FreakyThomas
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Hi guys,
After years of trying to find an idea, I just picked up the least shitty one and decided to start from there.
If I check it with the CENTS framework,
Control : The control is 50-50%, because it will be a SaaS to help doctors with a service provided by another big company ; but if this company fails, someone out there will provide the same service and I'll be able to still provide value. I'll own the SaaS and do my own coding.
Entry : The bar for entry is low. There is already some competition, and people selling the same service.
Need : The need exists. I looked for it myself, and signed up for a competitor. But it lacked some functionalities. The already existing SaaS solving this need seems to thrive. It's not a vital need, but it will be felt like a good one by SOME caregivers.
Time : everything can be automated easily.
Scale : The market size could be all caregivers in the world, so it's pretty big, and since everything is automated, scalability is excellent.
I'll try to be better than the competition, by niching down, and by being an INSIDERS of the caregiver community and adjusting better to their needs. I may also have a better marketing strategy since I'm part of this community and may be in good place to know how to best reach it.
My plan is to start with this simple service, that's already offered by the competition, that have a low entry barrier, but still getting started and win my first real entrepreneur money. Then probably I'll spot more needs on the go, get better ideas, and will be on the momentum for acting on them. I've tried to come up with a better idea for years, but this approach didn't work for me, so I'm trying this one, and at least, it made me do some real stuff for once !
What do you think ?
Now, the progress :
First, I validated my idea by pre-selling to my friends. I messaged like 10 of them, and 4 accepted to gave me 20€ before I even had something to show them. That was a good sign for me that I could spend some time to build the product.
I've spent the last 2 weeks building and testing the product, my friends and I started using it since Monday. I had good results with it, in some points it's better than the competition, in some ways it lacks some non essential functionalities. Spotted some problems and solved them progressively. Now the product is very basic but solid.
One friend started using it a little since Monday too, he didn't had such good results but you need to use it a bit more to start seeing some return. It worked well beside the issues we corrected early on.
Two friends set up their accounts but didn't really use it, just sent a message to know why.
One friend is just starting his private practice and need to set some stuff first before really needing/using the product.
Next steps :
1) have some small and important improvements to do within the products, even if it's already working well.
2) set up payments and billing (I've managed everything "by hand" for now) with stripe API.
3) set up an email list with a selling email flow.
After this, the product will be able to sell "itself" and I will start to be able to give the website address so that people can sign up by themselves, and can be sold by the email flow if they don't want to sign up straight away.
4) send the address to all my relevant contacts and try to find new clients "by hand"
5) come up with a deeper marketing strategy (social medial?) while still improving the product thanks to customer feedback
6) long term plan : find and solve other needs of the same community (caregivers) and grow
6b) when I reach a significant recurrent income, I'll be able to free more time from my private practice to dedicate to the business. But since I had entrepreneurship dreams for a long time, I already designed my schedule in order to have a little time to dedicate to business endeavours.
Any thoughts ? All feedback welcome, even harsh criticizing or reality checks !
God it's good to be part of the "action" team !!!
After years of trying to find an idea, I just picked up the least shitty one and decided to start from there.
If I check it with the CENTS framework,
Control : The control is 50-50%, because it will be a SaaS to help doctors with a service provided by another big company ; but if this company fails, someone out there will provide the same service and I'll be able to still provide value. I'll own the SaaS and do my own coding.
Entry : The bar for entry is low. There is already some competition, and people selling the same service.
Need : The need exists. I looked for it myself, and signed up for a competitor. But it lacked some functionalities. The already existing SaaS solving this need seems to thrive. It's not a vital need, but it will be felt like a good one by SOME caregivers.
Time : everything can be automated easily.
Scale : The market size could be all caregivers in the world, so it's pretty big, and since everything is automated, scalability is excellent.
I'll try to be better than the competition, by niching down, and by being an INSIDERS of the caregiver community and adjusting better to their needs. I may also have a better marketing strategy since I'm part of this community and may be in good place to know how to best reach it.
My plan is to start with this simple service, that's already offered by the competition, that have a low entry barrier, but still getting started and win my first real entrepreneur money. Then probably I'll spot more needs on the go, get better ideas, and will be on the momentum for acting on them. I've tried to come up with a better idea for years, but this approach didn't work for me, so I'm trying this one, and at least, it made me do some real stuff for once !
What do you think ?
Now, the progress :
First, I validated my idea by pre-selling to my friends. I messaged like 10 of them, and 4 accepted to gave me 20€ before I even had something to show them. That was a good sign for me that I could spend some time to build the product.
I've spent the last 2 weeks building and testing the product, my friends and I started using it since Monday. I had good results with it, in some points it's better than the competition, in some ways it lacks some non essential functionalities. Spotted some problems and solved them progressively. Now the product is very basic but solid.
One friend started using it a little since Monday too, he didn't had such good results but you need to use it a bit more to start seeing some return. It worked well beside the issues we corrected early on.
Two friends set up their accounts but didn't really use it, just sent a message to know why.
One friend is just starting his private practice and need to set some stuff first before really needing/using the product.
Next steps :
1) have some small and important improvements to do within the products, even if it's already working well.
2) set up payments and billing (I've managed everything "by hand" for now) with stripe API.
3) set up an email list with a selling email flow.
After this, the product will be able to sell "itself" and I will start to be able to give the website address so that people can sign up by themselves, and can be sold by the email flow if they don't want to sign up straight away.
4) send the address to all my relevant contacts and try to find new clients "by hand"
5) come up with a deeper marketing strategy (social medial?) while still improving the product thanks to customer feedback
6) long term plan : find and solve other needs of the same community (caregivers) and grow
6b) when I reach a significant recurrent income, I'll be able to free more time from my private practice to dedicate to the business. But since I had entrepreneurship dreams for a long time, I already designed my schedule in order to have a little time to dedicate to business endeavours.
Any thoughts ? All feedback welcome, even harsh criticizing or reality checks !
God it's good to be part of the "action" team !!!
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