From: Emlyn O'regan (oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au)
Date: Thu Jun 05 2003 - 18:04:08 MDT
I must agree with Adrian that the get big then get money plan doesn't appear
to work.
If you look at what the scheduler idea (you could expand it a lot to include
all kinds of extra social networking features), it's primary goal is to be
the killer app for wireless devices. I mean, geez, a schedule on it's own
doesn't really get me all worked up; it's a bit dull. The point is that it
(in some variation perhaps) could move wireless mobile computing devices out
into the consumer market big time. And that's a very extropic goal I think.
Following from this, there are lots of hardware and infrastructure people
who I think are really struggling to find the killer app for their devices.
So rather than get big first, I think you go find interested already big
parties, and partner with them.
I'm not a business guy (as has been amply demonstrated to many already, I'd
warrant). But I'd say the plan of attack with something like this is to
1 - put together a business plan,
2 - try to hook up with someone who has or can make the contacts needed with
a/some phone/hardware/network companies
3 - build a prototype, targetting the right orgs' devices & infrastructure.
The goal would likely be to make something really, really slick and easy to
use, going for "user ecstacy" rather than too many whiz-bang features.
Something interesting with this idea is that it probably doesn't require
much, if anything, by way of patents. It's not about IP, it's a tool for
pushing a technology that many wealthy entities really want to push. It's
not a unique idea; it's actually pretty pedestrian. But I think it has legs
in context.
So what happens next?
Emlyn
> --- Dennis Fantoni <df@tdc-broadband.dk> wrote:
> > Rough plan for action would be ( i think )
> >
> > 1) Get established as one of the widely used
> > internet based scheduling
> > solutions. ( make it free, make it superior to yahoo
> > calender and others -
> > this should not be that difficult )
> > 2) ramp it up by supporting everything internet
> > enabled and wireless ( this
> > is technically quite easy if you have it in mind
> > when creating the system)
> > 3) when half the western world are customers, sell
> > out to someone who wants
> > the eyeballs, or figure some way to earn a
> > respectacle revenue from the
> > service.
>
> Umm...that is the canonical dotcom business plan: get
> large *then* get income, and assume that all or most
> of the users will stay once the income generation
> mechanism is installed (usually, a dramatically false
> assumption). True, many such businesses did get
> funding, but most places that funded these types of
> businesses have learned their lesson and will not back
> this type of venture again. Income has to come before
> you get big. (The earlier suggestion of starting out
> big, by starting out as an additional feature of one
> or a few established cell phone networks, suffices to
> get around this since the payment method has also
> already been established.)
>
> > Of course, if You pull it off, the reward when
> > selling the company or being
> > taken over would most probably be in the triple
> > digit million euro range.
> > ( look at similar companies and their worth )
>
> While there have been some success stories, most of
> the existing companies with plans comparable to the
> above aren't doing so well, and more - more than
> average for small businesses - no longer exist (and
> thus have a net worth of zero).
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