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Captains Log: Monday 11 August 2008

Today was a killer day Meeting after meeting. It has been a long while since I did so many meetings in one day. Got home and just landed on the couch, keeping in mind that I still have a ton to do. Business plans , learning some new development techniques, where our marketing plan is pointing so on and so forth.

I saw a rather interesting article on Forbes website about the Online Travel Industry and the huge growth potential we will see in the market in the next few years. Check it out.

As a startup the most important thing is to focus on what you are doing and keep that focus. Even if you feel you should shift direction or scrap the project and start another in a potentially new industry that shows the potential for high growth. If you feel passionate about your project go forth and march on like there is no tomorrow.

Passion and a determination will get you through. I am learning that this is so important. Never ever think that you are too small to compete. Competition is all about how you compete not with who. I feel there is no point competing with another market entrant. Focus on your clients and deliver a good consumer expierence. Never be afraid to experiment as I see the Internet as a huge evolving experiment in social behaviour and stretching you imagination.

Captains Log: Friday 8 August 2008

I just had a thought about revenue models and how micropayments can assist many a startup. We all know the Google model of revenue , whereby you startup a web app and add Google adsense to it in the hope of covering costs and making a tiny profit. Well the reality is  in most cases you earn around $10 or so a month. Some of the big guys do get a couple of million but those are the few. Most VC people don’t want to see the Google Adsense as a revenue model any more.

You cannot also build your own ad network as the cost and time in most cases is not worth it as you are busy with you new app and marketing and building the user base. Most of the ad networks give anywhere between 30 to 70 percent of the revenue, but you would have to get alot of clicks per day in order to get any meaning revenue. There are of course other forms of web advertising as well like banners and placements.

So I was thinking why not look at a micropayment strategy for  you product. You feel you are offering some sort of meaningful service to your userbase so why can you not charge for it and offer some premium services. Even if you only charge $1 per year and work off volume you would probably come of better then with Google.  Hold competitions via premium SMS and make money off that. Everyone loves the chance of getting something for free. So if you can charge $.50 extra on top of the SMS and recover the revenue via the service providor you should be able to generate a fair amount of revenue from that. The hard part would be to get the providors to asisst as they are usually totally disinterested in a small guy running his operation out of his bedroom.

I do believe that there is no such thing as a free lunch and the freemium model cannot sustain itself at the current rate with Google looking at generating quality clicks and ever changing the adsense algorithms.

With my startup I am looking at all these things as without a revenue model there is little chance to getting the terms you want from a VC. If you got cash on hand and a growing product they will most likely provide better terms.

So guys share you opinions on this topic and maybe we can see some googd ideas come from discussion.

Captains Log: Thursday 7 August 2008

We are starting to make some good progress overall on the development side and the guys are really putting in a concerted effort to catch up after all the issues we have been expierencing recently. We are now working nights to make up for lost time.

I hope to have wrapped up some of the important features in about a week or so. This will allow us to complete the site testing and get ready for the first of September beta launch. I have decided to start with the site fully open to use as direct feedback from a wide audience would work well.

Hopefully that strategy works for us.

Captains Log: Wednesday 6 August 2008

Today was a really good day as I was on a learning path and spend the entire day just researching different topics in development and marketing. The interesting thing is that in startup mode you tend to learn alot about a ton of different things. Things that in any other enviroment you would have not even bothered reading as you were focused in just you area of expertise.

I don’t anyone starting up a business should even remotely think that it can succeed with just their particular skill. You need to wear at least 20 hats or you are going to fall flat somewhere along the line. If you are also not driven to learn something new everyday , whether it be about your competitor or a new cutting edge technology then once again you are asking to fall behind.

Just a thought which is better ? To be dedicated or motivated. Your thoughts on this would be good.

Captains Log: Tuesday 5 August 2008

Worked till late into the early morning and feeling a bit tired today ,but alot of work is getting done. I have now set a hard target of 1st September 2008 to launch the first site. This puts the pressure on which I think we need. there is still alot of work that needs to be done but I am confident that we can get it all done in the next 25 days.

The good thing is that in beta mode you still have a chance to fix bugs and sort out minor issues. Also it gives me a chance to look at the new features for the next 12 months which can be put into development to both enhance the product as well as compete in a crowded market space.

Have a crowded market space validates you idea but also adds alot of pressure to get your product noticed by the fickle consumer, while trying to drive revenue so you can sustain the business.

If anyone has any ideas or been through this please share some of your expierences as it would be of great help.

Captain Log: Monday 4 August 2008

Well we seem to have another power failure, luckily alot of work was done during the weekend. This assisted alot in helping to get things on track again. Hopefully this week will work in our favour.

I think I have come up with some good marketing strategies for one of the applications we are developing for a niche market space. I think sometimes when it comes to marketing you have to have multiple strategies with some performance management tools to assess your campaign. A scoring system would be good as well so you can actually determine a threshold for a campaigns success.

I will get more into this later as my project gets closer to release.

The new buzzword in the industry is cloud computing and how it will revolutionise the way we interact with our applications and entertainment. My question is did we not already have a form of cloud computing since the internet was available for commercial use ? It was called web hosting and wait for we still use it today. With web hosting we could also upgrade packages as required or do colocation. So all we have really done is repackage what was already there with a few improvements to the technology base.

Maybe we should have actually called web hosting ver.2 as cloud computing is an upgrade with new features. I must say I like the way we are moving in cloud, but what I would really like to see is split hosting in the cloud. Where I could have a web app hosted partially in Asia and the US. this would afford my customers to have speedier access to the application and seeing that speed can make or break an application it would definitely be a plus.

Hey if anyone has an idea on how to do this ,then you could have the next bilion dollar idea.

Post some ideas on this, I would be very interested in seeing what ideas are out there.

Captains Log: Friday 1 August 2008

Great news we are starting to pickup pace on all the projects and everything is back on track. I have spent a good 14 hours just working and I am tired now, but feel that I should continue otherwise we will lose more time. This is probably what a typical startup goes through, sleep or just work till you drop. I know I need to take a nap otherwise I will be wrecked for the rest of the week.

For a startup time seems to be moving at such a rapid pace that you have to squeeze every second of everyday to get real bang for your buck. I always wonder how hard other startups are working and if everyone is on the same running pace. It is scary to think that you have probably have 10 other guys working on a similar idea thinking exactly like you.

Well I am off to take a nap.

It would seem that most people are predicting that Google will control 90% of all search within the next 6 to 12 months. This is obviously going to lead Google to being labled a monopoly. The only difference between Microsoft and Google is that with Google users can move to other search engines and advertisers can go and find other companies to work with. They use Google by choice. This becomes difficult for governments to slap Google with huge fines as they have not shoved their tools and applications down users throats. Users want to use Google as it is the preferred place to find what you need.

Cuil came into being fairly recently and it is being touted as the Google killer. This is the wrong apporach to take as Google has been in the business for more then 10 years. They also have a revenue model to keep growth running at a furious pace.

If I was Cuil my strategy would have been to do low level marketing and get the guy on the ground to test the search quality. Universities are a great place to start. If they like it then they will be your viral marketing tool. A PR company will hype your product as they get paid to do so. A user has no financial reward so their recommendation is worth more.

Cuil has a long way to go and I think that they really need to think about the next steps carefully before jumping in. You can not have sporadic uptime either as a user will only come once then return to Google or any of the other engines they were using before.

It would be great to see a new search engine come and take a share of the Googles market share but you need to come up with something innovative. Browserank does not cut it for me (Hint hint) or any other type of rank. We would need to start thing out of the Google box if you are going to be anywhere near successful in this battle.

I would take some hot grads from university that have a passion for building the next Google , dump them in a house (big brother style except no cameras) for 1 year with pizza delivery and a credit card with $1 000 000 and see what they come up with.

I will be checking out Cuil from time to time to see if there are imporvements in their search quality. Good luck to them and any other search startup.

Captains Log: Thursday 31 July 2008

It seems we are back on track with development and have put planning together to move a rapid rate to get things done and dusted. Whew, what a relief. It is hard wearing so many caps at once, just the balancing act can tire you out.

I spent a good 1.5 hours discussing what needs to be done and how we are going to get it done. I am sure we would have made some really good progress by Friday night.

While wearing the developer cap, I decided that I need to put on the sales and marketing cap as the development is back on track and soon we will need to work out how to derive maximum revenue from the application. My credit cards are bleeding red ink and the bank is gladly nailing me with an assortment of charges. Hopefully in the next 12 months I can bring that under control.

It is always hard when you have to do alot at once, but I intend to get it right and make my mark.

So keeping on watching and hopefully soon you will see some progress.