Boom, it’s done.
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Archive for the 'cabeasy' Category
One way ticket for Paris |
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Business ideas are a dime a dozen |
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Business ideas are a dime a dozen
Pamela Slim in this interview with Guy Kawasaki.
I said it in the past, and any accomplished entrepreneur (like Charlie O’Donnell here about YouDeparted) will say the same. It’s all about execution - and risk.
Yesterday, I took a first step in that direction. Many of my friends told me they admired the risk I’m taking, and that they would love to do the same, but have no ideas.
Imagine if someone told you “Hey! Let’s build Notre-Dame de Paris in LEGOs!”. Nothing new there. However, the result is stunning (see the picture above). And is exposed for hundreds to see at the Lego World in Cologne.
That’s execution and marketing. The idea was worthless without them.
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The first day of the rest of my life |
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Like everyone with an entrepreneurial spirit, I’ve had many business ideas.
The one I pushed the further until CabEasy was SubMate. Saddly, SubMate didn’t fly. It didn’t fly for many reasons, but the main one is that I didn’t commit full time on it, keeping my day job and trying to pursue my project (development, fund raising, marketing and PR, …) on evenings and week ends.
I’m not doing this mistake again.
Today, at noon, I tendered my letter of resignation. From now on and for the next few months, I will work full time on CabEasy. With the little money I have aside, I will work my a** off on three things: product, partnerships, money. In pretty much that order. Product will lead to partnerships, and partnerships will legitimate the project.
Wish me luck - I feel like jumping off a plane, without parachute, by night, over a desert, without water. But I’m confident that CabEasy has a real potential, and I’m determined to listen to my users and partners to make it a huge success. Stay tuned, big ideas coming!
And if by fall I haven’t pushed three major updates of the site for three different potential types of customers, I will update my resume and get on Path101 for some career and job hunting tips ;)
See you soon - in a cab!
[photo credits: Jumping ...., by JPhilipson]
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Google closes the loop? |
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Google Profiles are now available in results of Google name searches. Only available in the US, but that’s kind of in the line of a post I wrote a week ago: What if …? Gmail vs Facebook vs Twitter.
The differences and gaps between Google and the main social media actors will be decreasing, and if Google’s Open Social is well driven, it could well lead Google in becoming a major social network player.
I can’t wait for Google to start taking interest in ride sharing and social transportation! ;)
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Long time no write… |
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It’s been radio-silence on this blog for the past two weeks, because a few things have kept me very busy, and not in a writing mood.
- I’m try to rent my apartment (a nice brick wall 2 bedroom on St Marks Place), and had tons of visits over the last three weeks. It’s almost a full-time job … ;)
- I developed StartupsNews.com, a user-generated news site for startups, where entrepreneurs (or stakeholders) can post news about what they are working on, ne features, beta testing requests, hires, layoffs maybe, ….
- I developed a Twitter Bot to post news on StartupsNews.com using the hash tag #startupsnews. It is my first TwitterBot and I’m amazed how powerful it could be…
I’ll write more soon about each thing, but ping me if you already wanna know more!
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Twitter is no search engine |
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I had a discussion yesterday with my friend Michael about the future of twitter and their potential positioning. It’s funny that it was relayed this morning in a Techcrunch article.
Why would I bother?
First of all, I’m not a twitter fan. I use it personally, and so far I’ve been using it as a communication tool. I do it because I want to stay on top, and reach an audience that is beyond (besides?) my personal audience.
But all of my friends are on Facebook, and all of them update their Facebook Status. Even when they use Twitter more than their Facebook status, they update their Facebook Status via Twitter (like @ceonyc, @cyrillamblard, @danielito, …).
And finally, until now, nothing has been easier to follow a conversation than Facebook: you can comment it, you’re notified when someone answers, you see a clear thread of conversations.
I don’t see how this specific usage of Twitter, even now that it reached a critical mass, could make it a search engine. How can “@so-and-so Yes man, you rock, loved that article but @thingamajig sucked last night” constitute the raw data for a search engine?
But …
But I also use Twitter for CabEasy. CabEasy allows taxi users to share cab rides, and each time they create a cab ride, they can tweet it. In addition, I’ve been using twitter to “source” the market and contact people who were looking to share a cab ride … with twitter. When I started doing that, I realized the value of this data mining (Summize at the time).
Actually, traffic is not free and to get some on CabEasy.com I have to pay. If I had a CPL (cost per lead) of $1, whether it’s through affiliation partnerships, advertising on Google or Facebook, or automatic responses on Twitter, I would be ready to pay to use twitter’s service if it brings me (i.e. CabEasy) qualified traffic. That’s where I think twitter could go. And they just might.
There’s been a lot of ink on what Twitter should do, and I’m not gonna add to it. This is just a reaction - and my 2 cents - on TechCrunch’s article.
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It’s 2009, and I haven’t blogged yet. Not a single post. Lame ….
To start, two pics that summarize what I’ve been up to lately:
First, yours truly presenting CabEasy at an Ultra Light Startup workshop on revenue models. A great evening full of ideas. The crowd must have been around 80/100 attendees, in majority entrepreneurs (or “light entrepreneurs”). Thanks to Joshua Russak from MarketingBlog for the pictures and a great summary of the evening. Here are the slides of my presentation (pdf).
Second, I am building my first track bike and finally received all parts! It’s being assembled right now!!
In short:
Motobecane Jury Track Frameset Chrome
Vuelta Track Pro 700c blue
Shimano UN26 bottom bracket
Shimano DX Cranks
Tahoma threadless stem
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Execution, execution |
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Two years ago, I met for the first time in my life a successful web entrepreneur: Fabrice Grinda. I was working with a few friends on my first startup project, SubMate, a site allowing subway, bus and train commuters to discover the people that share their commutes.
I did all the wrong things I could do, but you got a start somewhere! With Fabrice, it was a first meeting and we didn’t know each other, we presented a business plan that no one with experience had reviewed, and we tried to convince him to invest in our project. We didn’t know him before, and had no recommendation. Boom. Shameless presumptuous first time entrepreneur. Fabrice was kind enough to stay with us until we were done though ;-)
As the end of that meeting, Fabrice asked us how far we were in the development of SubMate. I replied in a flash, full of a naive and inexperienced over-confidence, that the development was outsourced in India for the v1 and would ship within 4 weeks.
It never shipped. Fabrice was the first to tell us that an idea is worthless without its execution, which is worth everything.
A bit later that year, I met with Darren Herman, another successful New York entrepreneur. Darren told me the same thing. Darren also told me that when talking about production time-lines, you should hope for 1 (whatever unit of time), expect 2 and plan for 3. If it takes less, you’re lucky.
Yesterday, Venture Hacks twittered that “The ‘Execution Gap’ is the space between the astronomical opportunities before us and our ability to grasp them”. It reminded me of that first meeting two years ago. Darren and Fabrice were right. I learnt it the hard way.
Fabrice sums it up in that post: Fund Raising 101.
For CabEasy.com, I took a complete different route than for SubMate. A route that actually makes sense. It allowed me, 2 months after the initial idea, to get a product out the door, get some initial reviews and feedbacks, get some users, and lots of contacts. Now that it’s there in the wild, there is visibility on its improvements, and the execution risk is taken care of. But especially, I have something to sell.
On to the next steps: finding customers, paying or potential, and then get some funding to scale the service!
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A great kickoff for CabEasy.com! |
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CabEasy was launched just over a week ago (in its first infant version). Since then, thanks to a few blog posts, I have received tons of feedback, positive overall, and very encouraging !
Continue reading ‘A great kickoff for CabEasy.com!’
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I’m on TechCrunch ;) |
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Via TechCrunch: CabEasy Looks To Pair Off Strangers For Half-Priced Taxi FaresThat’s cool ! I guess pretty much everyone could be covered on TechCrunch, but it’s a first and it’s great. It follows from a few days a great review on CenterNetworks too.Cool first week for CabEasy.com !
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