So here it goes, I want to share my business partner and my journey. We are on the ground floor right now, well, we're on the elevator up from the parking garage to the ground floor actually.
Where it all started
My business partner and good friend sent a business audio book with a ridiculous name. Come on, who didn't smirk when they saw the title of TMF ? Haha. I spend 9-10 hours a day in my car at my territory sales job and I though, why not, my current science fiction read is getting boring. My friend has always had the heart and soul of an entrepreneur. I always joked with my wife and mutual friends that if him and I went into business together some day, we'd take over the world. As I listened to TMF , I wracked my brain every few minutes for an idea. Then it hit me. MJ said, "find a fragmented industry and bring it together" (or something like that). I swear, I could see the cartoon light bulb hovering over my head as I texted my friend 15 times in quick succession "call me now! I have our idea!" While waiting for him to get out of a meeting, I pulled over at a gas station, grabbed a hotel notepad I swiped from a work trip the previous week and wrote 2 pages of bullet point ideas. He called, I word vomitted, we agreed. This idea is GOLD.
What it is
Ok so no, as I've had suggested and also seen in other progress threads, im not divulging my business model or idea quite yet. Once we go live and running, you'll see. But here's the basic idea.
We will be a website and companion app based business. Just him and I. No needed employees. Think www.ratemyprofessor.com. For any of you between 16-35, you probably visited this site once if you went to college. RMP.com is a template for our business. (This has nothing to do with academia) Is there a need for it? Absolutely. Is there competition? Yes, one poorly designed website that isn't even running yet.
How will we monetize it?
The website will have 3-4 streams of income. The website will be free to the end user. The business that we are targeting will pay a monthly subscription fee. We will also put minimal ads on our site, not landing page, and on the app. We will start with google ads, once we have the site traffic we will be able to target big producer companies for ads. We will also allow businesses to upgrade premium options and send out app notifications to their customers in a geographic location. Lastly, we hope to allow the businesses to conduct credit card transactions through our app, which we will collect a 1-2% transaction fee from.
Our progress so far
For the few who saw my initial thread, you know we are starting to develope our website. As of now we have the domain and hosting. We are submitting our LLC paperwork shortly.
I have a childhood friend, who along with one of his friends, are both excellent coders. They have both done impressive work in the private sector. They told us writing this app would be easy. They're both looking to start their own software agency. Good news, we're both start ups. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. We haven't started negation yet, but they indicated they don't expect a huge lump sum $$$ and we are hoping we can offer them an equity stake or royalty as compensation.
Over the next 2 weeks we will launch a proof of concept website on our own, collect google analytics data and collect email addresses through user sign ups. We also plan on targeting trade groups, Facebook groups, blogs, etc pertaining to this industry to get users over to our site.
I have a notebook of my plans and ideas for this business, a timeline to accomplish milestones and a list of ways to achieve each one. I cannot wait to share my success AND failures with y'all. I know that my successes will be greater than my uh-Ohs.
Where it all started
My business partner and good friend sent a business audio book with a ridiculous name. Come on, who didn't smirk when they saw the title of TMF ? Haha. I spend 9-10 hours a day in my car at my territory sales job and I though, why not, my current science fiction read is getting boring. My friend has always had the heart and soul of an entrepreneur. I always joked with my wife and mutual friends that if him and I went into business together some day, we'd take over the world. As I listened to TMF , I wracked my brain every few minutes for an idea. Then it hit me. MJ said, "find a fragmented industry and bring it together" (or something like that). I swear, I could see the cartoon light bulb hovering over my head as I texted my friend 15 times in quick succession "call me now! I have our idea!" While waiting for him to get out of a meeting, I pulled over at a gas station, grabbed a hotel notepad I swiped from a work trip the previous week and wrote 2 pages of bullet point ideas. He called, I word vomitted, we agreed. This idea is GOLD.
What it is
Ok so no, as I've had suggested and also seen in other progress threads, im not divulging my business model or idea quite yet. Once we go live and running, you'll see. But here's the basic idea.
We will be a website and companion app based business. Just him and I. No needed employees. Think www.ratemyprofessor.com. For any of you between 16-35, you probably visited this site once if you went to college. RMP.com is a template for our business. (This has nothing to do with academia) Is there a need for it? Absolutely. Is there competition? Yes, one poorly designed website that isn't even running yet.
How will we monetize it?
The website will have 3-4 streams of income. The website will be free to the end user. The business that we are targeting will pay a monthly subscription fee. We will also put minimal ads on our site, not landing page, and on the app. We will start with google ads, once we have the site traffic we will be able to target big producer companies for ads. We will also allow businesses to upgrade premium options and send out app notifications to their customers in a geographic location. Lastly, we hope to allow the businesses to conduct credit card transactions through our app, which we will collect a 1-2% transaction fee from.
Our progress so far
For the few who saw my initial thread, you know we are starting to develope our website. As of now we have the domain and hosting. We are submitting our LLC paperwork shortly.
I have a childhood friend, who along with one of his friends, are both excellent coders. They have both done impressive work in the private sector. They told us writing this app would be easy. They're both looking to start their own software agency. Good news, we're both start ups. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. We haven't started negation yet, but they indicated they don't expect a huge lump sum $$$ and we are hoping we can offer them an equity stake or royalty as compensation.
Over the next 2 weeks we will launch a proof of concept website on our own, collect google analytics data and collect email addresses through user sign ups. We also plan on targeting trade groups, Facebook groups, blogs, etc pertaining to this industry to get users over to our site.
I have a notebook of my plans and ideas for this business, a timeline to accomplish milestones and a list of ways to achieve each one. I cannot wait to share my success AND failures with y'all. I know that my successes will be greater than my uh-Ohs.
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