Almost everybody here is focussed on a single, simple consumer niche: rich white people who shop online.
Because, you say, that's where the money is. Well... no.
That's where 2% of the money is. Maybe 5%. Out there, in the big wide world, there are tens of thousands of other lifestyle niches, other places to see. Take a look at that Nokia guy's blog,
Nokia pays him to wander around the world learning about people and how they use things including but not limited to cell phones.
The whole B2B boom, just before the .com bust was a moment of insight... "wow, people outside of the home shopping by internet niche can use the internet to buy things."
So. Ideas.
First thing, get the hell out of San Francisco. Stay away from TechCrunch. Go to Iowa or Brazil. Spend two weeks walking or bicycling around. Call it a vacation. If you take a computer, don't look at your usual sites, turn off your RSS feeds, don't take work email. Put yourself in a new state of mind and then, if money is the goal, ask yourself "what would these people like their computers to do?"
But the space of "software for technohip 20somethings" is heavily swamped right now. It's a saturated, clogged, grossly overfilled demographic.
You want a freebie? An integrated software/hardware/services combo for old people's homes. Does email to help residents talk to their families, prints out pictures when they are sent automatically so people can take them back to their rooms, reminds people of calendar obligations like their grandchildren's birthdays. Maybe even supports some kind of mediated e-commerce which has a credit card account which can only be spent at a known-good list of a couple of hundred stores, so that they can't get phished.
Yes, it would take some selling, but the improvement in quality of life for the residents, and for their families is not insignificant, and business is booming for old people's homes.
Get out of your demographic. That's where the money is.
Almost everybody here is focussed on a single, simple consumer niche: rich white people who shop online.
Because, you say, that's where the money is. Well... no.
That's where 2% of the money is. Maybe 5%. Out there, in the big wide world, there are tens of thousands of other lifestyle niches, other places to see. Take a look at that Nokia guy's blog,
http://www.janchipchase.com/
Nokia pays him to wander around the world learning about people and how they use things including but not limited to cell phones.
The whole B2B boom, just before the .com bust was a moment of insight... "wow, people outside of the home shopping by internet niche can use the internet to buy things."
So. Ideas.
First thing, get the hell out of San Francisco. Stay away from TechCrunch. Go to Iowa or Brazil. Spend two weeks walking or bicycling around. Call it a vacation. If you take a computer, don't look at your usual sites, turn off your RSS feeds, don't take work email. Put yourself in a new state of mind and then, if money is the goal, ask yourself "what would these people like their computers to do?"
But the space of "software for technohip 20somethings" is heavily swamped right now. It's a saturated, clogged, grossly overfilled demographic.
You want a freebie? An integrated software/hardware/services combo for old people's homes. Does email to help residents talk to their families, prints out pictures when they are sent automatically so people can take them back to their rooms, reminds people of calendar obligations like their grandchildren's birthdays. Maybe even supports some kind of mediated e-commerce which has a credit card account which can only be spent at a known-good list of a couple of hundred stores, so that they can't get phished.
Yes, it would take some selling, but the improvement in quality of life for the residents, and for their families is not insignificant, and business is booming for old people's homes.
Get out of your demographic. That's where the money is.