An Example of Startup Challenges
This is a response to Andy Liu’s post on startup challenges. Andy is a serial entrepreneur that regularly busts out some of the most intelligent commentary in our industry, and is a must read and follow if you are into internet marketing at all.
I guess I have a different meaning of the word ’startup’ than most, I have on average 3-4 ’startups’ a month. To me it’s nothing more than an idea, and the 4 D’s. Design, Develop, Deploy, Dominate. If I can’t do any of those, the ’startup’ goes out the window. My advantage over most entrepreneurs is I can code reasonably well, at least well enough to build a prototype of the idea. If that prototype ends up proving the idea, I have it rebuilt by people much more proficient than I in the php arts, and begin the Domination.
Sometimes I come up with an idea out of the blue, sometimes I will look at someone else’s idea and say ‘Hey they suck I can do that way better’, sometimes I just browse the Sedo domain auctions or Flippa and look at what’s out there for some inspiration. My current idea / startup is a combo of those.
A few years back I was craving some food from a local restaurant, Lotsa Pasta. I didn’t have their number so I typed lotsapasta.com into my browser. To my surprise the domain was parked and for sale. I thought it was weird but whatever I just googled them and found their number. As I was putting my order in, I looked more at the google local result and saw their domain was actually yumm.com. When I got through with my order, I asked to speak to the owner and found out I already was, and asked her if I could meet with her regarding her site. Long story somewhat short, I ended up buying the lotsapasta.com domain and building them out a new site in exchange for the yumm.com domain. It’s a killer domain for several reasons, it’s size, pronunciation, age, etc. I just have never had the right idea for it. Sometimes the name comes before the idea.
Now I have a killer idea for my killer domain, and want to move forward. Without giving too much away, my plan is to make it a site about recipes. My challenge is that the recipe space is already dominated by large sites. So assuming I can do the first three D’s, how do we Dominate?
First and foremost I want to build an awesome service. I have a few rules for this, 1) My Mom has to be able to use it and like it, and 2) It has to be something so cool you would tell your friends because you think they would enjoy it. I am still debating charging for the service, but will probably leave it free because I like free stuff and I think other people do too. Bottom line, make something too cool to not spread the word about.
Building in tools so people can share it is crucial. It’s too easy to say “Oh so and so would really enjoy this I am going to tell them” and then forget about it. If there is a share button right there where you can post it to your twitter, facebook, email, whatever it’s much easier. So yeah, obviously make it so it has the capability to go viral.
One thing I can do pretty well is SEO. One facet of Yumm will be a public front with popular recipes. We obviously want these pages to rank well in search engines, so an SEO strategy is key. Something that is popular right now is the URL shortener services that have a toolbar across the top (see pop.ly,digg.com). Yumm.com is a pretty short domain so that is totally an option. Also building widgets that webmasters can embed on their sites to enable users to share their content through yumm provides not only traffic but linkbacks to the yumm.com domain, all of which helps with SEO.
As a developer, I can appreciate a killer API. Twitter owes a lot of its domination to the fact that it has a thorough and easy to use API. If you look at almost any successful web company in the last few years, it is very easy to get data in and out of the service. So I think having a comprehensive and easy to use (REST / XML) API is key to the success of Yumm.
All of these things are important, but I don’t really look at them as challenges, just part of the job. Our industry is unique in that we call it web marketing, but oftentimes we have to be experts in a lot of fields to even have a chance of being successful. For example with Cars For a Grand I had to not only code it, design it, SEO it, market it, do the PR, build an email list (that’s just the web side) I then had to become an expert in the used car business. The more skills you have the better your chances. You can always hire someone to fill a void, but they will never care as much as you or work as hard as you would. Also they are more expensive 
A great way to build your skillset is to associate with the dominant people in your industry. DK’s ThinkTank is a great place to do that. I attended last year, and will at the very least be making a cameo this year. ThinkTank is the first place I met Andy Liu, who I ended up spending time with at Shoe’s Elite Retreat (also an epic conference).
I also met Cameron Olthuis at last year’s ThinkTank and we ended up being great friends. Cameron surfs, and last week we took a ten day trip to Nicaragua (more on that later). On our way, we passed through El Salvador. Some of the poverty in this area of the world is enough to bring you to tears, which is why I am stoked Andy and DK decided to support Future Hope, an organization that helps empower impoverished people through technology.
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