, the profitablity can parlay into greater success.  When this initial niche is filled, then it is ideal to tackle another niche that can be approached with the same level of success.  After successfully adressing several niche markets, it becomes easier to expand into more niches and grow the existing product offerings vertically.  A key to developing a good product is finding the right balance between uniqueness and desirability.   A good balance of both will always provide the greatest success.

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Google Gmail adds a task list…finally!

I came across this post this morning and remembered you asking me if Google Calendar had a task list.  Apparently Google has integrated the task list into Gmail and it is easily accessible via the iPhone.  The article below explains how to enable it in gMail and how to access it via an iPhone/iPod Touch.

Google’s Gmail is one of the company’s most popular services, and the service has been enhanced with an add-on feature, a Task list, which is now ready and waiting for iPhone users.

However, to use this new feature you must first log into Gmail and enable Tasks. Once you log into your Gmail account, locate Settings, and then go to the Labs tab and enable Tasks. That’s it and you’re ready to use this feature on your iPhone. Gaining access to the task list is easy: just launch Safari, surf to http://www.gmail.com/tasks, and you will see the new iPhone compatible mobile web interface for tasks in Gmail.

Just like any other task manager, you can add new tasks, check off your completed tasks and delete tasks. You can also add notes to any task. You can also manage multiple tasks lists, and separate tasks onto one list for work tasks and one list for personal tasks. Task lists are immediately synced with the Tasks list in Gmail whenever you make changes.

Unfortunately, there is currently no offline access to Task list(s), so you must have an active cellular data or Wi-Fi connection to use Tasks. Tasks also does not allow you to prioritize your tasks as this can only be done in the desktop computer version of Gmail’s website.

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Sources:
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-10155864-233.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=iPhoneAtlas

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A Quick Foray into licensing

As we build our “muse empire” step by step, we should also keep licensing an idea or product in mind.  This could prove to be an invaluable arrow in our quiver.

I just read a post on the 4 hour work week blog about licensing from Steven Key from Invent Right (who was discussed in the book).  This guy is king of licensing.  One of his products is a spinning label that allows for 75% more space on a lable.  The video of this is below.

He has sold over 300,000,000 of these in the last 5 years.  In the 80’s, he was part of design group that created Teddy Ruxpin (I used to love that cartoon) and Lasertag (awesome game that brings back memories)

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Sources:
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/11/26/a-beginners-guide-how-to-rent-your-ideas-to-fortune-500-companies-plus-video/
http://www.inventright.com/

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Deconstruction of the PXmethod muse sales model

So, after looking through Tim Ferriss’s example of a sales landing page for PXmethod, I decided to do a little bit more research on this type of sales model.  I am making an attempt to do what Tim describes as Deconstructing, Streamlining and Remapping our challenge at hand.  The sales model for PXmethod was effective but just seemed so simple to replicate…too simple.  My findings: well, the internet is completely littered with sales pitches of this type.  They are all over the place, from things like successful real estate investing systems to pitching home based businesses and almost any product you can think of.

The Bad News: Keyword competition is extremely fierce, and this type of business model now requires a lot of skill (sales and marketing technique) and a great product to become successful in a model like this.

The Good News: It is cheap to implement a sales project of this type, and multiple products can be tested and sold at the same time.

Conclusion: Still definitely worth our time to learn this system, but will probably take a lot of trial and error, researching and learning from mistakes and failure.  The product will be key.

When I think about it, this is the exact type of business model Mike Heffern is utilizing for his Joomla webpage.  A video based informational product that focuses on a niche market of computer users.  When you chat with him, it will be interesting to see what his success rate has been.

So, here are the questions we need to ask when we are coming up with a product idea.

1. Who is the potential customer/client?
2. What does he want?
3. How does he want it?

If we can accurately answer these three questions, we can then proceed to create/acquire a product and build a sales and marketing website around this product.

Here is the logical order that we could follow to develop a muse:

1. Feasibility Study
   • Identify the customer – Who is he? What does he want? How dies he want it?
   • Brainstorm an product idea that fits the customer’s needs
   • Create a test run of a product website utilizing keyword search analysis
2. Product Development
   • Acquiring or creating a product that the customer wants
3. Website Design
   • Creating a website to promote the product
4. Marketing
   • Reaching out to customers and bringing them to the website

Any additional ideas or comments about this post are welcome.

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A theme to consider

As we continue brainstorming, it is important to keep future trends in mind.  I am struggling to think of a good business model for the automated, build-it-yourself product.  Maybe this will stimulate your thoughts a bit.  I found this comment in a TechCrunch article and thought it conveyed the idea pretty well.  As our economy slows, spending will decrease, and people’s consumption habits will shift away from unnecessary toys and items.  As an idea, we may consider products or services that focus a little more on cost efficiency and productivity, rather than just entertainment or discretionary items.  More specifically, maybe introducing a product or service that increases the effectiveness of already existing technologies or products as people will tend to hold onto their old gadgets a bit longer.

A couple of examples I can think of:

• purchasing a software upgrade instead of a hardware upgrade (phone, computer, etc)
• purchasing a fuel savings device instead of a new hybrid car
• renting movies via Netflix instead of going out to the theater
• purchasing more functional clothing (that can be worn casually as well as going out)
• buying digital music instead of going to concerts
• making home-made mixed drinks instead of paying for them at a bar (sounds familiar…)
• DIY projects instead of already assembled products

In recessions, and dare I say depressions, of the past, the do-it-yourself and repair-what-you-have mentality became commonplace. Today, with our tech gadgets, that means people will hold onto the devices they have, and either add/modify the software running the device, get new applications (making the device seem new) or learn how to program the device itself. Likewise, I can see do-it-yourself multimedia becoming more popular – learn how to grow food, home medicine, & general education. Plus I can see a vibrant used device market emerge.

This leads towards a new emphasis on software development, free and open source software, and software optimization techniques. Many of the devices today are “fat”, in that their software (both OS and applications) are bloated with internal object orientated libraries duplicating the same functionality in hundreds of ways with only minor flavor variation. Our devices we now own could outperform the next hardware generation easily with a generation of consumers focused on keeping their same devices and new optimized software layers sold or open sourced to them that strip away this bloat, enabling zippier performance from the same devices.

I think things will be very interesting for the capable geek.

On the larger economic outlook, we may experience a global generation that does not invest. The idea is quite shocking, but the reality is one can not trust one’s money in other’s hands. The financial industry has “screwed the pooch”, as “they” say. It takes a generation to get over such events.

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Sources:
http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/10/06/what-does-the-downturn-mean-for-gadget-freaks/#comments

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I love this business model

http://www.studio28couture.com/designyourowndress.html

 

This was one of the people on that business week peice you posted about the top entrepreneurs under 25.  This girl started this online dress making company.  Customers create their own dress using different pre-created templates  Basically, it breaks down like this: 

1.  People pick the style of top they want: as they choose an image shows an illustration of what it looks like

2.   They pick the style of skirt they want: once again, another illustr. of what it looks like

3. They pick out the fabric pattern they want it made out of

4. They pick the color of trim for the dress

5.  They put thier measurements in and buy the dress ($200)

From there the order is sent straight to a manufacturer (or individual sewers, I assume the former) to be “custom made” for the client and shipped straight to them.  Like Collarfree they allow 1 free resizing if it comes back the first time not fitting right.  

The girl who started this thing still works a full time job.  She said everything is automated so she doesn’t have to do anything except business strategy, marketing, and getting traffic to the site.  Oh yeah, and her margin is $100-130 per $200 dress!!

So, lets find something we can automate, have people design, order, have someone else manufacture and ship, and collect money! (custom beer pong tables with campus logos, sports teams, etc. on them?)

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Notes on this afternoons brainstorm

I wanted to get these thoughts down so we can expand upon them in our brainstorms.  They seem like fun ideas at the core, and a with a proper market survey, we could test the feasibility.  It is far from a get-rich-quick idea, but would provide some residual income as it grows.

Key takeaways from our chat today:

• The two ideas favored at this point are the Team-Fundraising idea and the City-Tour idea
• Both ideas have very low startup costs
• Fund-Raising Idea notes
  • Demo photobooks would be put together to help sell the idea
  • The company could be a non-profit (can play with this idea)
  • We would position the company as a philanthropic service that helps develop student’s skills
  • We give business talks at high school classes, and recruit motivated students to help
  • Utilize our student relationships to increase awareness and sales
  • As it develops, we could set up the company so students do a majority of the work
  • We would focus on new accounts and growing the customer base
• City-Tour idea
  • Create a line of photobooks under a trade name i.e. “20 spots you must see in _______”
  • We would take cool photos of landmarks and other city spots and include brief descriptions
  • We would create new cities as we travel
  • Would be a good fit with motorcycle touring
  • Register for ISBN and list on Amazon
  • Create our own website as well to boost sales
  • Very little maintenance as sales will be handled by blurb.com or amazon.com

These are the basics, feel free to modify whatever you think is necessary.

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Photo Idea Brainstorming Continued

The idea here is to combine Web Technology with Photography.  I am going to layout some of my brainstorming ideas that you can then pick through and comment on what may work or not. 

Using http://www.blurb.com for professional quality self-publishing I think there are several possible ideas:

• Photo-based biographies/family tree
  • Creating a customized photo/limited text biography for select people
  • We would create a web link dedicated to that persons biography that they could link to
  • Example: we approach people and offer to gather their photos and create a memory log that they can sell to their friends, family, etc
• Photo-based documentary
  • Custom create a photo based documentary for businesses to sell to friends, customers, employees, etc
  • Approach different organizations — meetup groups, frats, sororities, motorcycle groups, sports team, church groups, etc. and offer to create a log of a particular event or series of events that we could then sell back to them and their friends/family
  • We could quickly create a custom webpage for that organization to visit and generate sales.  We could offer the business a cut of sales to encourage them to actively promote it
• Photo-based tour
  • After looking around on blurb.com and doing some searches on each city, I thought it might be cool to create a photo tour of cities
  • Possibly something like “20 Places you must see in San Diego”, and that could be repeated for any city we decide to visit.
    • I didn’t see any tourist type guides to St. Louis on Blurb, but I did find a $125 photo album of St. Louis.  Maybe we could create something similar to this, just costing a lot less ($20-30), and describing the significance of each landmark
  • We could then create a website with a collection of photo tours of various cities that we visit and sell them from the site.  It would require virtually no maintenance once we set it up.

If we actually want to make money of off photography, it will require crafty marketing:

• Marketing Concept 1 – Customers do the selling

Any of these ideas could easily be promoted through existing social neworking sites as well.  I believe the key to making money off of this concept will be by empowering the customers to do the selling for us – to their friends, family ect.  We make the core participants feel like they are part of the project and excite them to sell the books to who they know.

• Marketing Concept 2 – Crowdsourcing

We creating some sort of crowdsourcing photography element for an album, where church members (church is just an example) could all submit their photos to us.  We would pick the best ones and give cash donations to their church in the winner’s name based on a percentage of the overall sales.  This would create an incentive for everyone to buy the book.  

• Marketing Concept 3 – Fundraising

We approach a high school football team and offer to collect the best photographs and put it into an album that could be sold to team members, families and fans.  A percentage of profits will go to the team.

 

Closing notes:

As we get started, we could structure it so that the person/organization we are doing it for pays NOTHING out of pocket.  This would seperate us from a majority of photograhers from the get go.  Obviously, I am not even close to an expert in the field of photograhy, and I don’t really understand the photography bsuiness, but I think it is a start.  Hopefully this stimulates some thought, let me know what you think.

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Photo Idea Brainstorming Continued

The idea here is to combine Web Technology with Photography.  I am going to layout some of my brainstorming ideas that you can then pick through and comment on what may work or not. 

Using http://www.blurb.com for professional quality self-publishing I think there are several possible ideas:

• Photo-based biographies/family tree
  • Creating a customized photo/limited text biography for select people
  • We would create a web link dedicated to that persons biography that they could link to
  • Example: we approach people and offer to gather their photos and create a memory log that they can sell to their friends, family, etc
• Photo-based documentary
  • Custom create a photo based documentary for businesses to sell to friends, customers, employees, etc
  • Approach different organizations — meetup groups, frats, sororities, motorcycle groups, sports team, church groups, etc. and offer to create a log of a particular event or series of events that we could then sell back to them and their friends/family
  • We could quickly create a custom webpage for that organization to visit and generate sales.  We could offer the business a cut of sales to encourage them to actively promote it
• Photo-based tour
  • After looking around on blurb.com and doing some searches on each city, I thought it might be cool to create a photo tour of cities
  • Possibly something like “20 Places you must see in San Diego”, and that could be repeated for any city we decide to visit.
    • I didn’t see any tourist type guides to St. Louis on Blurb, but I did find a $125 photo album of St. Louis.  Maybe we could create something similar to this, just costing a lot less ($20-30), and describing the significance of each landmark
  • We could then create a website with a collection of photo tours of various cities that we visit and sell them from the site.  It would require virtually no maintenance once we set it up.

If we actually want to make money of off photography, it will require crafty marketing:

• Marketing Concept 1 – Customers do the selling

Any of these ideas could easily be promoted through existing social neworking sites as well.  I believe the key to making money off of this concept will be by empowering the customers to do the selling for us – to their friends, family ect.  We make the core participants feel like they are part of the project and excite them to sell the books to who they know.

• Marketing Concept 2 – Crowdsourcing

We creating some sort of crowdsourcing photography element for an album, where church members (church is just an example) could all submit their photos to us.  We would pick the best ones and give cash donations to their church in the winner’s name based on a percentage of the overall sales.  This would create an incentive for everyone to buy the book.  

• Marketing Concept 3 – Fundraising

We approach a high school football team and offer to collect the best photographs and put it into an album that could be sold to team members, families and fans.  A percentage of profits will go to the team.

 

Closing notes:

As we get started, we could structure it so that the person/organization we are doing it for pays NOTHING out of pocket.  This would seperate us from a majority of photograhers from the get go.  Obviously, I am not even close to an expert in the field of photograhy, and I don’t really understand the photography bsuiness, but I think it is a start.  Hopefully this stimulates some thought, let me know what you think.

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Okay, what about a photo based startup?

(no real relevance for the picture, I just created it the other day and thought it looked cool)

Read the following:

R.J.Pittman, Google’s director of product management for consumer search properties, in his interview with Beet.TV said that around 100 billion images are captured and uploaded every year. He expects an  abrupt growth of around trillion uploaded images in the future.

I started thinking in different direction yesterday.  I love photography so I thought I would look into it.  I wonder if there would be any promise, as more and more people have access to smartphones with cameras on them, to create a photo search engine to search for pics based on their exif data.  Exif data is the info that all digital cameras capture and store for later review.  Here is an example:

Tag	Value
Manufacturer	CASIO
Model	QV-4000
Orientation	top – left
Software	Ver1.01
Date and Time	2003:08:11 16:45:32
YCbCr Positioning	centered
Compression	JPEG compression
x-Resolution	72.00
y-Resolution	72.00
Resolution Unit	Inch
Exposure Time	1/659 sec.
FNumber	f/4.0
ExposureProgram	Normal program
Exif Version	Exif Version 2.1
Date and Time (original)	2003:08:11 16:45:32
Date and Time (digitized)	2003:08:11 16:45:32
ComponentsConfiguration	Y Cb Cr –
Compressed Bits per Pixel	4.01
Exposure Bias	0.0
MaxApertureValue	2.00
Metering Mode	Pattern
Flash	Flash did not fire.
Focal Length	20.1 mm
MakerNote	432 bytes unknown data
FlashPixVersion	FlashPix Version 1.0
Color Space	sRGB
PixelXDimension	2240
PixelYDimension	1680
File Source	DSC
InteroperabilityIndex	R98
InteroperabilityVersion	(null)

 

In my opinion geotagging will become a typical part of exif data as more and more photos will be taken from GPS enabled smart phones and camera.

Heres an example of its use:  Im at a party downtown in a bar between 9pm and 12am.  Everyone was drunk and having a blast and taking pics on their phones and cameras.  Later on I want to see these pics.  So instead of having to contact all these people (I may not know all of them), or search on a ton of different social network platforms, I can search for pics uploaded to public social networks and sites like flickr that were taken in a defined geography, and time. 

 I’m just free-flowing here but I wonder if there is any potential to create a search engine or similar function for the sheer vast amount of pictures that will be uploaded based on location taken, time taken, type of camera, etc.

It could help police as well.  Lets say there was a murder that happened in Pacific beach at 2pm on garnett and cass ave (one actually happened yesterday but it was at 5am and on Agate Street near La Jolla Mesa Drive) .  The police have a vague description of the perpetrator (clothing color and height but thats it).  In searching for clues/evidence they might be able to do a search of photos taken from 10-2pm that day in that general area to see if he happened to show up in anyone elses photos.

Or I was at an event (Ozzfest 2008) and wanted to look back at pics later on since I didn’t take many.  I could enter a search for pics taken at the Cricket Amphitheater between 12pm and 8pm.

Perhaps intead of searching for a particular image like on google image search, people would be searching for a certain event.  Whole different market homeboy.  As social networks reign king and grow at astonishing rates, there needs to be a organized way to search through all of that data; thus opening up opportunities for search engines just for social networks.

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