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Verification of the Commandment of Need

Tomas J

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Hi there,

firstly I need to really appreciate the Millionaire Fastlane and the Unscripted books as both helped me to aim my focus the right way (so far I can tell :smile:).

Recently I came up with an idea... I would like to create an internet platform that would connect people with different levels of knowledge in a particular area (already know what that area will be) who would like to share/teach/train others in that area with people who would like to get better in it.

On one hand, I would get customers for the providers via the optimized platform so the provider who is good in something, but not in getting customers, still could get plenty of them. On the other hand, I would like to create a pretty big catalog of these providers with reviews and references. That means that the customer could choose the best fitting provider for him/her (not only by expertize in that particular skill but also by other factors which will be evident from reviews, eg. empathy).

I know "someone is doing that" is not a problem, but as far as I know, there is no such platform in the exact area that I would like to focus on.

CENTS COMMANDMENTS
I was thinking about the idea from a variety of angles and talk about it with some business-interested friends and the outcome is that it meets 4 out of 5 CENTS Commandments - control, entry, time and scale, but I have no idea if it meets the Commandment of Need (few friends tell me, that it is an amazing idea, but I would still like to really verify that before starting).

I find it quite difficult how to verify if my idea meets the Commandment of Need when I have no real competitor. I've come up with these ideas:

1) To disseminate Google Forms in various facebook groups.
2) To write threads/polls on forums like Quora.


Of course in both points, the form/thread would be created in a way that would help me to discover if there is a demand for my idea.

If anyone had more tips on how to verify the idea, I would be very grateful.

TECHNICAL WORK
Considering the web creation, I am not good in this area and I would like to focus on other things in the business than the technical work.

I've come up with some possibilities:

1) To let some agency/freelancer create the platform for me and pay them for the work done.
2) To find someone who is really good at the technical work and would work on the whole idea with me, I mean like a partner.

I know that both the above-mentioned possibilities have its pros and cons, but I am pretty inexperienced in this area so I am here to please for your advice. :smile2:

Which of these possibilities do you consider better?
Do you have any recommendations or warnings on this matter?

Many thanks for any response on this thread, I tried to be as brief as possible, but at the same time to mention everything essential, if anything was unclear, I would love to explain it further.

Feel free to contact me via inbox.

Tomas
 
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Andy Black

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MJ DeMarco

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What is the size of your market? Like, how many people do you estimate are involved in the space?
 

Tomas J

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What is the size of your market? Like, how many people do you estimate are involved in the space?
Thanks for your response!

I would say hundreds of potential service providers and thousands (10k+) of customers in the Czech Republic, but that's a raw estimation.

Worldwide it would be much more.

The thing is, that the service provider must be in the same location as the customer because they would physically meet each other (let's say, that it would work somehow like Uber). That's the reason why I plan to start in our small country, maybe only in the capital city for the start - I can get those service providers, in a relatively small location, on board quite easy and when the customer visits the platform for the first time, he/she would find a variety of service providers in the particular area.

If the customers would like the platform, it should be quite "easy" to scale it up to a larger area - then sky's the limit.

I don't feel good starting it with no numbers behind the verification, because the creation of the platform would be no joke (a lot of my time spend/a lot of money invested/both)...

That brings me to the second thing. I am forth year law student so I have no real experience in website creation and I have no relevant sum of money on my bank account. What do you consider as the best option?

1) Learn all the process of website creation from A to Z myself.
2) Saving as much money as I can
(through the "standard" job) and hire some agency to do the tech work for me.
3) Find some "tech guy" who would start the business with me
(the business would have a form of a corporation with limited liability).

Again, thanks for your response, I really appreciate that.
 
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Tomas J

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Welcome. Thanks for your first post.

Maybe check out this recent thread:
Thank you!

I am not sure if I can apply your opinion... The thing is, that I would not provide the service myself, so I can't start helping one person right ahead.

Once the platform would be active, it can help thousands of people (let's say instantly). But to create the platform, I need to:

a) spend a lot of time creating it myself
b) spend a lot of time, saving money for some agency to create the platform for me
c) spend a lot of time finding the right "tech guy" who would start the business with me and do the technical work

...in either case, it means investing a lot of time and energy.

I would prefer to know if the time and energy are worth investing in that particular idea. I understand that I would never know it 100%, but I still consider it better to do some research before starting.

Thanks a lot.
 

Andy Black

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I can't start helping one person right ahead.

Once the platform would be active, it can help thousands of people (let's say instantly).
I'm curious...
  • Why can't you help one person now?
  • How will you help thousands if you can't help one?
  • When you build the platform, how will you get people to it so you can help them?
 

Tomas J

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  • I can help one person but in a totally different way... let's say that I can connect the person I know that wants to get better at something with someone who knows how to do it and wants to teach it, that's no problem and I am already doing that with my friends. But that does not verify anything because I am actively connecting these people while in the case of a platform that should be a place, where they meet without my additional activity - my business won't be actively connecting people, but creating a "place" where they can connect if they want (and I suppose that they will, because it solves a problem).. I don't know if it's clear, but I find it quite different. Let's suppose that I apply your strategy and will connect people actively and "manually" at what point should I create the platform?
  • That's not that I can't help one. I can't help one in the exact same way that I would help thousands (more above). The process would be different.
  • By actively promoting it through my friends, recommendations, university press, social networks and so on.. I also expect to pay some traffic, at least in the very beginning to speed it up and to get it into general awareness.
 
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Andy Black

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  • I can help one person but in a totally different way... let's say that I can connect the person I know that wants to get better at something with someone who knows how to do it and wants to teach it, that's no problem and I am already doing that with my friends. But that does not verify anything because I am actively connecting these people while in the case of a platform that should be a place, where they meet without my additional activity - my business won't be actively connecting people, but creating a "place" where they can connect if they want (and I suppose that they will, because it solves a problem).. I don't know if it's clear, but I find it quite different. Let's suppose that I apply your strategy and will connect people actively and "manually" at what point should I create the platform?
  • That's not that I can't help one. I can't help one in the exact same way that I would help thousands (more above). The process would be different.
  • By actively promoting it through my friends, recommendations, university press, social networks and so on.. I also expect to pay some traffic, at least in the very beginning to speed it up and to get it into general awareness.
Cool. So you are already doing it manually. I didn't realise.

Can you create a Facebook group or a Slack group and invite people into it and let them connect? Focus on getting both sides of the market into the group first, so you know you can? Then build something based on what’s missing?
 

Tomas J

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Can you create a Facebook group or a Slack group and invite people into it and let them connect? Focus on getting both sides of the market into the group first, so you know you can? Then build something based on what’s missing?
That's definitely possible, but part of the added value of the platform (and I would say that it is an important part) should be the possibility of the customer to choose from a lot of providers based on the reviews and references of others.

I mentioned Uber in my response to MJ.. let's suppose that I would like to create something like that (actually I aim at a totally different market) but what I like the most about that is the fact that I can verify in advance that the driver that I am taking is someone responsible and so on - based on the references. So I use the app instead of using normal taxi (you don't know who will be your driver in advance) because of just that added value (it ads value also in different aspects, but this is the most important thing for me).

If I create n FB group, I would connect the people, but that's still not it, the main value that I want to provide is missing.
 

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