If you swap my big players and niche for your big players and niche, I could have written your reply here.
Specifically:
1. We've been called a one stop shop by multiple people.
2. We're self-funded by my day job with a trivial burn rate.
3. I've probably read "How Not to Die" > 100 times.
Before my current project, I tried to create small niche websites that would eek out enough to get me out of my day job. They never did. Some success, but not enough. So I decided to go big or go home. I like this approach way better.
I think grabbing a beachhead is crucial in a competitive space. I'm in year two. I pursued 5 or 6 different niches my first year, following the philosophy that you should release a minimum version one. And if you are going to be a one stop shop, the minimum has to thinly cover several niches/sub-niches. I was definitely embarrassed by some aspects, but people sent me unsolicited emails with feedback and appreciation.
I laughed a bit at the fact that I was trying to outdo the big players as a solo shop, when everyone else is trying to carefully test their lean startup principles. I convinced someone to join me because of the initial traction. And now we're beefing up 2 of the initial niches. Under the theory that we'll hopefully get traction in one of them by the end of the year. And patching holes in the rest will be sufficient until we have time to work on them more. Or find another team member.
If we can get traction in a 2nd sub-niche, we're going to be working on monetization in the highly competitive space (as well as the sub-niches we've got traction) in year three (next year). As it turns out, even when things have gone right, making money in a competitive space is still tough! We were able to grab traction in the first sub-niche because there isn't a clear path to revenue in it. We've got some ideas though; we just don't have enough people to go after both user growth and revenue growth. So we're going after user growth right now, given our infinite runway to learn ... limited only by our ability to stay motivated.
That's awesome. One good thing about what we're doing is that the monetization aspect is fairly straightforward. It's Open Source enterprise software, which we expect to sell under a subscription model very similar to what Red Hat does. I think RH and a few others have shown that this works, and the more I think about it, the more I realize that it's very compelling for the customer:
1. No huge upfront capital outlay
2. Paying part of the cost in (inflated) future dollars, which are less valuable than today's dollars
3. No big lump-sum version upgrade fee, ever.
We're still pre-revenue, but we are getting real close to making a serious effort to start signing up customers. In fact, I was trawling through Hoovers and Jigsaw earlier tonight, prospecting for leads in what we are targeting as our first attempted beach-head market. Over the summer we're going to be going after these guys hard and hopefully close a couple of deals.
If you swap my big players and niche for your big players and niche, I could have written your reply here.
Specifically:
1. We've been called a one stop shop by multiple people. 2. We're self-funded by my day job with a trivial burn rate. 3. I've probably read "How Not to Die" > 100 times.
Before my current project, I tried to create small niche websites that would eek out enough to get me out of my day job. They never did. Some success, but not enough. So I decided to go big or go home. I like this approach way better.
I think grabbing a beachhead is crucial in a competitive space. I'm in year two. I pursued 5 or 6 different niches my first year, following the philosophy that you should release a minimum version one. And if you are going to be a one stop shop, the minimum has to thinly cover several niches/sub-niches. I was definitely embarrassed by some aspects, but people sent me unsolicited emails with feedback and appreciation.
I laughed a bit at the fact that I was trying to outdo the big players as a solo shop, when everyone else is trying to carefully test their lean startup principles. I convinced someone to join me because of the initial traction. And now we're beefing up 2 of the initial niches. Under the theory that we'll hopefully get traction in one of them by the end of the year. And patching holes in the rest will be sufficient until we have time to work on them more. Or find another team member.
If we can get traction in a 2nd sub-niche, we're going to be working on monetization in the highly competitive space (as well as the sub-niches we've got traction) in year three (next year). As it turns out, even when things have gone right, making money in a competitive space is still tough! We were able to grab traction in the first sub-niche because there isn't a clear path to revenue in it. We've got some ideas though; we just don't have enough people to go after both user growth and revenue growth. So we're going after user growth right now, given our infinite runway to learn ... limited only by our ability to stay motivated.