What will it take to have you hand over your money? Maybe that sounds like horrible question to ask, but I really want to know. People have money, people want things and people are willing to pay money for those things… right? Well, what is it that people want? I guess people want a lot of different things and there are many companies providing to those needs. I want to be one of them!
I have had many discussions with friends about which companies are making the big bucks these days. Obviously, for a company to make money they need to provide something people want and implement a successful business model. There are many business models that a company could adopt. Quite a few websites make all of their revenue from ads while others actually charge money for access to a service they provide. Everyone wants to find the perfect business model and I am right there with them. It is farily difficult to think outside the box and come up with something new. And even if you do think of something new the timing is really hard to get right. So what’s the solution? I don’t know. The next big thing doesn’t have to be something brand new I suppose. Myspace wasnt the first site to offer a place for people to put up pictures of themselves. Google wasn’t the first search engine. Digg wasnt the first user contributed content site. I just need to find that one thing that people need (or dont even know they need) and get it out at the right time.
I am also discovering that another problem is that most of the time you don’t know about the problems that exist. Why is this a problem? People pay for solutions and other things that they want. But, it’s really hard to solve a problem you don’t know about or provide something to people you don’t know they want. So I suppose one solution to the problem would be to find a Domain Expert of some sort and learn from them what the problems are. Any domain experts out there?
Yesterday, The founder of Xmission Pete Ashdown paid a visit to Neumont and I had the opportunity to listen to him speak. Pete shared various experiences on how he developed the idea for his ISP company and also how much work it took. I wish I took notes! He used some interesting terms that I heard for the first time. The one that stuck out was Sweat Equity. He used this term when he was talking about all the traveling and work he had to do just to run his first server. I suppose when you think about sweat equity it makes sense. There are businesses interested in paying you for something they didn’t want to do themselves for various reasons. Some reasons might be because the initial risk or startup costs are very high. Services that require the kind of work Pete put into his company are what makes his service different than something such as a new website idea. Anyone can copy someone’s great site idea (MySpace, Facebook, etc), but it takes a lot more work to start a company with tangible assets and services. This of course got me thinking more about what I really want to accomplish in the future. I think if I had a choice between developing some great site and actually starting a company with employees I would go with the later. It would be great to start something with employees and provide a valuable service and have something that I could invest some sweat equity into. It’s going to take a lot of work no matter what I choose to do.
Ok, so I got bored and decided to do some random searching on google and you won’t believe what I found. Apparently someone has written a book about how they retired by the age of 26. You can find it on amazon following this link: How I Retired at 26! What do you think about this book? Sounds like the perfect guide for me, ha!
I currently have two projects very close to being completed. If there is one thing I learned while trying to develop both of them it is how true the 80/20 rule in development really is. The first 80% of the projects had their obstacles but as things like project scope became more clear things developed fairly quickly. But, now both projects pretty much have hit the same obstacle. They are both in the last 20% stage and it is taking forever to make any progress! This stage involves simple things that can make or break your service. For example, the design and user friendliness is very important but is so hard to get done right on the first attempt. If someone thinks it’s too hard to accomplish a task or they don’t know how to accomplish it, then they wont! And the last thing I want is a frustrated user. Especially if that user is very vocal about their frustration. I am also finding that the last 20% of a project has a lot of stuff that just isn’t fun to do. For example any service needs a well thought out Privacy Policy and Terms of Service agreement. Otherwise, you could find yourself in a lot of trouble once you gain a large number of users using your service. I’m not sure where to even start on some of these last requirements but hopefully I can get things figured it soon. It’s really hard to stay focused on finishing what I have started and not start something new. I have a few more ideas I would love to start up and I just need to resist the temptation to start a new project when I am so close completion.
Since most of you know that I am always working on some sort of project I decided to take my blog in a new direction. Instead of taking the time to just keep people updated on whatever random thing I am currently working on, I decided I would try to write about why I spend so much time developing new ideas and projects. I think most people have heard me talk about my strong desire to retire by the age of 26. Why 26? To be honest I have no clue where that number came from. At some point in a discussion at school I just decided that I would really love to work on a new and successful project and retire from it. A few quarters ago I finally made the decision that I would take some of the ideas that I had and finally develop them. I hope to share what I learn from my experiences as I seek to attain my goal and also look forward to any feedback anyone has. You could be well rewarded if your feedback someday helps me achieve my goal!
