Why Are You Telling Me This?

 

It's official.  I've kicked off the proof-of-concept for my little art history project.  You can find the quirky little page with the easily recognizable mnemonic title at https://tbittner-cc.github.io/strong-saturn/.

In my previous post, I spent a lot of time telling all of you - my closest internet buddies - exactly what I was going to do and how I could potentially monetize it.  

Why would I do that?  That sounds crazy.  It isn't like I have a particular advantage over any else that gives me a leg up [Of course, I'll be happy to tell you my secret recipe because it's impossible to implement.  First, obtain unobtainium.  Second, refine it using your flux capacitor.  Third...].  I took the image from Wikipedia, did my research, and kicked off the POC in Astro.js with a little sprinkling of my favorite JS framework, _hyperscript, sprinkled in.  While not everyone can do this, plenty of people can, so I'm wading into the realm of a commodity.

But, there are a few reasons I'm willing to spill my secrets.  First, the primary reason businesses don't get off the ground is a lack of execution.  I have this brilliant idea for cold fusion.  Fuse two atoms at room temperature and watch the paychecks roll in.  All I'm missing is the middle step.  If you figure it out, I'll be happy to cut you in for half, because I came up with the idea.  I'm just missing the implementation.

In the realm of content, execution also means "information imparted" and "delivery style."  Novel writing is a great example.  With sufficient discipline, anyone can write a novel (I know.  I've done it.).  However, not just anyone can sell that novel and obtain critical success (I know.  I've done neither.).  

Much of what I'd be banking on here is that people want to listen to my voice on the subject.  Other aspects of the business model would involve using someone else's expertise, but the information itself, in any case (art history or a virtual museum exhibit), isn't proprietary.  It's history!  History is a particular interpretation of facts.  And, if you're a good historian, you can impart generally accepted information and reach others with your own individual narrative style.  It's that uniqueness that merits compensation, not the possession of the facts.

So, we've got the idea, the drive to develop a POC, and a particular narrative voice.  If I were to make a comparison with a less creative endeavor, like travel, an analogous goal would be creating a site that consistently meets the expectations of the user with no nasty surprises associated with a poor implementation, tailoring your site to a specific set of travelers, or finding a specific niche within travel (like being the exclusive supplier of log cabin adventures under $200 in the upper-Wisconsin area).

Those combinations alone are already formidable barriers to entry.  There's also another barrier that's often overlooked - you're own combination of skills, interests, and expectations.  In this case, I'm an ex-software engineer with an interest in art history and writing.  Alter any of those skills, and the likelihood of my starting an app like this goes down significantly.

These may not be the impenetrable barriers that people crave, especially when looking for unicorns or a blue ocean market (MBA-speak for a market that has few competitors and the potential to construct your own market-guarding barriers), but, for a saturated market, it helps keep some of the competition at bay.

Which brings me to my next point...

The market I'm entering is closest to what economists would deem perfectly competitive.  As with everything in economics, economists like to use theoretical models like a sphere to approximate an irregularly oblong potato with four toothpicks sticking out of it, but, in our case, the model generally works.  Perfectly competitive essentially means that, as long as I don't deviate too much from the generally accepted price for my product, there will be a sufficient market for me to sell my wares.

When I was annoying people with my Mona Lisa POC, one quipped that "there's probably an app like that out there."  It's true, there probably is, but how much does that matter?

If I'm charging $5 a year for content that's some ratio of entertaining to educational, that doesn't mean a consumer can't buy a handful of similar apps, assuming they're providing some value.  If the potential customer base is too small and the number of apps is too large, then, yeah, that's a problem.  But that's not an issue here.  

I was fond of saying in the last post that it's not inconceivable that 1,000,000 casual art lovers would be willing to pay $5 a year for YAAS (Yet Another Art Site), and I still stand by that statement.

However, the ability to generate enough leads among a large enough group that 1M people would buy my wares may be outside of my capabilities.  The possibility of expanding my market for this idea excites me enough that I'm willing to expand my social media presence.  I currently post solely on LinkedIn and last posted on Facebook about a decade ago (for all of you who wish me happy birthday on Facebook, I'll say here - Thanks!  It means a lot!), so I'm a social media luddite (which is also why my mental health is significantly better than average).  

I'm also not cut out for sales (case in point - I literally just admitted my app is pretty similar to all of the other apps out there.  That's not considered a strong marketing tactic).

But, maybe I don't need $5M per year.

• With just 1 person paying, I've got a significant portion of a night out at White Castle covered.
• With just 10 people, I've got a nice night out at a bar.
• With just 100 people, I get at least one very fancy dinner out per year.
• With 1,000, I cover my entire hobby budget for the year.
• With 10,000, I can cover a significant portion of my annual expenses.
• With 25,000, I'm making a living that exceeds the median income.

Any of those would be significant wins for me.  But, realistically, most people can't make a living off half-comped sliders.  With that in mind, let's take the 25K person scenario apart for further analysis.

First, I've already set some expectations about my customer base and revenue.  It also helps create a more nuanced business plan.  There's no way any VC is going to fund this (mostly because it doesn't promise to be the next plateau in human existence that is the only reason anything should ever be funded.  Screw those mundane problems like malaria or health insurance efficiencies), so I don't need to bother figuring out how to get from one round of funding to the next.

A smaller user base allows you to determine if you want to market to a particular niche.  Maybe Midwestern art lovers have a greater propensity for Impressionism, and I'll have better inroads into those markets because you live in the Midwest.  Well, now, after some market research, I know where to center my initial content.

From a tech standpoint, I can plan my work accordingly.  I don't need to scale to infinity and beyond.  I probably just want to prep to scale to 100,000.  That bounds the complexity significantly.

I also have the flexibility to grow my customer base or replace users during inevitable churn.  Many people, once convinced, probably won't think too much about renewing a $5/year charge, especially if I'm cranking out content at a reasonable rate.  But, eventually, White Castle will increase their prices, and families will need to make tough decisions.  

If I've successfully built a market that caters to several thousand people, it's probably not going to be difficult to replace those ne'er-do-wells who choose chicken rings over me.  It's not like, say, deciding your only growth strategy is breaking into the Asian market or watching the company slowly get swallowed.

So, for all of those reasons, I feel perfectly comfortable giving away my idea and even the sketch of its implementation.  The market's big enough - and I'm confident enough in my offering - that I don't feel I'm ultimately harming my prospects by disclosing everything here, even if someone copies the idea verbatim.  

But, if you do come across some unobtanium, please let me know.  I'd be happy to talk licensing deals for my flux capacitor with you.

Until next time, my human and robot friends.