Agile Business on the Web (long)

[avfletch]

[ QUOTE ]
The piece you are missing is found in the book THE ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF NEW BUSINESSES by Amar Bhide.

The essence is taking shots at low cost, low probability, but potentially very high payoff bets.

Because of the nature of these small bets, an empirical iterative process (rather than a defined process) works best. Bhide discusses this in detail in his book, but from the other end-- he shows how corporations invest more, and have more to lose, and do not use empirical methods. Instead they use defined methods aimed at predictability.

Entreprenuers take shots in areas of rapid growth. Online dating was growing 100% a year when www.plentyoffish.com came in with the innovative freeby. The model is: spend minimal time and money predicting, and maximum time getting something out there, in a growth market or zone of activity and interest, inspecting and adapting quickly over several iterations.

30 to 50K is enough to get something "good enough" and get it out there. Amazon, Ebay, Google, YouTube, MySpace, PlentyofFish, ICQ, these are all examples of empirical winners.

Collaborate. Get it out there. Inspect, adapt, iterate.

[/ QUOTE ]

If this is the case could we see some financial calculations showing how the $30k will be invested please?

[Scorpion Man]

Mr. Now. I won't comment on the merits of your investment idea and I wish you luck. However, I started my career in venture capital and know a bit about raising money. I sent your link to a venture capital lawyer friend of mine and asked him to comment on what you are doing. Here is his reply:

"No question that it constitutes an unlawful solicitation. There's no question that you cannot offer a security (which this would constitute) to the general public without a proper prospectus. It is definitely bad news. It can result in actions by the state and federal securities regulators, as well as the capacity for investors to seek recision of their investments. Pretty crazy."



As you always say, go in peace.

[Big TR]

Maybe I missed something. Mr. Now posted that if he has 200 interested individuals, he would post all the pertinent information regarding this business venture. At this point he he would then obtain the funding from his partners.

So from my eyes, he's basically looking for pledges at this time. If he in fact gets enough pledges, it then would move to a stage where he would offer up his prospectus.

[Mr. Now]

"the money is not the point of getting together a large group. But what is, then? The trouble I see, is getting a good idea in the first place. "

Bingo.

See also:

"I’m interested in developing web sites that generate tremendous anounts of cash."

"I could do this myself..the web site may be the best idea, it may not. The web site may be successful, it may not. The timing for the web site idea may be good—the timing may be bad. "

I'm looking for the next good one, that's what the 100 are all about-- finding it.

[Mr. Now]

I give you those points. Software development (like management) certainly has its fads.

Agile and entreprenuerialism have much in common:

1. Low investment and process overhead
2. Focus on results
3. Empirical process iterations over predictability

[Scorpion Man]

[ QUOTE ]
Maybe I missed something. Mr. Now posted that if he has 200 interested individuals, he would post all the pertinent information regarding this business venture. At this point he he would then obtain the funding from his partners.

So from my eyes, he's basically looking for pledges at this time. If he in fact gets enough pledges, it then would move to a stage where he would offer up his prospectus.

[/ QUOTE ]

I am not a lawyer but I have spent a lot of years around security offerings. This IS an offering of securities. There is something called a quiet period. For example, when there is an IPO, the company can have no communication with the public thorugh the media. If a company were going public and posted something like this, the offering could easily be scuttled by the SEC. This is just an example.

[Mr. Now]

Whoops thanks for the catch

[CrayZee]

Also, I guess it's just important to get out there and play the game. There's plenty of opportunity out there. My philosophy is to try hit a bunch of singles (via an incremental innovation mentality) instead of trying to hit a grand slam paradigm shifting revolution (e.g. MySpace, Google, first GUI OS, etc.). Find some niche market, not necessarily a small audience, and improve their experience on the web.

You don't necessarily need a bunch of people for that, even to come up w/ some reasonable ideas. Dev cycles, rather than cash, are more important in the beginning stages for a start-up anyway. Of course, it helps to have a pretty wide range of skills to do this on a short-handed team (e.g. reasonable design skills, programming ability, ability to manage prima donna programmers, etc.).

If you can't tell, I'm about to dive into this sort of thing because it's my cup of tea. Poker has been a fun, and somewhat random, diversion, but it's time to focus on something else that has a great potential for me to profit. Creating things from scratch is fun, too. That's certainly something you don't get out of poker.

It also happens to be a good time to get in the game.

[Mr. Now]

Thank you for your post here. I do agree with all of it, except:

"You don't necessarily need a bunch of people for that, even to come up w/ some reasonable ideas. "

The world we live in now is amplifying crowd behavior via the web. This is seen in the stock market for example. Other forms of web-based crowd contagion include viral marketing, hoaxes and most forms of popular "culture" spread.

If you have done any experimentation with what catches on, you find that the "formula" is very hard to pin down. What catches on is difficult to know. The viral aspect (catching the attention of the crowd) is very elusive in terms of what works 'now'.

Therefore, a great many players invested with some skin in the game, colluding and collaborating and getting consensus on the next shot makes total sense. It is a form of crowd polling that probably increases EV and reduces risk.