June 25, 2006 at 12:47 am
My site isn't really public yet, so I'm still just talking to the wind, but I figured I would write a post that actually had some content to it.
I just finished watching a presentation by Guy Kawasaki. The presentation was about how to start up a company, something that's particularly relevant to me since I want to start a business in order to sell Solon as shareware.
He goes over eleven points to keep in mind when trying to create a startup. A few of them stood out, and I would like to comment on them.
The idea is that you should make your startup with the goal of improving some aspect of life, not to make money. I have to wonder, are the goals of making meaning and making money mutually exclusive? I've been approaching Solon with both in mind. I'm not satisfied with managing my money with a pen and paper checkbook register, and none of the apps out there let me easily do what I wanted to do. I want to be able to go in, add or modify an entry, and exit quickly. I want to be able to find out how much money I've spent on iTunes and World of Warcraft quickly. I want to be able to do these things, so I wrote an app to do them.
At the same time, I want to make money off this app. Since I want to make money, I need to create a business instead of merely posting the full app on my website. If I didn't want to make money, there would have been no need to start a business. Why create a business if not to earn money?
This was one of the more humorous parts of the presentation, but the idea was remarkably sound. According to Guy, men have a flaw wherein we desire to kill anything: plants, animals, the competition. Walk up to a man and pitch a product with the intention to kill the competition, and they'll be all for it. To sell a business idea to a woman you'll need to produce something with actual merits, rather than just an aim to kill the competition.
I've described Solon to both men and women since I've begun creating it, and I never considered the difference between their reactions until I heard Guy's comments. While the difference was not universal, women tended to focus on the spiffiness of having things like automatically calculated balances and really quick entry searching while men wondered how I intended to take on Quicken with such a simple app. The simple fact is that I don't intend to take on Quicken. I have no desire to. It's probably for my own good that I don't want to, since there's no way that I alone could accomplish such a feat. I just want to create a spiffy app that makes handling a checkbook register far easier, and hopefully make some money doing it. I think that Guy was spot on with this particular piece of advice.
If you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend watching the presentation. Even if you don't want to start a business, it's a very entertaining presentation. If you happen to read this blog, please feel free to comment.