2012 – San Francisco…
Vitoto was a failure.
It feels good to say that. There has been an air of uncertainty around the state of the company for the last few weeks, its nice to make a decision.
Firstly, I am proud of myself for taking the shot.
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
— Wayne Gretzky
One liner:
TailSearch: Search for retail stores.
User experience:
Store experience:
Monetization:
1. Selling security tags
2. Selling monthly recurring to store for software / support
3. Making advertising / affiliate commissions from wider search network
4. Transition into POS and merchanting, take a commission on all sales.
Opportunities:
– Could crowd fund the product since its hardware (maybe? as its b2b)
– Clear acquisition targets (Google/Amazon/eBay)
Costs:
Lots of hardware bullshit to deal with
Selling won’t be easy
Medium-High switching barriers exist
I tried opening a Venturebeat article from Facebook the other day and got the below screenshot:
Just goes to show even the big brands can fall victims to problems like this. Creating a process to test problems like this on a regular basis is crucial and one of the reasons we created Process Street.
Hopefully they can fix this soon!
So I went to the hairdresser today and… you can probably guess the rest from the post title. I wanted to use my phone while getting a haircut and started to think why there was no clear window in the poncho so I could use my phone without getting hair all over it.
This kind of product would be perfect for a “Muse” (with appropriate testing first of course).
If you don’t know what a Muse is, its a concept from the book The 4 Hour Work Week, the book that inspired me to start my first internet business when I left to go travelling. It refers to a small business, usually internet based that requires very little energy to run once set up as you systemize all parts of the business (one of the things my startup Process Street is designed to help with).
I like the idea of this product because you could sell it wholesale to companies who supply hairdressers, creating a business with decently high revenue but only a few clients, 80/20 that shit (another concept from the book).
I found the above image, its kinda what im talking about except for getting a haircut.
Someone needs to make this or Evernote needs to integrate spreadsheets into their platform, because my current spreadsheet experience is pretty poor.
I currently have 13 Excel Spreadsheets open, 6 Google Doc Spreadsheets and 2 files open in CSV file editor.
Why is there no solution for me to manage this?
Here are the reasons I want this:
1) Navigation
Using Windows 7, Excel makes me click twice to change sheets, I cant split excel spreadsheets across monitors, and I am switching between excel / chrome / csv editor. Confusing and slow. With an Evernote esq app, I would have everything in one place, and could spawn off spreadsheets into new windows to do with what I needed.
2) Speed
Google Docs uses a TON of memory and I have no way to easily look up or add to spreadsheets.
3) Search
Using an Evernote style app, I should be able to insta-search any spreadsheet, or any bit of data in any spreadsheet. This would make finding data from and adding data to spreadsheets much faster and easier.
Is this something you think you would find useful?
To search on iOS 7 you need swipe down from the middle of the screen anywhere in the phone to bring up search.
NOTE: This will not work if you are in an app that uses scroll such as Safari or Mail.
Here is an example:
I was so happy when I found this I just had to share it. I LOVE this trick.
Basically, it allows you to add browser based web apps to your task bar when using chrome.
This is what it looks like:
Below is a YouTube video that shows you how to do it. Takes 2 seconds and is built into chrome.
This has already save me hours browsing through tabs and opening multiple chrome windows.
Facebook went down the other day for the first time I can remember.
Got me thinking about how much money is being lost every minute they are down.
I know individuals who spend upwards of $50,000 each day on Facebook advertising, which is actually nothing compared to the big brands.
If you take into consideration:
Facebook is SO massive that anything it does has a massive ripple effect. I once read a while back that the Facebook ecosystem had created over 220,000 jobs, that number is probably much larger now.
Crazy to think about.
I’ve been meeting lots of people and getting lots of feedback here in San Francisco.
Here are some of the consistent ingredients of successful startups I have collected from observation and feedback.
Note, these elements will probably not leave you with the next Facebok, but just know, for every Facebook, there are 1001 companies who tried to be Facebook and failed.
This is similar to what 37 Signals teaches. Basically this will remove the NEED for funding, but you can still take it if you want. It will allow you to grow based on revenues of your company, and the fact that it is recurring will create a more stable model.
Vitoto – has almost none of these ingredients. But then again, we want to be the next Facebook 😀
Quite the conundrum….