starting with a high-level view

[loop101]

Historically, I have always tried to think of a "killer idea", so focusing on "process" is a little new to me. I am currently training myself in the basics of creating interactive websites, and making iPhone/iPad apps. Once I get the basic skills, it will be time to decide what I want to do. I have some ideas already, but I thought I should make sure I am not skipping over anything obvious.

I have been reading MJ's book, Felix Dennis book, and researching "The Foundation" group ("paperless pipeline" developers). To start at the 10,000ft view, I started to make lists in order to identify the (N)eed I will attempt to fill. I'm not sure if I will be targeting consumers or business, and with a new or existing product.

When I made the lists, it became obvious the needs were different depending on whether you were selling to a consumer or a business, and whether there was existing competition or not. For example:

Consumers have a need for a new product because it:

Increases pleasure

Makes them look/feel smarter (caffeine drinks)

Makes them look/feel more attractive (clothing)

Feels/tastes/sounds good (alcohol, ice-cream, music)

Decreases pain

Stops pain (aspirin)

Avoids pain (padding)


Consumers buy your product over an existing product because?

You are better at Quality (Fudruckers)

You are better at Price (grocery store)

You are better at Convenience (McDonalds)


Businesses need your product because it:

Increases profits

Decreases expenses

Decreases time/labor

If selling to consumers, it seems a lot simpler/safer to simply beat an existing seller on Price, Quality, or Convenience, than to justify a new product ("Blue Ocean"?). If the process is the ideal way to beat them, it would seem Quality would be most directly influenced ("build a better mousetrap").

If selling to businesses, then profit, expense, and labor would all be easily effected by process improvements.

In making these lists, I am trying to identify if there is a certain category of buyer or product I should be focusing on. My "tool" to satisfy needs will be website/iphone/ipad based.

My gut instinct is that there is too much competition for typical web-surfing consumers, and targeting businesses with a SAS product (software-as-a-service) would have a lot less competition.

Any suggestions, or am I over-thinking this?

 

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[Jason K]

One thing I've noticed and had personal experience with is that there's a real need for a low-priced solution for transferring domains from one host to another. This would be for the non-techie business person who doesn't have an IT department.

Here's my example: I had a survival gear wordpress blog hosted on a friend's account. Kind of forgot he was hosting it. I got my own hosting sometime thereafter, and had my account for at least a year before this happened: someone hacked the wiki plugin. Yes, I had installed a wiki plugin to allow users to set up their own accounts and post their own content like product reviews. This plugin got hacked and suddenly 300 spam emails an hour were being sent out of my friend's account. Whoops.

And nobody told him. Suddenly his email service and hosting went down. He's a web designer, so he wasn't too happy. We talked about it. I suggested moving the site over to my account after deleting the wiki plugin.

The host told him he could do that. I tried transferring the domain over to my account, but the site kept coming up blank.

Now here's the funny, gut-bustingly but sad clown funny, thing. We both used the same hosting company. They HAD the directories and the files. They could have easily transferred them from his account to mine. But no. They referred me to an expensive 3rd party service provider. No, thank you. I took my friend to dinner and he downloaded and uploaded the files himself.

This took about 4 hours and it wasn't some crazy built-out site. Pretty basic. So if you can offer an easy, inexpensive (under $300) service to transfer websites from one host to another, you may have a winner.

Someone will probably pop up and tell me there's a dead easy way of doing this already--but the point is neither my friend or I knew about it...so neither does the average bear. Hope this helps.