Hello! I’m Eric from Wisconsin. Apologies in advance for the long post but figured it would be a good jumping-off point to get any feedback and advice.
I’ve had a strong interest in starting my own business for a while, but reading Millionaire Fastlane last year really kicked things into gear and served as a large paradigm shift for me and how I should value time as my most valuable asset.
My current “day job” is in health care technology, building interfaces for medical devices. I did this in Big Tech for over 13 years but very recently was able to get out of Big Tech and work for a health care system instead. I make decent enough money and it gives me enough spare time to work on my business while still filling my most important role as a husband and dad. I see it as a way to at least get one foot out of the door of the corporate world.
As for my business, our major project right now is an app called “Drift - Discover Local” (check out our website here). The elevator pitch is that it’s a more small-business friendly alternative to something like Groupon, which takes a large cut of profit on top of the discount the business is already providing. For example, a business may provide a BOGO offer and Groupon also takes a 50% cut on the sale price, leaving the business with only 25% of the sale. Businesses also report Groupon not being a great mechanism to create repeat/motivated customers.
We saw this as an opportunity to try a different model, where we take no commissions or fees from businesses and instead generate revenue via user subscriptions. This way, we are able to get a better selection of (exclusively local) businesses on board who can set deals based on what they deem an acceptable customer acquisition cost, without having to worry about us taking a cut.
Many people may understandably say “Really? Asking customers to spend money to save money?” And I’d say that’s a fair question, but people are already doing it. I spend $130 a year on a Costco Executive Membership to save money on buying more things than I need. There are several more niche apps out there like PubPass and Hop Passport for breweries and bars where people pay money to get deals. And then there are physical passbooks like what Venture Wisconsin offers in my neck of the woods serving as both a guide and discount pass to local spots around my state. We are providing a digitized version of what these products offer and much more. We are also very privacy-focused, we do not collect any user data beyond what’s necessary to run the app and will never sell data to third parties. The subscription fee helps us stay that way.
I could keep rambling but figure it’s probably easier to explain my business by how I think it checks all the boxes for CENTS, feedback welcome.
Control - I own all of the code of my app and while it is distributed on platforms that could technically go away or delist it, they are very stable (App Store, Google Play). The app is also built on a framework (Flutter) that could be moved to be web-based/PWA without an enormous amount of effort. Its backend also could be migrated if necessary.
Entry - From a technical standpoint, even in the age of AI-aided development, building an app of this complexity requires a lot of effort and knowledge to really understand how your code works and how to fix things when they break. We’ve been building this thing in our spare time for a year now. From a business standpoint, we are building our business to be based on local relationships, putting in the face time and legwork to differentiate ourselves from a giant corporation (more on that with Scale).
Need - 2 in 3 Americans want to shop local more than they do, and one of the main contributors to that number is COST. We are providing a way for customers to discover local businesses and save money. With every business that signs up and every offer that’s added, we dynamically calculate how much their subscription is worth - so the paywall says in bold letters “this is how much your $5 a month/$40 a year can save you”. Even with the small handful of businesses we have signed up prior to launching, that number is already several hundred dollars.
Time - The app development and business relationship building is a lot of up front effort that I believe will pay off. Once we have a good stable of businesses and offers and expand to 2-3 additional markets, I enter into more of a maintenance/marketing mode where we continue to recruit new businesses and users. We have a plan to scale to additional markets through an ambassador/franchisee program, more on that with…
Scale - As I’ve been building the app, I’ve also been simultaneously building web-based administrative tools to significantly decrease the amount of manual database/administrative work I need to do. As we expand to new markets beyond our first few pilot regions, I would enlist “ambassadors” to own the local business and user recruitment. In return they get a cut of profit from subscription sign-ups in their region. This also keeps our company mission intact - having a local human to work with as a local business or customer, then critical issues/requests can be rolled up to our team as needed.
We plan on launching the app very soon (it's been approved by both Apple and Google), but one of our biggest challenges has been business recruitment. When I’m able to really show the app to business owners and get their ear for more than 30 seconds, I get genuine enthusiasm. I feel like if I can get ~10 more on board I’ll start to see a network effect, business owners talk to each other and I think some of the business recruitment will start handling itself. I’ve built additional marketing features to further differentiate ourselves from Groupon and discount books, but business owners are busy. Happy to hear advice from anyone who has had similar challenges with getting the attention of local business leaders…I’ve been considering maybe a presentation/demo at a Chamber of Commerce meeting or something similar?
Anyway, thanks so much for reading if you made it through to the end here. Excited to collaborate with other like-minded folks in this forum and learn from your knowledge and experience.
I’ve had a strong interest in starting my own business for a while, but reading Millionaire Fastlane last year really kicked things into gear and served as a large paradigm shift for me and how I should value time as my most valuable asset.
My current “day job” is in health care technology, building interfaces for medical devices. I did this in Big Tech for over 13 years but very recently was able to get out of Big Tech and work for a health care system instead. I make decent enough money and it gives me enough spare time to work on my business while still filling my most important role as a husband and dad. I see it as a way to at least get one foot out of the door of the corporate world.
As for my business, our major project right now is an app called “Drift - Discover Local” (check out our website here). The elevator pitch is that it’s a more small-business friendly alternative to something like Groupon, which takes a large cut of profit on top of the discount the business is already providing. For example, a business may provide a BOGO offer and Groupon also takes a 50% cut on the sale price, leaving the business with only 25% of the sale. Businesses also report Groupon not being a great mechanism to create repeat/motivated customers.
We saw this as an opportunity to try a different model, where we take no commissions or fees from businesses and instead generate revenue via user subscriptions. This way, we are able to get a better selection of (exclusively local) businesses on board who can set deals based on what they deem an acceptable customer acquisition cost, without having to worry about us taking a cut.
Many people may understandably say “Really? Asking customers to spend money to save money?” And I’d say that’s a fair question, but people are already doing it. I spend $130 a year on a Costco Executive Membership to save money on buying more things than I need. There are several more niche apps out there like PubPass and Hop Passport for breweries and bars where people pay money to get deals. And then there are physical passbooks like what Venture Wisconsin offers in my neck of the woods serving as both a guide and discount pass to local spots around my state. We are providing a digitized version of what these products offer and much more. We are also very privacy-focused, we do not collect any user data beyond what’s necessary to run the app and will never sell data to third parties. The subscription fee helps us stay that way.
I could keep rambling but figure it’s probably easier to explain my business by how I think it checks all the boxes for CENTS, feedback welcome.
Control - I own all of the code of my app and while it is distributed on platforms that could technically go away or delist it, they are very stable (App Store, Google Play). The app is also built on a framework (Flutter) that could be moved to be web-based/PWA without an enormous amount of effort. Its backend also could be migrated if necessary.
Entry - From a technical standpoint, even in the age of AI-aided development, building an app of this complexity requires a lot of effort and knowledge to really understand how your code works and how to fix things when they break. We’ve been building this thing in our spare time for a year now. From a business standpoint, we are building our business to be based on local relationships, putting in the face time and legwork to differentiate ourselves from a giant corporation (more on that with Scale).
Need - 2 in 3 Americans want to shop local more than they do, and one of the main contributors to that number is COST. We are providing a way for customers to discover local businesses and save money. With every business that signs up and every offer that’s added, we dynamically calculate how much their subscription is worth - so the paywall says in bold letters “this is how much your $5 a month/$40 a year can save you”. Even with the small handful of businesses we have signed up prior to launching, that number is already several hundred dollars.
Time - The app development and business relationship building is a lot of up front effort that I believe will pay off. Once we have a good stable of businesses and offers and expand to 2-3 additional markets, I enter into more of a maintenance/marketing mode where we continue to recruit new businesses and users. We have a plan to scale to additional markets through an ambassador/franchisee program, more on that with…
Scale - As I’ve been building the app, I’ve also been simultaneously building web-based administrative tools to significantly decrease the amount of manual database/administrative work I need to do. As we expand to new markets beyond our first few pilot regions, I would enlist “ambassadors” to own the local business and user recruitment. In return they get a cut of profit from subscription sign-ups in their region. This also keeps our company mission intact - having a local human to work with as a local business or customer, then critical issues/requests can be rolled up to our team as needed.
We plan on launching the app very soon (it's been approved by both Apple and Google), but one of our biggest challenges has been business recruitment. When I’m able to really show the app to business owners and get their ear for more than 30 seconds, I get genuine enthusiasm. I feel like if I can get ~10 more on board I’ll start to see a network effect, business owners talk to each other and I think some of the business recruitment will start handling itself. I’ve built additional marketing features to further differentiate ourselves from Groupon and discount books, but business owners are busy. Happy to hear advice from anyone who has had similar challenges with getting the attention of local business leaders…I’ve been considering maybe a presentation/demo at a Chamber of Commerce meeting or something similar?
Anyway, thanks so much for reading if you made it through to the end here. Excited to collaborate with other like-minded folks in this forum and learn from your knowledge and experience.
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