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Starting an online business
This is what I've learnt from starting a couple of online based businesses. Firstly let me give you some background to why I'm creating new startup companies.I've been in business for 20 years and are doing well with Spinning Planet Limited but for the last 5 years I've been researching and experimenting on how to create new startup companies that I can run under my Intergalactic Investments company. My first project was to create a website that allowed users to send TXT messages from a website (www.mysms.co.nz). The business goals were:
- To create recurring income from people topping up their accounts with their credit card.
- To create a fully automated online business.
- To create a business that doesn't require any personal support. Like how Google does it. When is the last time you had to call them for support with your Gmail, Calendar or Search?
MySMS doesn't make a lot of money and I didn't expect it would but it has achieved all of it's business goals. The only time I get reminded it exists is when I get notified that someone has topped up their account to send more TXT messages. However, the real value of the exercise was that I proved that I could create a business that creates recurring income without the need of staff. I'm now applying what I learnt from that project to my new projects.
After MySMS I decided that I needed to do more research on modern startup business structures. Here's some of the research and training I did:
- Did online courses such as Udemy and Liber8me
- Read books such as:
- Business Model Generation
- The Startup Owner's Manual
- Running Lean
- The Lean Startup
- The E-Myth Revisited
- Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable
- Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice
- Path of Least Resistance, The
- The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
- HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy
- Think and Grow Rich
- Rich Dad Poor Dad
- Critical Chain: A Business Novel
- The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
- Did lot's of web browsing researching what businesses were succeeding online and why.
From all of my research I came up with 3 simple rules for any new project or business I create:
- It has to be able to be used by at least one million people. From experience I've learnt that I don't like selling an expensive product to just a few customers. It requires lots of human hours and the intellectual property is owned by the customer. Instead, it's better for me to target millions of people and charge a very small price to achieve the long tail effect and recurring income.
- The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) needs to be developed quickly so it can be tested with clients which will change the product - I'll demonstrate how this happened with my brynux project shortly.
- It needs to be part of my personal digital ecosystem and improve my webutation, brand, revenue and knowledge. Companies like Macintosh have great digital ecosystems such as the combination of iTunes, iPhones and iCloud but a new shift that is happening on the Internet is that people are now creating their own personal digital ecosystems that include webutation, publications likes blogs, books and their products such as training and online tools. Everything I create such as Spinning Planet Limited, brynux or even my courses are all part of my digital ecosystem that is an ever expanding system that provides income, opportunities and increases my business stability, longevity and influence.
So, from my above learning I thought "What have I made that I could sell as a physical product?" My first thought was selling Spinning Planet OS: A system I've developed over the last 15 years based on Linux that creates and manages websites and email accounts. However, it didn't meet the requirement of being able to used by over a million people so my next idea was "Create a desktop version of Spinning Planet OS that can be used by normal people and make it be able to be run live from a USB stick." My friend Hamish had said that I should call Spinning Planet OS, Brynux, so that became the name of my new product. Again, I don't expect it to make a lot of money from brynux but these were my first business goals for it:
- Spend no more than $1,500 to build the Minimum Viable Product and promote brynux. The $1,500 was just a cash limitation. If someone else was building brynux then the e-commerce website would have cost around $7,000 and the hundreds of hours that have already been used to develop it would have cost in excess of $100,000. However, because I'd already developed the majority of it to run my Spinning Planet Limited business it didn't take long to convert it into a retail product.
- Learn how to work with an International manufacturer to create the brynux stick, import and distribute.
- Practice continual deployment that uses input from customers to improve the product.
- Promote the product using social media
- Create a community version of brynux that can be downloaded for free to help promote the use of Open Source software.
It's been 31 days since the launch of brynux and here's some of the major milestones:
- Choose a good overseas manufacturing partner. The first place I purchased USB sticks from sent me faulty sticks. I ended up finding a new manufacturer that supplies sticks to companies like IBM and the service and communication from them has been excellent. Costs a little bit more but well worth it.
- The manufacturer suggested a new type of USB stick that can also be plugged into smart phones and tablets which helps differentiate brynux.
- I found out that Microsoft was stopping support for Windows XP in April 2014 which makes brynux an excellent alternative for customers that don't want to upgrade to Windows 8 so I'll be marketing brynux again in April.
- From customer feedback I've added additional software and better hardware support.
- Most people didn't know if they needed the i686 version or the x86_64 version of brynux so I've now integrated both of them on the brynux stick which makes it compatible with all Intel based PCs.
- I've learnt that you can't trust International shipping and need to package very securely because one of my customers just received the packet that had been carefully cut open and the stick stolen.
- Even though the brynux stick is less than a centimetre thick it still counts as a package so shipping costs a lot more. The next version of brynux (Nano Brynux 64G) will be a lot smaller.
- From my discussions with friends and users of brynux a common statement was that schools should be using brynux so now the Palmerston North Linux Group (PLUG) is going to create a free computer suite for a local school or community project that will use brynux as it's operating system. Rob Edwards from Aspire Videography is going to make a documentary of PLUG creating the brynuc computer suite.
- To automate the brynux business I've created a program that does all of the tasks needed to create brynux such as compiling, formatting sticks and testing.
- Online advertising with Facebook generated over 900 followers and only cost $400. Online advertising on LinkedIN didn't generate any followers.
I have a number of other projects in the pipeline and when they're released I'll update you on those too. If you have any questions please freel free to contact me.
brynn :-)
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