
An Open Discussion Of My Personal Business Strategy - zackattack
http://www.zacharyburt.com/2010/08/an-open-discussion-of-my-personal-business-strategy/
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Mc_Big_G
I appreciate your candor. I struggle with some of the same issues, especially
when it comes to finding new customers. I imagine a lot of other devs have the
same issues.

I recently decided to take a similar approach, which I'm calling "quickie
startups". The max timeframe to build a quickie for me is 2 months. It's not
so much a desperate shotgun approach as it is just getting ideas out of my
head, into reality and seeing which ones have merit. In my head, they're all
winners but we all know it doesn't work out that way in reality, as evidenced
by a few of your projects (and mine).

I definitely sympathize with your disinterest in a project once it's launched.
Building is a fun, creative process. The let down comes when the world is
apathetic to your startup and you feel more excitement about the next one,
rather than trying to shove something people don't want down their throats.

I agree that you have to give it some time with each one and really try to
find your market, but when you are bootstrapping, it's more cost effective to
focus on the ones that users gravitate toward.

~~~
il
I don't mean to be overly critical or dismissive, but I think this is a
guaranteed recipe for disaster. It takes more than a couple of months to build
steady traffic and gain traction.

For me finding customers is the easy part- they're out there, and there are a
few proven ways to generate lots of traffic quickly that WILL get you
customers. The hard part is getting cash flow positive and monetizing
properly. That means minimizing CPA and traffic costs, maximizing customer CLV
and all of the other things that come with running a profitable business.
Getting more money out of a customer that what it costs to acquire him is the
hard part.

It's trivial to generate $1 million in revenue for any mass market product in
a few months. I've seen others do it time and time again with direct response
campaigns. That million from paying customers might cost you $10 million to
acquire however.

Assuming you're targeting a large market and solving a real problem, any one
of your projects has the potential to be wildly successful. The ones that
aren't just haven't found their audience yet. Fortunately, there are economies
of scale and snowball effects as a product grows, so once you've gotten a
small customer base and some initial traction, everything becomes much, much
easier. Commit to a single, well thought out idea, and see it through rather
than starting from zero every 2 months. Test different traffic sources,
pricing models, etc. It's a fool's errand to test different startups.

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midnightmonster
Re: web confessional

I don't know what you mean by "RFQ" in this context, and I don't know whether
you meant this seriously, but in the Catholic faith, confession is not
(principally) counseling: it's a sacrament. Neither confession nor any other
sacrament may be administered remotely. You may think that's silly (but unless
you believe in the efficacy of the sacraments, it seems even sillier to argue
about how they should be effective), but of course the question has come up at
least since phones became commonplace, and the somewhat related practice of
proxy baptisms on behalf of the dead has come up since the first century. In
short, I wouldn't bet a business model on the Church changing her mind on this
one.

I'm not saying you couldn't get traction calling something a web confessional
--in the reality tv age I think the name implies exhibitionism more than
confidentiality--but it would be disingenuous to pitch it to Catholics as at
all related to the sacrament.

~~~
steveklabnik
As with any other group of people, lots of people who are Catholic don't even
know half of the tenets of Catholicism. At least where I live. I basically
slept through CCD, and even in my adult life, I've heard a 'huh?' response
when I bring up something as big as Vatican II.

I still think that you're right, but you'd need to do a little more market
research to prove it out. Even people who know it wouldn't be 'real' might
still think it amusing enough to do it anyway.

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michael_dorfman
_I wonder why that is – is it because I’m more eager to hack on early
prototypes of fun ideas than continue them? Or is it because the code base is
so development-unfriendly that working on it is just no fun? (For example,
there’s no automated testing.) Soliciting feedback._

It seems to me that you might do well to try to find a co-founder to work
with. You're clearly full of ideas, and have the skill and discipline to get
an MVP out there. Nicely done.

However, I think that having somebody to share the ideas with, prod and poke
you, and share some of the burden, might help you achieve more.

~~~
swombat
I'd disagree with that. Getting a cofounder before finding an idea that sticks
will:

1) slow you down - you can't iterate as quickly when you need to convince
someone else too

2) dilute your shares a lot more than if you de-risk the idea before getting
others involved

Given his choice of a "quick iteration" approach, I don't think getting a
cofounder makes sense.

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adn37
Zach, you might want to buy that domain (Webconf...) you are talking about,
like right now.

Nice article.

~~~
zackattack
Thanks - got it. :)

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bmcnamara82
The typical organization goes through 100 "investigations" or idea concepts to
get to one success*. They have a larger pool of resources to execute those 100
investigations, but I think the larger point is that you need to get through a
lot of muck to get to the one success.

As long as you're learning lessons along each project I say more power to you.
You'll known when you hit upon a project that you're passionate about.

To that point, have you read “The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to
Quit”? The summary is (taken from Amazon):

\- Winners quit (regroup. cut their losses, switch gears) whenever necessary
on the path to winning.

\- Be the best, and the world comes knocking at your door.

\- Work through the pain, because the reward is waiting for you further down
the road.

Sounds like keep doing what you’re doing.

Source:The Human Side of Managing Technological Innovation: A Collection of
Readings

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mahmud
As the person responsible for sparking that thoughtful, and reflective piece:
I have nothing to say but kudos, and march on.

If there is a method to the madness, and you're systematically building,
launching and tossing projects, then there is nothing wrong with that. I just
had to address what I thought was impatience, and decided to make it public
because I have noticed it as a trend lately.

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maxklein
I think you are absolutely right in trying different things till one works.
When the idea is right, when the business works, you will know, nobody will
need to tell you.

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ahoyhere
Have you ever sat down and figured out what your end goals are?

Because without that, you're just stabbing around in the dark for a couple
hundred here and a couple hundred there.

Which is perfectly fine, if all you wanna do is experiment.

~~~
nanijoe
A couple hundred in a couple hundred places would not be such a bad outcome

