Ground Rules

 

After seeing the barrage of TV ads for dot-com companies, have you begun to wonder, ‘‘Is there a startup in my future?’’  If there is, now is the time. The first-mover advantage is essential to owning your market of choice. And those markets, as it happens, are being sliced into ever more narrow niches. Before long, the available niches will be too narrow to justify the investment needed to build a Web business. If you wait until next  year, the ideas will have been taken and the industries reshaped and you will have missed your chance. Entrepreneurs think of this as a race, and so should you. However, before saying, ‘‘Get set, go’’ to yourself read the ground rules listed below.

 

Rule 1: How different is your idea?

Everyone has an idea these days including yours. Venture capitalists will tell you this, as will lawyers, bankers, and anyone who receive thousands of business plans and presentations. More than half startups fail because they are not good at conceptualizing their idea. It's the execution of the idea, rather than the idea itself that matters. You have a very bright chance of succeeding if there is no undisputed market leader in the field you want to venture in, especially if you're able to identify and target a particular market segment.

Avoid market niches

However, avoid getting into a market niche which is aleady crowded. Going to a VC with a proposal on personal finance is in all likelihood going to be rejected as there are hordes of sites on personal finance. Some of them are:

• Finsights.com offers the usual features – investment vehicles, loans, advice, tax information, a section for NRIs, a tutorial centre.
• ValueNotes.com is a search engine for Indian financial and corporate research.
• Woodle.com is a comprehensive consumer empowerment site. These sites are creating fragmented niches, which mean that much less revenue per company. Besides, a VC who has already funded a company in that space has fewer chances of recovering his investment. Your idea should be unique if you don’t want to be turned away by VCs.

Novel concept

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ndiaproperties.com was the first site to come up with the novel idea of providing an interface between buyers and sellers in the highly unstructured housing sector and that too without making a dent in the business of brokers! It had to succeed.

 

So try to offer something different if you want your startup to be noticed. The free email service chequemail.com is indeed unique as it shares revenues with its subscribers. After the users register with the site, they have to submit authentic details, and use the service at least 30 times a month to become eligible for a share of the profits. The site is going great guns, as it’s a ‘win-win’ situation for everybody associated with it -- the advertisers, subscribers and promoters.

 

Another site yet2.com has come up with a novel B2B idea with no real-world counterpart. helps bring together inventors of killer technologies and customers. Owners of intellectual property fill up a listing form at the site where they explain how exactly the technology works and its applications. Those looking for solutions, can either search at yet2.com for technologies or create anonymous technology wanted listings that members can check out. The seeker of the technology first requests an introduction through yet2.com after, which a meeting is fixed between the  developer and the customer.