Matt Baril

I haven't posted on my blog in quite a while and I won't blame anyone or anything for that, I've been involved in many projects for the last few months and decided to prioritize my projects and unfortunately the blog was put on the back burner. I still get comments and emails from people who use the job feed and I'm averaging 10-15 unique visitors a day, so I'm glad to see the blog hasn't died and some people find the job feed useful!

As some of you may know, my friend Evan Bleker and I started a small venture called Taste of Vancouver Tours about 2 months ago and I've invested most of my energy and time in our project. I have learned a great deal and faced many challenges already, but I enjoy every single step of it. It's finally time to apply what I've learned from school, books, case competitions, conferences, mentors, etc. And well as you probably expected, it's more difficult to execute than simply debate something in a classroom setting. You need some guts, good resistance to sleep deprivation, patience (which I lack), motivation, dedication when everything goes wrong, negotiation skills, marketing skills, project management skills, etc. The last 2 months have been very interesting to say the least.

The fact that my blog hasn't been updated for a few months and the creation of Taste of Vancouver Tours are actually related, but not because of a time constraint, it was a thought that was the catalyst.

I believe we, in the western world at least, live in a "container" world. We're more concerned about the container: what things look like and how people talk and present themselves than the "content" in that container: what we actually know and the quality of our thought process. Take this quote as an example, you've probably heard it 1000 times by now: "It's not about what you know, it's about who you know". I actually have a problem with that and I think it's fundamentally wrong. Why would you hire someone based on the people he or she knows rather than what he or she knows. The answer is you wouldn't. This quote misses the point: success attracts people and successful people will have broad networks. It doesn't mean that having a broad network wil make you successful though. You can know a lot of people in your field, if you're not successful at what you do, it's not going to be of any help.

So, a few months ago, I decided I would stop "shouting" in the blogsphere, hoping someone would hear me. I decided to spend my resources to act, execute and deliver. It's not that easy, but it's a lot more fun and I figured there are already many people shouting hoping for your attention, hoping to convince you they're worth listening to. I rather spend my time building something, filling up the container. If I'm successful, the rest will follow.

I will end with this quote I found on The Economist website this morning: "Also, they [potential MBA candidates] will recall that the most effective way to build a network is not to go to school, but to be successful".

I'm finally reading The Long Tail, Revised And Updated (affiliate link), yes I know it was about time, and I realized Anderson explained very well, and in economic words, something I've been fascinated about and which I used a lot for my 28 business ideas: aggregators. After reading Anderson, I think I've come to a better understanding of the true power of aggreagtors for building communities, as well as its power for new potential ventures.

Aggregators are great for many reasons and they benefit everybody, people who create them, people who use them, and even people who get their content aggregated. Aggregators filter part of the junk out of the useful stuff and most importantly, they help build communities. But aggregators are only one part, and here is what I believe is a better overview of where aggregators fit in.

Anderson says 3 things have made long tail economies possible:

1. Better access: This is provided by new technologies such as Internet, cloud computing, cheap hosting, cheap Internet access, etc. New technologies have empowered your browser and it allows more people to easily reach out and connect with you.
2. More stuff: Here the aggregator comes in handy as it is its job to fetch the most relevant products/services/information and deliver them to you.
3. Filters: If you have no filters, it means you have an easy access to a great deal of stuff, which by definition will be mainly useless to you (it's an aggregate of niche products that don't appeal to the mass). You need tools to filter out what's not aligned with your tastes and a good CMS (Content Management System) will help you do just that.

What Anderson doesn't say however, is that once you have content, users and filters, you've created a platform. From a business perspective this is a very good news, because you can build a platform with little resources: a hosting contract, a domain name and a CMS (drupal, magento, joomla!, etc.) and you're good to go. The keys will be to find your niche and build up a community, two things that are easier said than done.

For the skeptics, there is definitely a strong business case for a platform, because you're adding value by offering a large selection of sorted products, connecting people with similar tastes to one another, and creating more value from the users through reviews, ratings, recommendations and word of mouth (free marketing). It also means that you are getting rid of the less profitable and more difficult part of creating innovative great content and focus on building a community around your platform and its products/services. It reduces risks in two ways, on one hand the initial cost is lower than a typical venture that creates content or goods, and on the other hand, a platform can adjust to new tastes much quicker since it can easily scale up its catalog.

To conclude, a good example of an international company who has been very successful doing just that is Amazon.com. They've even been a step further by offering what Anderson calls an Aggregator-for-hire. They basically offer other vendors to use their platform which means they don't even have to bother fetching content.

I've recently found my niche and I'm working hard at getting a platform up and running. Do you have yours?

Idea #23 Warehouse companies can rent based on their space need. Inventory & shipping is managed for them

Working for an e-commerce company, I realized that it can be a serious problem for us to ship to Europe. A typical delivery takes 4 to 6 weeks and can be held in customs for a very long time and customer might even be charged taxes as well. It makes doing business difficult. The normal answer to that is to buy a warehouse and have stock in Europe, however this isn't always very useful for smaller e-commerce organizations.

The idea would be to buy or rent a warehouse which would be divided based on customers' needs; any customer could rent the amount of square feet they need. The warehouse would be dynamically divided to meet customers' needs. In order to accommodate smaller businesses, inventory as well as shipping would be automatically managed for them. If they close a sale on the continent, the warehouse would package and ship for their customer's customer. That should be appealing to any small e-commerce website who wants to improve sales on another continent without the high fix costs and risk associated with buying or renting a large warehouse.

Idea #19 Kiva for entrepreneurs. 30sec pitch, short business plan, founders' resume & micro investments

Kiva.org is a great website on which you can make micro-loans to poorer people on the globe. For instance, a young Bangladeshi might need $1000 to buy a small herd to make a living and you have the opportunity to give money to help. It would definitely be interesting if we could do the same for our local entrepreneurs. Micro-lending would be made easier and investors would have the opportunity to make 7-10% in interest while local entrepreneurs would have access to inexpensive financial leverages.

Kiva relies on pride and honor for people to pay their loans back and it works really well for them. Call me a pessimistic, but I don't believe that system would work in our society and therefore young businesses would have to offer assets against the loan and legal papers would have to be signed. That means a physical office would have to be set up. The company would take a small fee for all transaction.

Investors would have access to a 30 seconds pitch, videos, description of the company, the main idea or a summary of the business plan. Investors and entrepreneurs would have a way to communicate through the website and answers could be made public. The website would be a platform to connect investors and entrepreneurs.

In case you don't know yet, I set myself to come up with 28 Business Ideas in 28 days, and I've been doing so dutifully for 14 days now which means I'm half way through! It's been challenging at time since I wanted the ideas to be feasible and realistic, but I also wanted the ideas to be something I would enjoy doing. No need to say that some days you just don't feel inspired and it seems you've run out of ideas. The ideas are definitely not all great, but they're there and I believe they could all be achieved and be profitable which is the point of this exercise. I've found a couple of tricks to force myself (or my daemon as Seth Godin calls it in his latest book linchpin) to be more creative and come up with an idea. Here's a short list:

1. Give yourself a time limit. I give myself 5 minutes and I use an online Java app that displays big numbers that take the whole screen. It adds a sense of urgency and I find myself thinking much faster and coming up with many more ideas. Don't go over, no exception.
2. Deliver, all the time. It's better to deliver your idea on time even though it sucks than not delivering any and be 5 days late. You can't get the next greatest idea that will change the world and make you a billionaire every day. Most of your ideas will suck, but they'll lead you to better ideas. Deliver.
3. Focus on an object. I'm not sure why, but if I close my eyes, often time an object will come to my mind. It might be something I've seen during that day like a shopping cart or a coffee cup and then I start thinking about what I like and hate about that object. That usually leads me to a couple of business ideas.
4. Think about business opportunities all the time. I've become more sensitive to my frustrations and every time I feel anger it usually means there is a business opportunity. Something is not working the way it should and it usually makes me waste either my time or my money, or worse it makes me feel dumb. This means something can be made more efficient, cheaper and better, or easier. I write it down on my iPod Touch and it becomes a starting point for my daily brainstorm.
5. Talk to people. Ask questions to your in-laws, work colleagues, neighbors, customers waiting in line with you at the supermarket. Be genuinely interested by what people have to say and what they think. Most of them will gladly tell you everything they know and what they love and hate in their job or in general. Make sure you take notes.

PS. I used to post all my ideas on the main page, but it quickly cluttered the front page and I therefore moved everything to one place under the tab called "Business Ideas" at the top of this page.