Sorry once again about the pompous thread title, I still haven't gotten over the novelty of copywriting "hooks". For what it's worth, my "intro" thread has 468 views, though other threads with titles like "Hello from California" have more.
If you didn't look at my idea thread, read that one first, it explains in some more detail what I'm trying to accomplish:
https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/co...ternet-revolution-money-for-the-masses.51736/
So to summarize:
- I believe there are a large number (maybe around 60M based on a few stats I found) of working adults who are underserved by our existing financial system. They can't buy things online and they can't borrow money easily (consider every use of a credit card an instant loan, which is what it is).
- I've also spent enough time with the type of people who create internet startups to know that they don't consider this a viable target market ("You're an idiot if you're trying to make money off lazy bums, those welfare leeches won't pay you a dime!"), hence the lack of existing projects (there are only a very few).
- This is the important point, and why I wouldn't have done this five years ago - EVERYONE has mobile internet access now. Even if they can't afford their own phone they have one from their boss, or an old one from a friend. All phones are smartphones and have wifi as well as cellular internet.
Since this is a progress thread, here's the ACTION part:
- On May 15th I will have ready the following: A basic website with the Minimum Viable Product (see below for more on "Lean Startup"), along with more mundane facets like a forum and blog. These are important but will most likely be off-the-shelf components. I will also have an android app that provides the same functionality, so either the web site or the app can be used. If this sounds like an insanely aggressive schedule keep in mind I'm one of those "been coding since I was 10" dudes, so I'm leveraging this talent to the hilt. I have no experience (or likely talent) doing sales, marketing, and all that other stuff which is way more important, so at least I can compensate somewhat on the tech/actual product part of the business.
- Since I'm likely way overoptimistic on how long this will take (and any honest programmer here will tell you that a fair bit of self-delusional optimism is necessary to start a major project) I've allowed for two weeks of "slip" time, with May 28th being the "really ready now" deadline.
So what is the product? Having read about the "ghillie suit" drama on here I'm a bit hesistant to say much at this point. I will reveal that it's a product that would be useful to my target market, and be used over and over, keeping them coming back to my site/app. At the same time I don't believe I can really charge for it. In Fastlane terms this is the equivalent of the web page you put up in 20 minutes to see if people will sign up. It may seem nuts to do this much work just to see if there's a market but look at it this way...if I can get 10% of 60M people to pay me just one dollar (or equivalently, provide 6M leads to a third party at a dollar each) that's already $6M.
I'm synthesizing my process not just from TMF , but some other sources. Most significantly at this point is the "Lean Startup" methodology by Eric Ries. Although there's heavy overlap between the two there are some differences. The Fastlane method is to make one sale (or one dollar) as quickly as possible, then scale that up...it's focused on solving a need for a customer. The LS approach instead considers a startup as a scientific method for learning how to build a sustainable business, by performing a series of "experiments" each of which are designed to get closer to that goal. This methodology also puts a lot of emphasis on the idea of the "pivot"...that many startups begin by creating one product only to find that they need to make a major change to their product or business strategy. In this case I'm first creating a minimum viable product (another LS term) with no firm monetization plans, just to see how many people I can get to use it, and more importantly, to learn the characteristics of these people (hence the blog and forum, to make bidirectional communication easy and readily available from the start). I'm very confident that I've identified a target market with a general problem that isn't being sufficiently addressed by existing companies. I'm much less sure I have a good solution to this problem, and in fact I may not make any progress on that until I know much more about these people and also have something to offer potential partners/vendors (in this case, the userbase of my site/app and a lot of useful demographic and other information about them).
I'll post updates here as I get things done.
If you didn't look at my idea thread, read that one first, it explains in some more detail what I'm trying to accomplish:
https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/co...ternet-revolution-money-for-the-masses.51736/
So to summarize:
- I believe there are a large number (maybe around 60M based on a few stats I found) of working adults who are underserved by our existing financial system. They can't buy things online and they can't borrow money easily (consider every use of a credit card an instant loan, which is what it is).
- I've also spent enough time with the type of people who create internet startups to know that they don't consider this a viable target market ("You're an idiot if you're trying to make money off lazy bums, those welfare leeches won't pay you a dime!"), hence the lack of existing projects (there are only a very few).
- This is the important point, and why I wouldn't have done this five years ago - EVERYONE has mobile internet access now. Even if they can't afford their own phone they have one from their boss, or an old one from a friend. All phones are smartphones and have wifi as well as cellular internet.
Since this is a progress thread, here's the ACTION part:
- On May 15th I will have ready the following: A basic website with the Minimum Viable Product (see below for more on "Lean Startup"), along with more mundane facets like a forum and blog. These are important but will most likely be off-the-shelf components. I will also have an android app that provides the same functionality, so either the web site or the app can be used. If this sounds like an insanely aggressive schedule keep in mind I'm one of those "been coding since I was 10" dudes, so I'm leveraging this talent to the hilt. I have no experience (or likely talent) doing sales, marketing, and all that other stuff which is way more important, so at least I can compensate somewhat on the tech/actual product part of the business.
- Since I'm likely way overoptimistic on how long this will take (and any honest programmer here will tell you that a fair bit of self-delusional optimism is necessary to start a major project) I've allowed for two weeks of "slip" time, with May 28th being the "really ready now" deadline.
So what is the product? Having read about the "ghillie suit" drama on here I'm a bit hesistant to say much at this point. I will reveal that it's a product that would be useful to my target market, and be used over and over, keeping them coming back to my site/app. At the same time I don't believe I can really charge for it. In Fastlane terms this is the equivalent of the web page you put up in 20 minutes to see if people will sign up. It may seem nuts to do this much work just to see if there's a market but look at it this way...if I can get 10% of 60M people to pay me just one dollar (or equivalently, provide 6M leads to a third party at a dollar each) that's already $6M.
I'm synthesizing my process not just from TMF , but some other sources. Most significantly at this point is the "Lean Startup" methodology by Eric Ries. Although there's heavy overlap between the two there are some differences. The Fastlane method is to make one sale (or one dollar) as quickly as possible, then scale that up...it's focused on solving a need for a customer. The LS approach instead considers a startup as a scientific method for learning how to build a sustainable business, by performing a series of "experiments" each of which are designed to get closer to that goal. This methodology also puts a lot of emphasis on the idea of the "pivot"...that many startups begin by creating one product only to find that they need to make a major change to their product or business strategy. In this case I'm first creating a minimum viable product (another LS term) with no firm monetization plans, just to see how many people I can get to use it, and more importantly, to learn the characteristics of these people (hence the blog and forum, to make bidirectional communication easy and readily available from the start). I'm very confident that I've identified a target market with a general problem that isn't being sufficiently addressed by existing companies. I'm much less sure I have a good solution to this problem, and in fact I may not make any progress on that until I know much more about these people and also have something to offer potential partners/vendors (in this case, the userbase of my site/app and a lot of useful demographic and other information about them).
I'll post updates here as I get things done.
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