

Disruption and My Next Startup... You Help Decide - markbao
http://jasonlbaptiste.com/misc/my-next-startup/

======
run4yourlives
I'm loving that woot for dating bit. I think that's a huge winner. Needs to be
local though.

It would work better as a "auction" though, like you see at those charity
fund-raisers. People apply to be "auctioned" off - submit detailed profiles -
one girl one guy every day. People bid. Highest bid wins (make it fixed bids),
depending on money raised, site sends them on a free date.

You might need to give the auctioned some influence in picking the bidder, but
man what a cash cow.

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
I would start it in one city. Miami or SF Bay area were my first gut instinct
thoughts.

The auction idea was one thought I had, but then it would be dependent upon
whoever spent the most, and not the girl's tastes.

~~~
run4yourlives
That's the thing that might kill it though.

Unless you're talking big money (which you may eventually) you're not likely
to find many women/men who are attractive wanting to blind date for a free
dinner or whatever.

What you could do actually, is get the person's friends to pick from the top
5, or have bidding levels that you can match to be considered "in", instead of
auction style bidding.

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
You would definitely have to do some leg work to find women who want in. They
especially may not want the attention.

That was my thought of using virtual gifts. If you send a virtual flower or
teddy bear to woo the girl, it helps indicate you're serious.

I also thought about letting the girl post her top choices along the way and
let the audience comment and add their thoughts in. Another option would be
letting the girl pick a "wingwoman" who helps and comments on the guys who
apply.

~~~
run4yourlives
You know, you could make it a "bachelor" style date, in that you could send
both guy and girl off for a weekend in Jamaica, or a week in Spain or
something like that. Of course the whole thing just got a lot more expensive,
but it still might fly.

You'd need to vet the contestants much more, but I'm sure that would take away
the jitters some people may have in letting the highest bidder win.

EDIT: I got it. You combine the ideas: Virtual Gifts are submitted to get to a
"bidding" stage. Auctioned approves profiles they would consider (They have
the interest of keeping this amount high) Pre-approved people are allowed to
bid. Winning bid wins. Date paid for based on amount of winning bid (the
higher, the better the date, hence the reason the auctioned wants lots of
bidders). So long as all the bids total more than the cost of the date, profit
ensues.

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
exactly. The question is, how do you consistently generate enough traffic and
get people bidding? Yes, it's 99 cents per bid, but if you're not interested
in the girl, it doesn't matter. ie- shes too tall, it wouldn't matter if it
were free. A PR burst would be nice for that week of launch, but what about
the other 51 weeks in the year? If you can figure out that formula, profit
ensues. Step 2: ????? actually exists here.

~~~
run4yourlives
That's nothing to worry about. You said like woot right? Well, one pre-
selected girl, one pre-selected guy per week (You can extend that to same sex
matches as well, which makes for 4 contests a week, locally in X amount of
cities.)

You put a detailed description of the auctioned on the site, along with the
date description, and invite everyone to apply to bid. Auctioned selects those
allowed to bid, I suppose you can put auto limiting options here if you want.
(So far, no money). Bidding commences with a conveniently placed minimum bet
(say 75% of date cost) and is not fixed - bid whatever you want. Since the
bidders and auctioned are pre-selected, all we're looking to do here is get
that bidding as high over the date cost (assuming only one date, perhaps if it
gets really high, say 100% over the cost, the date changes, and so on and so
on.) This way, you let the auctioned do your marketing for you - their
interest is getting that big free night out, after all, so they keep the pool
of allowed bidders large. So long as you keep the auctioned pre-selected for
attractiveness/interestingness, you win. Throw a pictureless rss feed up there
and don't worry, people will come back.

Hell, what the hell am I doing, I should just go build this thing!

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
I'd say just start with girls at first. Guys make it more complicated, and
they don't have as much of a draw. I could be wrong here.

You'd have to have really in depth profiles of the girl of the week/day. Video
intro, multiple pictures, in-depth Q&A, etc. If you're giving the restaurant
for the date decent exposure, you may not really need to even pay for
anything.

I think once you figure the traffic formula out, it's game over (in a good
way). Creating attention and buzz for it will not be hard.

~~~
phreanix
The thing I'm thinking about is, IF the girl is decently attractive enough to
warrant such bids and attention, she should have no trouble getting dates. She
might actually be wary of displaying herself on a meatmarket full of hungry
males with 99 cents to lose.

I had a somewhat similar idea I fleshed out a couple of years ago that also
involved local dating, but was more targeted at the 9-5 working crowd and
bringing them together on an invite/want basis for quick coffee/lunch dates
that brought a couple together long enough to 'get to know' but not so long
that it got uncomfortable. What I couldn't figure out was how to monetize it,
but your 99 cent 'participation' fee is intriguing me enough to try and
resurrect it. I wouldn't mind exchanging a couple of no-strings emails with
you if you'd like to discuss.

------
jasonlbaptiste
Writing everything down started happening / was inspired by this long Ask HN
thread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=475736>

TONS of good stuff in that thread. Still my favorite discussion here.

------
JacobAldridge
Great insight into the thought processes of aspiring start-up founder with
track record. Not disimilar to pg/YC's RFS.

Key context for all of us with excellent ideas going nowhere:

 _"Ideas only get you so far, and getting true feedback is a lot more valuable
to me than the rare off chance of someone 'stealing' 1 of 12 ideas that I may
or may not ever pursue."_

~~~
auston
Track record?

I'm not sure that has any basis, surely Jason is a nice guy, but the only
track record I am aware of is:

Some random company - Social startup which never went anywhere long term, but
had decent buzz at some point (iirc).

Publictivity - Which the towel was thrown in on (& may go open source)

Ramamia - Started with Mark Bao which seems to be barely lingering
(<http://siteanalytics.compete.com/ramamia.com/>)

I'm not sure if that is a track record.

[EDIT: Downvoted for disagreeing with someone & backing it up - anybody care
to explain why?]

~~~
run4yourlives
Track-record as in has actually launched products. You can look at that as not
being much, or you can look at it as being more than someone who hasn't done
any of that, which would include a good number of people reading this.

~~~
auston
Interestingly - I always kind of felt & have seen the opposite, all of the
people I know from HN have indeed launched something, although my sample size
is only 6 people.

------
ujjwalg
I really like the #4 and #6 mainly because we are working on both. :) I
totally believe that education industry needs a makeover because it is
extremely fragmented and highly inefficient with very less innovation.

~~~
ujjwalg
and the strange thing with this is that everyone agrees education industry
needs major innovation but not much VC funding is being poured into it in
spite of huge (billions) opportunity.

~~~
run4yourlives
That's because there are powerful interests that aren't interested in
innovating here: they like the industry just the way it is.

------
javery
Find an idea that you are passionate about and ready to pour time and money
into. I would bet that of those ideas maybe 1 or 2 are things you honestly
want to do (and think you can do).

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
I agree. This is the starting point you could say. From here, there are about
4 or 5 different pieces of criteria I'm prioritizing by. The biggest one with
the most weight is passion.

------
sho
There I was thinking that obviously "jasonlbaptiste" and "markbao" were sock
puppets but no, mark bao sounds Chinese. A few clicks confirms it.

So what the hell? Have you guys got an agreement to submit each other's stuff
or something? Honestly I don't like that. If jasonlbaptiste writes something
good on jasonlbaptiste.com, then just submit it yourself, jasonlbaptiste. You
don't need a proxy.

~~~
modoc
Mark is partners with Jason on one of the startups Mark is involved with (it
says that on his profile), so it stands to reason he reads Jason's blog a lot.
Don't need to be a conspiracy.

~~~
sho
Markbao did 9/11!

Hm. Too soon?

Anyway, I didn't mean to allege a conspiracy. Just saying that if people write
something, and they have an account here, they should take ownership and
submit it themselves.

~~~
webwright
What? As soon as I blog anything interesting (or that I think MIGHT be
interesting), I should rush over to hacker news and submit it? I always feel
weird submitting my own stuff and (honestly) submitting it to social news
sites is not the first thing that pops into my head when I blog.

