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Starting an eCommerce Competitive Intelligence Site

A detailed account of a Fastlane process...

openwater

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I just finished the Survivorship Bias piece in Unscripted . It got me thinking about how many graveyards full of failed business ideas there must be that we simply don't ever hear about. It bothers me that all the hard-fought lessons learned by founders never reach the next guy/girl to help them on their journey.

My motivation in starting this thread is that at least if my execution fades into oblivion, some future soul will see where I wandered into the woods and not follow the same path. It's one way I see of providing value to this great community.

With that said, my idea is well-documented in this Ideas thread. Feedback there was positive enough for me to continue on to execution (big thank you to folks who commented/voted there).

TL;DR: The plan is to build a competitive intelligence service for eCommerce entrepreneurs/businesses, with actionable insight on creating new/improving existing products.

In the past week since posting this idea, I've finished the official Django tutorial (a Python web development library) and am ready to start building an MVP. It will be a long process because I've never built a (non-WP) website before. I do have good experience with Python which helps.

My goals:
  • Create a barebones MVP without getting sucked into the web development rabbit hole and losing motivation. I want to build this site with Django primarily, with some borrowed HTML from wherever I can find it. If I can get traction, I think I will shift to reinvesting earnings into outsourced web development to improve the site (unless I'm knowledgeable enough to make the changes myself).
  • Long-term (next three years) the goal is to replace my income from my current Slowlane job. I want to be cognizant of whether or not I am on the right "road" and pivot early on if needed. My first major milestone is MRR of $1000, at which point I would not be replacing my income, but I would feel ready to quit and go all-in on the business.

My whys:
  • My major WHY is to free my time to help my parents when they become frail. I don't want to have to choose between keeping my Slowlane job and caring for/spending time with my parents in their final years. I'm sure most of us have some experience with this type of dilemma and the slow-burn regret it causes that never quite goes away.
  • I have a selfish WHY involving a sibling rivalry ;)
  • Finally, I need to free myself and my significant other from our life-draining job commitments.

My next steps:
  • In contrast to what I wrote in the above thread, I've realized that learning React (front-end language) would be action-faking and probably a waste of time. Armed with Django and some HTML I should be able to create an MVP. With that said, I now need to:
    1. Create my back-end with Django
    2. Collect/scrape the necessary data from the web
    3. Analyze and transform this data into digestible content
    4. Set up a pipe to feed this content through to my Django backend
    5. Figure out how to visualize this content on the front-end without inducing nausea for users
    6. At some point during the above steps, create a landing page (thank you @Vadim26 for this advice in the above thread) to generate a first-access user list and get ideas on what customers ultimately want
I anticipate that progress on here will be slow for a while as I smash my head into brick wall after brick wall figuring out how to build this MVP. From there it will pick up, and perhaps a year from now I can tell you about hitting my first MRR milestone :smile:

Thank you for reading. Happy to answer any questions or discuss feedback. In the meantime, back to work! :bicep:
 
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openwater

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So I came head-to-head with my first major roadblock and was close to giving up...

Long story short, my original method of gathering data is not possible (the gatekeeping on it is much stricter than I originally thought). I'm grateful to have run into this issue sooner than later.

There is an alternative method of gathering data (web scraping), but to keep this idea exactly the same, this would be building the company on too shaky a foundation. I'm trying my best to take the Commandment of Control as an absolute MUST HAVE.

One interesting question for the forum may be - does a business predicated on serving web scraped data violate the Commandment of Control?

I've personally made up my mind that this does violate Control. The legality of web scraping is squishy. I would most likely be violating at least one website"Terms of Service". If Control is the foundation for the house, I don't want to be building on sand where one cease and desist letter can end me.

Interesting read for anyone considering this question that helped me make up my mind: Web Scraping and Crawling Are Perfectly Legal, Right?

Instead of giving up I'm pivoting instead. The net of it is I can't report data as granularly as I would like to, so takeaways and insights will be higher-level. This will shift the target audience dramatically.

I need to think on:
  • Who exactly seeks product insights at a higher level (ex. VPs instead of solo entrepreneurs)?
  • How does this pivot change the MVP I need to deliver?
  • Execution of the new methodology for collecting intelligence.
Ultimately, a definite lesson learned today - when it's tough, find a way to keep going forward.
 

openwater

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Hi folks,

I've been spending time on data analysis and mockups for the MVP. I'll spend another week or two creating barebones data visualizations that communicate the distilled value add of this product.

Also decided on a website name (with the help of a few friends). This was a crucial step to set up a landing page in the near future to gauge interest. The landing page will leverage some screenshots of the visuals from the barebones data visualizations from above.

The plan is for the brand to be light and personable (avoiding taking itself too seriously) while analytical and data-driven. Kind of like that charismatic guy you know who's also a geek at heart!

Good progress so far. One thing I've been putting off but know I need to do is creating an LLC (or similar).

The mountain still looks unscalable from here but taking this one step at a time!
 

openwater

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Checking in - currently tumbling down the rabbit hole of scientific papers on how to implement what I'm trying to do :happy:

Long story short, there are two options:
  1. State-of-the-art implementation using the latest advances in machine learning. Estimated time to get working is unknown since I'd have to do a lot more research, digging, and playing around.
  2. Decades-old methodology that probably delivers 50% of what #1 delivers. Estimated time to get working is about a week.
While the curious and perfectionist part of me wants to go with #1, I know I need to just do #2 and get on with it. If there is interest/traction, $ can be invested in making the system better.

I would be somewhat embarrassed releasing a product that leverages #2, but that's exactly what Eric Ries advises.

I also think #1 would have me relying on some black-box deep learning methodologies where I wouldn't be able to tweak the model for exactly what I need it to do, which I think is somewhat a violation of Control. I don't want to rely on someone else's code for the main product feature and not fully understand what it's doing.
 
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openwater

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It's been a little while. Did you think I'd quit so easily?

The coding to get the actual market intelligence data is more time consuming than I had originally thought.

Two insights so far that well-mirror what is in Unscripted :

1. When I remember that every difficulty I face here is a barrier to entry for potential competitors, it makes the struggle seem well-justified instead of simply grueling, and I'm motivated to keep working.

2. I've noticed a change where, in the past I would want something to look perfect before moving on, but now I'm constantly reminding myself to see the bigger picture. If I perfect something that nobody wants, it's a waste. I need to get something out there even if what got it there is not pretty or elegant. If there is traction, then I can go back and improve on it.

I'm at a point where for each product, I have a set of descriptive statistics about the market's opinion. The data is incredibly messy, and much of it is meaningless, so the next step is to find a method of filtering out the noise.

Once the signal is clear from the noise, I'm going to move on and visualize some of these statistics. I may post some of those visuals here for folks to see the progress.

As far as process, I've begun tracking my "deep work" hours spent on the project. The day job is quite demanding, but I have a plan to spend at least 11 hours per week on this. Not as much as I'd like, but it's a realistic number.

I know that if this gets traction, I'll be 100% willing to jump into it and leave the day job to have a real shot. I want at least one paying customer before making this leap.

Until next time!
 

OverByte

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Glad you're continually pushing ahead.

Re: webscraping... definitely a gray area. I believe LinkedIn lost their case which set a bit of a precedent but I'm not a lawyer and I would agree it violates control.

That being said, there are a lot of successful businesses which rely on webscraping which almost certainly violate the ToS of the scraped sites.

Agreed though its shaky foundation to build upon. It would be nice if there was more clarity on it but that is a tangent.

How did you get around this for your business, did you find the data through another means?
 

openwater

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Thanks!

Agreed on web scraping - it looks like it really could go either way. Although your mentioning that there are some well-established businesses that web scrape gives me some confidence.

How did you get around this for your business, did you find the data through another means?

Great question. After thinking long and hard - and almost trashing this idea overall - it seemed to make more sense to keep going and pivot what the business delivers to customers.

So, for example, instead of providing ultra-fine-grained analytics at the lowest level possible (the level of the scraped data), we are aggregating and reporting the analysis at a higher level (think book review instead of the whole book).

The assumption is that by obfuscating scraped data to a higher level and baking some "value-added" insight to it, now:

a) The site no longer point-for-point copies and republishes the original site's data. From my research it looks like sites mostly just get angry/vengeful if you copy their stuff as your own - for example, pricing data or advertising copy.

b) There is precedence for a company's abstracted analytics being its own creative entity. An anecdote may be someone who makes a living creating YouTube video summaries of published books. My understanding is that these creations are protected in their own right, or else these videos (and all book summary blog posts / websites) would be litigated endlessly.

Hope this answers your question. It's not a complete solution, and there is some lingering inherent risk, but it's at least hedging toward much more certainty and control than the original solution.
 
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sparechange

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Seems interesting, selling shovels instead of digging yourself.
 

openwater

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Seems interesting, selling shovels instead of digging yourself.

Thanks - that is exactly right. There are folks out there killing it at the actual digging, figure I'll help them out!

As an aside, love the Felix Dennis quote. "How to Get Rich" is a wonderful book.
 

serge94

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Nice, following!

You seem very knowledgeable so I’m sure you probably know this already but have you thought about testing the idea with pre-orders? So you won’t have to go through the perfection struggle?Just do a deck/video/designs and a landing page and see how many people actually want to buy. And if it’s a winner, only then spend time developing the solution. My 2c.

Good luck!
 
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Silverfox148

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With regards to web scraping , companies such as Akamai have built solutions to prevent/block web scraping of information for their clients. Some companies are beginning to implement this and the filter/detection is decent on the solutions and will only get better. There are always ways to get around it , but if you are starting from scratch, what's the point?

On the coding front, most code written today for any Web Solution isn't really that great, I'm an excellent ReactJS developer and the amount of chest thumping about how great people's code/solutions are is no different than Wall Street brokers beating their chests about how great they are, it's a bunch of bullshit. Don't be intimidated by it, I can tell you have an analytical mind and would be better than 80% of coders out there if you study and apply yourself on the coding front.
 

openwater

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Nice, following!

You seem very knowledgeable so I’m sure you probably know this already but have you thought about testing the idea with pre-orders? So you won’t have to go through the perfection struggle?Just do a deck/video/designs and a landing page and see how many people actually want to buy. And if it’s a winner, only then spend time developing the solution. My 2c.

Good luck!

Thanks serge! I've a background in data analytics but am new to entrepreneurship, so your recommendation is a great one and much appreciated. It's a good reminder to get something out quickly.

I'm thinking that the landing page / deck / video will have screenshots of very basic visualizations that capture 80% of the value of the product. This is the main milestone I'm pushing toward right now (which to your point I thought would have been done by now). It's also a bit of a proof-of-concept of the methodology to see if there's anything useful to be gleaned.

With that said, it could very well be that the optimal path is to just create some mockups of what I think the end result will look like and start contacting folks. I clearly need to give this some more thought and be honest about the best path forward!

I notice that you run a SaaS product - can I ask, did you follow a similar path of marketing the idea for traction first, then focusing on development? Was there any ill will from pre-order customers for having to wait a while for the full product to be developed?

Thank you for the great insight.
 

openwater

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With regards to web scraping , companies such as Akamai have built solutions to prevent/block web scraping of information for their clients. Some companies are beginning to implement this and the filter/detection is decent on the solutions and will only get better. There are always ways to get around it , but if you are starting from scratch, what's the point?

Very interesting - I hadn't heard of Akamai but after digging around on their site you're right, they sound like a formidable bot blocker.

The current thinking is - if I can view a webpage as a human without a login, I can collect that information with a bot as long as I am respectful of the website servers (not sending thousands of requests per minute).

On this foundation of respecting the targets' servers, there are a few other tricks to get past bot detection - all of which I consider to help build the "Entry" of CENTS and prevent others from trying to replicate this solution.

But you're absolutely right in that this is unproven and bot detection may make this idea unusable. I'm getting pretty close to the chunk of time I've dedicated to building the scraping engine so I'll report back on that soon.

On the coding front, most code written today for any Web Solution isn't really that great, I'm an excellent ReactJS developer and the amount of chest thumping about how great people's code/solutions are is no different than Wall Street brokers beating their chests about how great they are, it's a bunch of bullshit. Don't be intimidated by it, I can tell you have an analytical mind and would be better than 80% of coders out there if you study and apply yourself on the coding front.

Haha I like this analogy - it makes the effort of coding my own solution much less intimidating. Thank you!
 
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serge94

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I notice that you run a SaaS product - can I ask, did you follow a similar path of marketing the idea for traction first, then focusing on development? Was there any ill will from pre-order customers for having to wait a while for the full product to be developed?

Thank you for the great insight.

I wish I did. Unfortunately, even though I thought I knew what I was doing, I made every mistake in the book.

One way to avoid ill will would be to offer limited early access and market it as such (eg. early access discount). Be upfront with the fact that you're still working on it and offer a refund policy. Not sure if that would be the best way but that's how I'd do it.
 

openwater

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I wish I did. Unfortunately, even though I thought I knew what I was doing, I made every mistake in the book.

One way to avoid ill will would be to offer limited early access and market it as such (eg. early access discount). Be upfront with the fact that you're still working on it and offer a refund policy. Not sure if that would be the best way but that's how I'd do it.

Absolutely makes sense, great idea!

I also appreciate the early caution you're giving me on validating the product. Thinking more on your input, I'm honestly realizing it would be silly for me to charge ahead with the coding without hitting the pavement and getting some actual feedback on people's pain points before moving forward with this. I've got a few votes in a poll on a post in this forum saying this is a good idea, but that's almost certainly not enough to justify the time required to get to an MVP.

Starting to uncover some personal biases/beliefs/bullshit here (learning that I'm more inclined to sit at a keyboard and code instead of reaching out to people).

You may have just saved me a whole lot of effort. Thanks again!
 

openwater

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Hey guys,

Final update for the time being.

It's been a hell of a week of learning and reflection. I spent a lot of time going through old threads in the forum, especially Dane Maxwell's incredible AMA, then proceeded to read his book.

I've come to realize a few things:
  • For me, coding is action faking. It invokes the parts of myself that are perfectionist and can take a task that should be one hour and work on it for ten.
  • My biggest weakness is salesmanship, reaching out to cold contacts, copywriting, etc. This is my area of biggest fear as well, and quite clearly what I need to dig into, and what would be the best leveraged use of my time.
  • The "mechanism" I'm building is not what I need to focus on. I need to focus on getting results for customers. If you asked me the result for the idea in this thread, I honestly couldn't tell you (better profits? customer satisfaction? fewer returns?). I was relying on a whiz-bang cool AI/NLP application that would make me feel cool and smart instead of focusing on the actual pain points of customers.
With that said, I think I need to cut this one short and go back to the drawing board. I've already sent some cold emails to start understanding what people actually need. (Relatedly, if you're in eCommerce and you don't mind my asking you a few questions about your insight on problems in the space, please PM me.)

I'm hoping that my being completely honest here and basically retiring this thread is more valuable to folks than just abandoning it without further explanation. It sucks to see that this failed but I think that I've learned a hell of a lot during this cycle. I'm still on the road, just taking a different one.

Thanks all for your thoughts and contributions to this. Seriously grateful for the support and wisdom in this community.

Take care!
 
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openwater

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Quick update here. I intend to stay in the eCommerce space, and like the above post mentioned, find the actual pain points of eCommerce folks before building a product.

I'm having a difficult time so far getting business owners to talk to me. For your entertainment, here's one response I got:

34875

Ouch. She's not wrong.

(To be honest I haven't yet developed the thick skin I need to cold contact people, so this one hit harder than it probably should have.)

Other than emailing eCommerce businesses to try to get them on the phone to discuss their needs, I'm not completely sure how to move forward. If I try calling them I'll be put on the phone with some outsourced Zendesk employee.

Maybe I need to find a way to provide more tangible value as a quid-pro-quo to get them to speak with me... attach some summarized research of best practices for eCommerce companies?

One option is to just ignore these responses and keep reaching out via email until I get some hits, and treat it as a numbers game.

What do you think? If my strategy requires me to find the need / pain first, should I pivot to a space where I can more easily get the business owner on the phone (restaurant, yoga studio, etc.), or should I persist?
 

MHP368

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I've already sent some cold emails to start understanding what people actually need.
yeh market research is important.
Other than emailing eCommerce businesses to try to get them on the phone to discuss their needs, I'm not completely sure how to move forward.
how many ecom store owners are on this very website opening up about their struggles?
What do you think? If my strategy requires me to find the need / pain first, should I pivot to a space where I can more easily get the business owner on the phone (restaurant, yoga studio, etc.), or should I persist?
seems like gartner already did the heavy lifting for you and this blog summarized it
 

openwater

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OverByte

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Another idea is to do exactly what the lady said, start your own e-commerce business and figure out the pain points. That is actually why I got into e-commerce (as a developer), in addition to growing the e-com business I'm also dog-fooding my own software which I plan to productize. As a bonus it will also teach you about sales and gives you your first user.
 

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Hey guys,

Final update for the time being.

It's been a hell of a week of learning and reflection. I spent a lot of time going through old threads in the forum, especially Dane Maxwell's incredible AMA, then proceeded to read his book.

I've come to realize a few things:
  • For me, coding is action faking. It invokes the parts of myself that are perfectionist and can take a task that should be one hour and work on it for ten.
  • My biggest weakness is salesmanship, reaching out to cold contacts, copywriting, etc. This is my area of biggest fear as well, and quite clearly what I need to dig into, and what would be the best leveraged use of my time.
  • The "mechanism" I'm building is not what I need to focus on. I need to focus on getting results for customers. If you asked me the result for the idea in this thread, I honestly couldn't tell you (better profits? customer satisfaction? fewer returns?). I was relying on a whiz-bang cool AI/NLP application that would make me feel cool and smart instead of focusing on the actual pain points of customers.
With that said, I think I need to cut this one short and go back to the drawing board. I've already sent some cold emails to start understanding what people actually need. (Relatedly, if you're in eCommerce and you don't mind my asking you a few questions about your insight on problems in the space, please PM me.)

I'm hoping that my being completely honest here and basically retiring this thread is more valuable to folks than just abandoning it without further explanation. It sucks to see that this failed but I think that I've learned a hell of a lot during this cycle. I'm still on the road, just taking a different one.

Thanks all for your thoughts and contributions to this. Seriously grateful for the support and wisdom in this community.

Take care!
Have you tried to send them free report that you wil lthink it will benefit them ? then call them to ask them if they are interested in more , if the info they find really useful for them they will want more .
Keep in mind , dont assume they know what is it about .

To be honest finding a top in category products is something good to know but not that important, here I am talking as a former e-commerce owner and for simple reason , because such product already have low margins that only ebay and amazon sellers can make money from them .
Beside that Alibaba and aliexpress already show you what currently people are buying .
 
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openwater

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Another idea is to do exactly what the lady said, start your own e-commerce business and figure out the pain points. That is actually why I got into e-commerce (as a developer), in addition to growing the e-com business I'm also dog-fooding my own software which I plan to productize. As a bonus it will also teach you about sales and gives you your first user.

I love it. Initially I was closed off to this idea because it seemed a long way around of understanding eCommerce as opposed to just asking folks in the space.

But your points about learning sales and learning the pain points on a personal level are spot on. Additionally it would provide much better credibility - I can imagine eCommerce business owners naturally asking "what right does someone who has never been in eCommerce have to tell me how to run my shop?"

Thanks for the thoughtful response OverByte - lots that I will be thinking about here.
 
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openwater

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To be honest finding a top in category products is something good to know but not that important, here I am talking as a former e-commerce owner and for simple reason , because such product already have low margins that only ebay and amazon sellers can make money from them .
Beside that Alibaba and aliexpress already show you what currently people are buying .

Very interesting - this is a valuable insight. To your point, if someone is already struggling for margin, they are likely not going to be open to dropping more cash on a software offering without seeing some serious value (seeing top items/features per category may not be enough value).

+1 reason why it's probably good to have ditched the original unvalidated idea in this thread. Thank you AppMan!
 

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Quick update here. I intend to stay in the eCommerce space, and like the above post mentioned, find the actual pain points of eCommerce folks before building a product.

I'm having a difficult time so far getting business owners to talk to me. For your entertainment, here's one response I got:

View attachment 34875

Ouch. She's not wrong.

(To be honest I haven't yet developed the thick skin I need to cold contact people, so this one hit harder than it probably should have.)

Other than emailing eCommerce businesses to try to get them on the phone to discuss their needs, I'm not completely sure how to move forward. If I try calling them I'll be put on the phone with some outsourced Zendesk employee.

Maybe I need to find a way to provide more tangible value as a quid-pro-quo to get them to speak with me... attach some summarized research of best practices for eCommerce companies?

One option is to just ignore these responses and keep reaching out via email until I get some hits, and treat it as a numbers game.

What do you think? If my strategy requires me to find the need / pain first, should I pivot to a space where I can more easily get the business owner on the phone (restaurant, yoga studio, etc.), or should I persist?
Most likely it was vague because context was missing.

I didnt see the original email but something like:

I'm working on developing a solution that solves a real problem that exists in this industry.

And then go into it...

..But I may be missing context. Hopefully that helps.
 

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