The Lunch break entrepreneur

After some thought I have decided that it's time to do something interesting in my lunch break and live up to the name of this blog. So I am starting a new web site and will be documenting it all here. Again, I am no Erick Schonfeld, Duncan Riley, Mark Hendrickson or any of the Blogger pros, but I will try to make it interesting.

The idea I am going to run with is www.sumrshr.com, of course sister site to wintershr.com. I will be covering everything here from ideation to execution, launch and management. As the name

I'd like to try to cover all phases, thoughts, decisions and details of the development of my new web service and since I am late getting started on writing let me take a quick look back.

I started thinking about a new service a couple of weeks ago so lets set the start Phase 1 as March 1. Unfortunately I have completely blanked out on why I started thinking about this idea in the first place. I get a lot of ideas and usually I remember where they came from. There are however a couple of criteria I have for moving beyond my note book. They are as follows ...

1. Is there an interesting unique target audience?
If there is a target audience there is a need, I follow my Business School training, but I am also trying not get too rigid and technical. Several of my friends have great ideas, but seem to analyze themselves out of ever trying anything. The fact is that we almost never have access to the research reports we need to make perfect decisions and always dealing with some unknowns. I don't worry too much about market size. I'm sorry buy I refuse to belive Twitter was build on good market research as opposed to a great gut feel for the needs of the social networking audience.

2. Are there anyone already targeting this audience?
How many? Are they doing a good job? Some sites just don't do what they need to. I am as guilty as others with some of my sites. We NEVER spam, but somehow that does not help people when they are starting a office pool on my site www.rocketpool.com. People may be willing to take a peak using their own email, but they are going to want to see what they are passing on before entering 10-20 of their co-workers emails. We ran out of time before the SuperBowl back when the site launched and we didn't add a preview and we suffer for it. A simple preview would have made a lot of difference. So I don't worry about finding a space that is not already covered, as long as it's not covered as I think it needs to be.

3. Is the idea timely?
Case in point. I created moveo.com in Oct 18, 2000. It was a site that allowed users to start their own Yahoo, a mini- search engine or site directory. The could create these directories about anything and others could add to it. By making directories around peoples passions, be it dogs or vintage car, would be synthesized up to move.com and provide better search.

It was wiki with and social networking, it was going to be perfect! I was already pending the money from the sale. Not. It was popular and got some good write-ups, but people weren't wholesale ready to start doing all the work for web sites. Site were tools and places to go for information. When the site was brought down by hackers I was out of money and I didn't bring it back up. Somehow the domain registration lapsed and now Moveo.com is "An award-winning agency, Movéo Integrated Branding is a hybrid branding and integrated marketing communications agency located in Oakbrook Terrace just west of Chicago, Illinois."

Timing I tell you.

4. Can it be done?
Everything can be done if you have enough money. This is where most of my ideas get the sword. I am willing to take a chance on success, but not if I have to take a $500K hit. If you have a little time and willingness to deal with a lot of issues then you can develop some really amazing things on a very small budget. Ryan at http://www.dropsend.com did a good job at describing what he did building an online app. on a shoestring. What he should really be blogging was his brilliant marketing of the site centered around pretending to sell the service ;-)

5. Can you sell it to your friends?
This test may not work for all folks. If you are hatching your idea in cell block 5 or while visiting your grandparents then maybe skip this one. I am fortunate to know a lot of people that develop online sites and apps for a living and who are all smart, level headed people. Most people are for some reason sceptical, so if I can explain my idea to them and they get excited, then I may have something.

6. Can I get a good domain name? Personally I think this is important, I may be overstating it. But the second I get an idea I start buying names. Some I use, others get dropped along the way. But don't let www.mountaintop.com just sit there if you are thinking about a site for hikers. It's $10,00 and once a domain is gone it's gone. For www.sumrshare.com I bought eight domains before settling on what I wanted. You will be stuck with your choice for a while so I don't mind paying $80 to have some options.

So those are the criteria I measured www.sumrshr.com against.

I found an interesting target audience and plety of them. Young affluent, web and social media savvy. From taking the Hamptons Jitney I know what advertiser are looking at this audience and what they are willing to spend. Back in the heyday you could land yourself an iPod by taking a $24 bus ride to the Hamptons. Not so crazy anymore, but the giftbags on the Hampton Jitney is still worth the trip.

I found one site that did a decent job at some things and not so much in others. They are already in beta so good for them. Again, I am not too worried, and nor should they be. We can all benefit from having at least one competitor. And with one site out there already there will be two when we launch making the segment less attractive for the next entrant.

If you can find an audience for your site and it's got social networking and functionality then the timing is right. Social media as a concept has established itself and my job is to tie into it.

What I am looking to do with the site is 100% achievable technically and financially and many of the features are either open source or ties into existing social media sites.

My friends love the idea and I found myself a great domain ... so I'm all set.

Next step will be to make it come to life. What will it look like, what's should the logo be, what's the cost etc.

But the lunch break is over so that's next week.