My first idea – The beginning
It is believed that most ideas are accidental and so is my first idea. I should probably admit that it’s not entirely mine and since I’m not sure what to do about it I won’t disclose the full idea yet. But that doesn’t really matter, what matters is how I reacted to it and what I did so far. Anyways, back to my story… about a year ago my wife was searching the Internet and she got frustrated and told me, “Hey is there a way to search for X and get detailed information about Y in Montreal?”. I told her to Google it. It turned out that Googling for it was not very efficient and there was no way to get the right information in order to make a good decision about what she was looking for. In fact, using Google was a total waste of time and simply counter productive. That’s when I identified a possible opportunity and decided to dig a little deeper into the problem.
At first, I couldn’t find anything similar to what I wanted to do. I told myself that I either had a great idea or a very stupid one that no one ever thought of pursuing. This actually encouraged me to work harder. That’s when I started to write down the basic functions I would offer. Those basic functions quickly grew into a monster which would kind of make Yahoo look like a junior player. It took me a while before I could find anything close to what I wanted to do. Of course I did find some players but very small and local websites. Nothing state-wide, nothing country-wide and surely nothing “world wide” like I thought. Then I told myself “how come no one already made this? how can it be?”. Then bigger players joined and that’s when I realised that they were probably working on it while I thought about it and did nothing about it.
At first, I was despaired, I sadly told myself “there goes my idea”. I felt pretty bad about it. I really felt this would’ve been big. Bigger than what’s already out there. So I took at look at what the other players were offering. I thought it was nice but it didn’t have that “thing” that I was looking for. It surely didn’t have every function that I thought of. Perhaps 10-20% of what I designed and even that 10-20% already out there didn’t feel right. I told myself not to despair and to go ahead with the plan. When Google failed to sell Yahoo their technology, they started a business. Do you think Yahoo would like go back in time to offer those two guys what they wanted (and even more)? I bet they dream of this every day. That’s when I really told myself to do it. To go for it and kick some ass. So I did…
I talked about this plan to a good friend of mine. At first, he didn’t quite understand the whole concept. For one second, I told myself, gee, perhaps I’m wrong after all? perhaps no one cares about what I thought of? But after a while, he got it and he decided to join me in this crazy idea.
To be continued…
hi denis,
my advice on new ideas is to talk about it as much as possible. go to see other people working on the web. go to barcamps. go to the next montreal tech entrepreneur breakfast. (if you are in montreal)
you will find valuable feedback, maybe other people who want to join in as well.
often, entrepreneurs don’t want to talk about their idea. but most of the time, someone else has already though about the idea. and even if you are the first one to think about a brand new application, don’t be afraid to talk about it. noone will be able to copy it. they don’t have the same background as you. they won’t have the same vision.
by the way, if it’s your first idea, a good idea is to start small. get the core. build it. test. rinse. and repeat the cycle. otherwise you will spend months and years building your “perfect” web service (just like mycarpoolstation.com which is a bright idea, but took too much time)
Thanks Heri, I appreciate your help and I will make sure to apply them in my future startup, which I actually started this week..!
I decided to also apply some of Guy Kawazaki’s principles. No business plan, a little bit of research and thinking and then the coding phase.
There is already one competitor in my field but as you said, we don’t have exactly the same vision so I think I will go ahead. Competition can be seen as a good thing and sometimes, being the first doesn’t give you an advantage. For example, where are all the 1st generation social networks now? How about Webcrawler, Hotbot, Altavista? All great search engines that were popular a few years ago now vanished… So I think I have a chance, especially since Quebec is bilingual and “my competitor” is focusing on the USA.
We’ll see… if things go well, we might meet at the next DemoCamp :)