I have been ‘attempting’ to build a web application for a long time now … roughly 9 months. I have been bootstrapping most of the operation. I have either A. built what I can myself or B. outsourced it to someone who can do it better than I can. It has been an awesome time of learning and growth but its time to face the music. The money for outsourcing has run out and I am not at the level that I can program the rest of the application.
I have been reading a bunch of Guy Kawasaki stuff lately and I am encouraged by him. Specifically this article about bootstrapping. He has some great advice and I would recommend anyone in my same position to read the article and start following his blog. Great stuff.
Back to this web app. Let me example a little bit of what it is and what the vision/dream is. Many, many, many businesses are entering the social media field. They know there is money to be made. This is true. Being able to connect directly to your customer is awesome and gives you some great opportunities. With that being said. There is a need for a company to be able to produce detailed findings or reports for these companies that are now spending some big bucks hiring social media guru’s to help them figure out what to do and how to do it.
Here is where my web application comes into play. Lets take one social media platform, Twitter for example, there are potentially millions of people ‘following’ you on Twitter. What if an application could tell you: what they tweeted about the most, where they were located, what time zone they were in, male/female, what time they were most online, what links they retweeted, etc. All of this information can prove to be very useful to big company trying to reach their audience. Now go beyond Twitter. Think at least some analysis for Facebook, Twitter, etc.
To continue to bootstrap this idea I have even ventured into the viral marketing realm with the purchase of the domain pleasefundmybusiness.com! I love the idea and concept but will it work. We will see. NOTE: the site is NOT finished like .. AT ALL!
My question to you Mr./Mrs. Reader is this: What should I do? Do you like the idea? Any words of wisdom suggestions etc?
2 Comments
I was in the same boat last year and right now that start-up is sitting on the shelf. My advice would be to put your energy and network towards finding a co-founder that can handle the bulk of the technical work, including working with your outsourced resources. 1. Single person start-ups are less likely to succeed. 2. You can continue to improve your technical skills and not let that gap be the bottleneck.
Finding a co-founder is easier said than done. I wasn’t successful and that on its own I believe is the single biggest reason why I put those dreams on hold.
I’m certainly no internet guru, but I have to suspect that Twitter’s astronomical market cap factors in the notion that Twitter itself is harvesting all the answers you have proposed to provide. It is uniquely positioned to extract market meaning from all those tweets.
See http://tech.mit.edu/V129/N39/long2.html .
See also Start-up Success – Four Fundamental Factors http://bit.ly/7rsbdw