A few weeks ago, I gave another talk at Barcamp. As usual, it was a blast. But in the past year something has agitated me, and it came out a bit during my presentation.
Right now there are thousands of the most brilliant people in the world, Twittering their hearts out, reading Techcrunch vociferously, digging more photos of sunsets or new Ubuntu installs or whatever….and all the while a great many of them are wishing, hoping that someday in the not-to-distant future, they’ll create and launch a site that their contemporaries flock to with the same excitement.
And in the interim, they’re wasting their lives.
Everyone wants to be the next Youtube. Everyone wants their new app written up favorably by the Web 2.0 elite. Everyone’s looking to hit a homerun.
But while they’re sitting at their desks daydreaming about Internet riches and the pride that comes with it, they’re working 60 hour weeks at jobs they hate, or they’re out freelancing, begging someone who’s probably a lot dumber than they are for work.
Meanwhile, there are a staggering number of niche markets out there that are being under served. Fact is, while we all think that Virb or Twitter or whatever’s coming out next week is the coolest thing in the world, most people have never heard of them. Most people don’t care.
I installed a Rails content management system for my folks new website last week, and spent 20 minutes walking my mother through it over the phone. She spent years having to deal with clunky CMS systems that were so frustrating to use that the site just didn’t get updated (and if it did, the changes would often magically disappear.)
She’s doing back flips because I took the tools that are at every Techcrunch-junkie’s disposal and made her working life demonstrably better. She’s played with the thing for three straight days and I’ve received three emails about how much fun she’s having.
So you’re a programmer, or a designer or a developer or whatever. And you probably have some brilliant idea that you think would change the online world forever. And all it would take would be a few rounds of venture financing, a few hundred favorable blog posts, maybe a spot on Digg’s homepage, and you’ll be a billionaire.
What if instead you took that idea and made it smaller? What if instead you decided to focus on a smaller group of people? What if you focused on dentists or lawyers or vegan restaurants or yoga studios or churches or nursing homes or real estate agents?
I can say with a fair amount of certainty that no one in their industry has even seen someone like you. They’re used to dealing with salespeople offering software and tools that are confusing, often poorly designed, and usually buggy. Next time you go to the dentist, check out their appointment system. Or give your buddy who owns that restaurant a buzz and talk to him about how he updates his website.
If you were willing to swallow your pride a bit, learn how to sell (or find a partner who does,) and build a working version of your product, I bet you could mop the floor with the competition. Truly.
You wouldn’t have to make it pass muster with the Web 2.0 community, because the Web 2.0 community will most likely think that they could build something just as good. And they’re probably right. Even if they are impressed, they’re rarely impressed enough to pay you for it. You’ll have to resign yourself to either collecting $20 for your software or trying to go huge and get money from investors on the premise that eventually you’ll figure out a business model.
But these people, the folks in the real world, outside of our echo chamber…these folks will be blown away by what you do. They’ll pay you good money to solve their problem. And word will probably spread over time about the new kid on the block that offers them exactly what they needed.
Not something worthy of the cover of Wired magazine. You probably won’t be invited to the sexy Silicon Valley launch parties. It’s not a home run, a billion dollar idea.
But what’s wrong with a million dollar idea? Why not ignore the tech community entirely?
