The joy of finding a competitor, and the fallout

For the past several months I’ve been working at pace on an idea that I developed back in 2008. It monetizes the sale of digital content over social networks.

Pitching has been time consuming and difficult.* Not necessarily because my pitch isn’t good (although there’s room for improvement) but because what I’m doing is groundbreaking. There is no point of comparison.

Until now.

I recently found a start-up in San Francisco somewhat in the space I’m occupying. They received ~$1 million backing from a well known VC firm and several equally well known individuals. They’ve had buyout offers from Valley institutions.

So to be able to say that the business I’m building is, “[name] turned up to 11”, makes getting this off the ground just that little bit easier. It is a joy to have a competitor.

Too many competitors?

There’s something about serendipity. Several months ago I couldn’t find competitors for a project I’ve been sitting on for years. I knew they were out there, they had to be, but I couldn’t find them. In the past several weeks I’ve found a few, even though I haven’t particularly been looking.

I think it unwise to ignore these chance events.

* Being in Australia probably isn’t helping my cause on this one. Time to relocate the family to Silicon Valley.

Relocation, failure and an update

I relocated the family to Silicon Valley. The startup crashed and burned. It lit up like a Christmas tree. Done before it even got off the ground in any meaningful way. There was some bad luck, like when a partner supplying core tech was acquired by Google and then shut down. There was also my inability to convince enough people that what I had mattered. The latter is a much bigger failure.

In the 3 years since a lot changed. I returned to marketing and learned a great deal about the mechanics of enterprise sales and marketing. I'm ready for my next entrepreneurial adventure. This time though, the ideas are rooted in solving user pain and not an attempt to change the future.