We are approaching launch in a month, after many turns in the road and a few false starts. I’ll give you a little info about what we’re building, where we are at, and what our plan is.
Word of warning: our startup defies description, there’s a mind-bending aspect to it because it solves a ‘wicked problem’, so bear with me. Its simple, like a bicycle is simple. But if you want to know how a bicycle works, you open up a conversation that disappears into the math of angular velocity and the gyroscopic effect of the wheels.
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It’s a place no kid wants to go. They just want to get on the thing and have fun. There’s a magical experience locked into the bike, as there is in Ecosquared, and all it takes a little courage to unlock it. But at this stage, all we have is a schematic, and a prototype that doesn’t have wheels attached. In a month’s time, we all get to give it a go.
What’s the Startup?
We are building a platform, initially accessible through a browser, and if we do really well, Facebook and Google will be partners. Its working title is Ecosquared and its been described as a potential unicorn, a startup valued at $1 billion. Why? Because it’s the business model that Medium, Spotify, SoundCloud, even Twitter have been missing. We monetise word-of-mouth. Our users can generate revenue and distribute virally any digital content — without advertising.
Yes, we have an alternative to advertising — if we get the on-boarding experience right. A world without advertising or marketing. That’s a world with a lot less noise, a lot less distraction. Less crap being sold to us. And hopefully, as a result, better products, services and experiences. IF we get the on-boarding experience right. It all comes down to execution. And the courage of our early adopters to give it a go.
I’ll go into the mechanisms in a later article if anybody wants to know. I used to be a math teacher, I still suffer from inventor’s blindness — I love talking about how it works, the maths, the psychology. We’ve re-engineered money at source, developed a value-tracking algorithm, built an alternative set of financial tools, a new trust-metric. Don’t get me started. Suffice to say, there’s been a few years of development.
The maths is solid, but the psychology is still unproven. Will it have the same kind of magic that a bicycle has? Hard to say looking at the schematics. And I’m not salesman. I don’t paint pictures.
What Stage are We At?
We’ve just completed Phase 2: built the User-Interface for the web-app, and the back-end database to track inter-personal values, and implemented the first version of the SQ Algorithm. Take a peek.
After our first couple of aborted efforts, mostly down to my being sucker-punched with ‘over-promise under-deliver’, this looks like a decent build. We’ve had to outsource to a team of coders in Ukraine who are doing a stellar job. We spent a sizeable sum on a UX Designer, for the first time, and the results are looking smooth. But will it be enough? With the on-boarding experience be smooth enough to encourage viral adoption? We will see…
I’ve been reluctant in reaching out to potential partners, mostly because the idea is so innovative. There are a lot of talkers out there, you know the type, hired hands that can pep-up any old dogshit. Hiring representatives to push your products is reasonable in the current marketplace, but the amount of bullshit that goes on in the startup scene is… obscene. It’s not because startup founders are making stuff up, it is because investors don’t know what to invest in. So there are pitch events and funding funnels, grant applications and networking events, and all this leads to the production of a lot of hot air. And this means salesfolk are brought in, experts who can write up a good application, and business folk who promise connection to their network, all eating off the meager funds that startups possess. And in this word-inflated environment, established companies are often reluctant to be involved with pre-revenue startups. So, I’d rather show them something; “look, this bicycle works”, at least as a web-app, because it will need great content to motivate people to use it. Hence content partners.
Nevertheless, we’ve hitched up with a few use-cases. One in Perth & Kinross Council, with the accelerator they are setting up there; another hanging in the balance between Edinburgh Uni and Northampton Uni, for their students to track value; and a couple of startup companies I’ve bumped into along the way. Oh, and a couple of artists in the music industry one or other of our network know personally. Not many. That’s what this next month is about.
Next Steps?
I’m keeping a close eye on development of Phase 3. On average, we’ve been behind by 3 days on each phase development. The estimate for completion is 23rd October, so I’ve added a week. That’s D-Day. I will have run out of runway by then. We will need to launch and generate revenue immediately. We have a transparent system of engagement, best remote working settup I’ve experienced. We use Trello for project management, Bitbucket for coding commits and repository, and Slack for team chat. And I have access to the build on an experimental server so I can test elements myself.
I’ve started to think seriously about soft-launch partners. I’ve started to engage a music company in London who are interested in promoting their artists through Ecosquared, reached out to companies and individuals who produce exceptional content, and consolidated launch content which exploits how Ecosquared works, hopefully unlocking its viral quality. This is not my strong point. If I had the money, I’d pay some of my friends who are interested in Ecosquared to do the outreach, but all the money is going into development. Ecosquared is about changing the system from the push system (selling, marketing, advertising), to a pull system (sharing, recommendation), so it’s no surprise that Ecosquared suffers from the first — but will it possess enough to pull itself through the market.
I am coming back to the idea that the very first thing we share on Ecosquared is Ecosquared itself. If it works for music, articles, videos, other apps — why shouldn’t it work for the Ecosquared web-app itself? Its called “bootstrapping”. My intention is to award the first 1,000 users with 1% equity, the first 10,000 users with another 1%, and so on. If our early adopters make Ecosquared into a $10 billion company, then the first 1,000 deserve $100k each. I also want to reward the first $10k invested in Ecosquared with 1%, so that a user who puts in $10 gets a return of $100k, and $100 will make them a millionaire. Ecosquared is all about the usership, so it seems natural to reward them.
We need quality content. And preferably from content-creators who are so enthused to soft-launch with us they are willing to pay for the experience. After all, if their content goes viral, they will generate revenue and gather information on their ‘customers’ of a completely different order of quality. In fact, if Ecosquared works, it upgrades us from ‘customers’ to ‘ambassadors’ for any digital content we value. We are changing the fundamentals of the game. Retrospectively, secondary advertising alone will be worth it — what helped you make the decision to be part of the ‘Turning Point’?
