In working on my business plan, I’ve been incredibly lucky in lots of ways. Since announcing my intention here about setting up a website, I’ve got lots of support. I’ve a wise and practical accountant and financial advisor guiding me step by step, a great web designer who’s enthusiastic and, happily for me, about to go freelance, and a very helpful researcher helping me out with practical stuff. Over the months, the project has grown and developed, and shifted in emphasis. I’ve been using BaseCamp Project Manager to jot down my thinking, post bookmarks and interesting links, point out potential competitors, and generally keep track of the project, for me and others on the team. Their comments and feedback have helped me shape it.
I’ve also been lucky with the people in the Irish blogging world I’ve asked for help and advice, in confidence – their feedback has been invaluable, and people have been very kind with their time and advice.
Market research
One of the interesting discoveries I made over the past two months is that traditional market research methods do not work for Web2.0 businesses. Or, to put it another way, they work, but the answers are irrelevant. With a (retrospectively paid) 50% grant for a Feasibility Study promised to me by Dublin City Enterprise Board, I did what they expected me to, and I wrote to hundreds of people by email and snailmail in Ireland, followed up by phonecalls to each of them, on a voyage of discovery.
The first industry that I researched, largely comprised of family-run businesses across Ireland, has less than 25% of its practitioners with an email address. How do you educate them about advanced concepts such as RSS and social bookmarking, when they don’t even have a computer in their office? Where do you begin? I made a good stab at it, but realised I was too far ahead of them, and it may take years before they’ll know what I am on about. So, I had to change tack.
Moving to another industry, local radio stations in Ireland, produced a more positive response – and the ones that are most internet-friendly were the ones who said they’d like to take part. Contacting local newspapers in Ireland produced similar results, although I am not finished collating the responses to that campaign.
Market research, as it is commonly understood, works when you have something like a perfume or a physical gadget or tool. You send a sample or a prototype or a mock-up, or just a good description and blueprint, to a hundred people and ask them what they think of it. If the response is good, you establish there’s a market, then you go to the financiers, persuade them you’re on to a good thing, you get the money, you go into production.
But for the nebulous fast-changing trend-setting world of Web2.0, the task is more like a Catch-22 – you have to create the (fully featured, beta) site first, and then get it up and running with users, and then get responses and feedback, and change the site to match the users’ needs. The traditional market research model of paper questionnaires about proposed concepts is simply not applicable. Not least because telling people your ideas is a grossly stupid thing to do on the internet – someone could copy you in an instant, if they have the resources and designers ready to spring into action.
It’s the conundrum I am facing particularly because my intended users are general bloggers/myspace users, with no particular niche market to appeal to (such as Keith Bohanna’s guitarists), to keep the research and beta-testing group contained or protected. It would be folly for me to send a questionnaire to a hundred random bloggers saying “I’ve got this great idea, what do you think of it, do you think it would work?” Within a week you’d have the reins snatched out of your hands, with other people writing about it. The genie would be out of the bottle. The idea would not be your own anymore, and the opportunity to capitalize on being first off the mark would be lost.
Like Athena, a Web2.0 project has to emerge fully-formed and adult from your skull – with only a headache for gestation. And that’s some headache.
Development
However, as the months have gone by, the project has shifted from being something that is, in essence, an Irish version of a site that already works in the US, to something broader, less specific, more playful, and with a potentially much broader appeal (and anyone who is reading this who had password-protected access to my initial online proposal might like to revisit it to see what I mean), I’m more convinced than ever that it will work. It’s applying social bookmarking techniques to take into account the thinking of, among others, James Corbett’s wonderful essay here on the semantic web.
It is, also, I realise, a website that has at its heart the philosophy of the counselling and psychotherapy training I did, psychosynthesis. It is about celebrating the best in people, and when it is up and running there will be a solid emphasis on encouraging kindness and compassion in its users. I’m creating the website because I’m a psychosynthesist, and especially because I’ve been realising the benefits that a maturing, kinder internet can bring to users, to enable connection and appreciation of each other.
It doesn’t sound very sexy, does it? If I were to follow sexy Jeff Clavier‘s advice, given at the Enterprise Ireland Web2Ireland conference, in which he said, perhaps jokingly, that businesses on the internet have to appeal to one of the seven deadly sins, then I might as well pack up my laptop and give up. But others at that conference, such as Judy Gibbons, spoke of a new trend, as the demographic of internet users matures from its adolescent male origins to include more women and families.
There is plenty of money around, as a recent Mashable post indicates, with the first comment on that post wondering exactly what I’m wondering. But Bluedot, the company Cashmore mentions, already had money to start with, obviously.
Needing money, to make money. How to square the circle? I emailed every psychosynthesist I know from my time in London yesterday, to see if shared values and philosophies are enough to persuade people to part with their money, to get something that isn’t “sexy” or “sinful” up and running. Trouble is, counsellors and psychotherapists invariably just about manage to scrape by – we aren’t in it for the money. But I’m hoping that just by asking, someone may know someone who may someone who can help me move on to the next stage.
If you don’t ask, you don’t get. Questions? Donations? Advice? Comments? I’m here.