With little internet savvy, how would you progress it?
(First post, and joined the forum specifically to ask for some advice.)
OK it won’t be as big as Google, but it will be a household internet ‘name’.
Take that as a given.
I’m mid 50s, run my own business (and have done for 30 years) and would say I was reasonably savvy to the ways of the world; business or otherwise.
My internet tech savvy on the other hand…. Well, not so hot. I can work my way round the majority of Office packages quite competently, and Photoshop – but I’m woefully inadequate in knowledge in just about every area of the internet and ecommerce. One word. Grandpa.
So, the light-bulb moment happens, and there it is, the next ebay / amazon / youtube – Global, of course.
You can see the site in action, many millions of hits globally per day, extremely healthy revenue stream – think PPC revenue raising as an idea of how income is generated…
On the basis that the idea is as described (and you don’t think I’m a complete nutter!) what would you suggest I do?
So what you have is an idea, you think it is the bees knees. It might be, alternatively it might be really flawed. You could float it by me if you want and I can let you know what I think.
You have 2 options. Pay a company to build the website for you. This is a fairly bad idea, it involves a lot of money and you will have to invest a lot in the business before it has a chance to make any money. You would then have to pay people to maintain the website etc. Its not great. The plus side is that you keep 100% of the profits.
Option 2 is to partner with one or many people. It doesn't sound like you currently have much to bring to the table apart from an idea. If someone is going to invest hundreds of hours, you would probably need to bankroll the project, pay for hosting, project resources, trademarking etc. This second option makes it a financially less risky project and easier to maintain in the long run as profits are split between founding members. You also gain access to lots of free advice. The downside is that you would split profits.
With sharing your idea. You will have to tell someone. Your idea sounds like it needs a team to make it. By all means do not broadcast what you plan to do but definitely get in touch with a professional to advise you. They can tell you if your idea has legs and give you advice on how to get it started.
...which brings me to DavidGiant's excellent and kind reply-
I am a web developer.
So what you have is an idea, you think it is the bees knees. It might be, alternatively it might be really flawed. You could float it by me if you want and I can let you know what I think.
You have 2 options. Pay a company to build the website for you. This is a fairly bad idea, it involves a lot of money and you will have to invest a lot in the business before it has a chance to make any money. You would then have to pay people to maintain the website etc. Its not great. The plus side is that you keep 100% of the profits.
Option 2 is to partner with one or many people. It doesn't sound like you currently have much to bring to the table apart from an idea. If someone is going to invest hundreds of hours, you would probably need to bankroll the project, pay for hosting, project resources, trademarking etc. This second option makes it a financially less risky project and easier to maintain in the long run as profits are split between founding members. You also gain access to lots of free advice. The downside is that you would split profits.
With sharing your idea. You will have to tell someone. Your idea sounds like it needs a team to make it. By all means do not broadcast what you plan to do but definitely get in touch with a professional to advise you. They can tell you if your idea has legs and give you advice on how to get it started.
I realise that I don't have the wherewithal to put this thing together myself; and I’m not sure that I’d want to in any case – one extremely focused individual might well miss opportunities at the outer peripheries of his vision or knowledge, whereas a properly joined-up team reduces these kinds of risks. Of course, the team should have direction…
One point I’d maybe take issue with you on DG, is your comment “It doesn't sound like you currently have much to bring to the table apart from an idea”.
Every person currently employed in the IT sector (and every other sector, and every person who ever has had any form of employment, ever) is, or has been employed because of one person’s idea.
That’s where it ALL starts. Without the idea, there’s a lot of people sitting round the table wondering where the next (idea) wage packet is coming from.
But I digress. Thanks for what seems like good advice. I’ll take a few days to bounce things around in my head and see if I can’t find some clarity.
I think that’s part of the problem; so many possible directions / potential pitfalls / unknowns… In the past, when trying to solve a problem, I’d focus on the ‘perfect solution’ and work a way backwards to the problem. The problem in this instance (for me) is that while I can absolutely envisage the end result, I can almost guarantee that there’ll be lots of missed opportunities and, unfortunately, landmines stepped upon etc - just through my lack of knowledge.
In the meantime, any other advice gratefully accepted!
No the first thing you should do is write the idea all down and post it to yourself in a recorded delivery envelope and / or if possible get a lawyer to notarise it, to prove it was your idea.
If you discuss anything with a third party get a non-disclosure agreement with confidentiality clauses, no usage clauses from development of the project and a clear outline of the project.
If it's a good idea you'll probably find the guts of the software you'll need out there for $300, without knowing the basis hard to guide but perhaps look at systems like Boonex etc.
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One point I’d maybe take issue with you on DG, is your comment “It doesn't sound like you currently have much to bring to the table apart from an idea”.
You're very wrong about that. Everybody has ideas; ideas are worse than useless. You will never get a professional investor to give you money for an idea alone because they know they're worthless.
To be of any use at all, an idea must be capable of being implemented, developed and marketed - that takes a huge amount of knowledge, resource, determination and luck.
It's simply a truism that you must have the idea to start with but that alone gets you no points with anyone that understands the game - the hard part is what comes after it.
(btw, I'm not saying this just to be difficult, at one point in my life I was responsible for new product development in a large technology company. If anyone said - which they often did - that they had the next ebay, google, whatever; they were laughed out of the room because the probability of that being true is billions to one against and just shows naivety.)
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Any system where you retain the evidence yourself is very weak as it provides no independent evidence, and means that a court or tribunal would only have your word that you actually placed the work in the envelope at the time of posting.
If you use the postal service (sometimes called ‘poor man’s copyright’), or any commercial system which requires you to store the work yourself, there is no evidence to say that the contents have not been swapped, or that you did not seal the envelope years later. It is so easy to cast doubt on such evidence, we believe it is next to worthless.
Rob
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No the first thing you should do is write the idea all down and post it to yourself in a recorded delivery envelope and / or if possible get a lawyer to notarise it, to prove it was your idea.
If you discuss anything with a third party get a non-disclosure agreement with confidentiality clauses, no usage clauses from development of the project and a clear outline of the project.
If it's a good idea you'll probably find the guts of the software you'll need out there for $300, without knowing the basis hard to guide but perhaps look at systems like Boonex etc.
Thanks DWi; sound advice. I'll take it and have the concept notarised.
Getting the concept on paper might also help with clarity as well.
Suppose you came up with the next Google…?
...
So, the light-bulb moment happens, and there it is, the next ebay / amazon / youtube – Global, of course.
...
what would you suggest I do?
1. Take a look at the teams who created those kind of websites/companies and see what their backgrounds are...
google - 2 computer scientists, Larry Page and Sergey Brin ebay - computer scientist Pierre Omidyar amazon - computer scientist Jeff Bezos facebook - computer scientist Mark Zuckerberg twitter - computer scientist Jack Dorsey youtube - Chad Hurley (BA in Fine Art), Steve Chen (computer scientist) and Jawed Karim (computer scientist) yahoo - electrical engineer Jerry Yang and computer engineer David Filo
There is a common pattern emerging here (one that I commented on in a web designer thread a few months ago). How similar is your team's background to this common pattern?
2. Take a look at where those teams started up, and I am sorry to say it is not the UK. That is nothing to do with UK talent, it is more to do with the spirit of pioneering and the availability of investment in the US. So if you want to be the next global google, ebay, amazon, youtube perhaps you might have more chance moving out to the US and putting together a US team.
3. Bear in mind that you will never become the next google, ebay, amazon, youtube, as they stand now. Not even google, ebay, amazon or youtube when they were starting out could have done that. What we have today with each company/website is a result of years of improvement, today we have google version 100 (100 is an arbitrary number I made up to give you an idea), ebay version 100, amazon version 100 etc not google version 1, ebay version 1, amazon version 1. Any new startup needs to consider this carefully. If a version 1 is the only thing that is practical to have from day 1, then that might be OK if it is in a completely new niche, but not so OK if it is competing with an existing version 100 system.
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