In order for any venture to succeed it needs to begin with a clearly defined goal. My goal would be to ultimately arrive at the end of a twelve month period with twelve sustainable start-ups plus a highly watchable documentary series intended for television. Airing the series would generate a lot of visibility for the stable of companies. Even throughout the filming of the documentary, there is huge potential for free PR and media coverage. Entrepreneurs and internet start-ups seem once again to be becoming the darlings of the media
Why the title ‘Serial Entrepreneur’?
- because it refers to the series of companies being founded.
- because it plays on the idea of a TV series.
- because it has obvious associations with a term like ‘serial killer’ which could also be interpreted as referring to the psychotic speed with which each of these companies must be set up. The TV series will bear this idea out, that this is a group of highly motivated young people with little time, working in a ‘fast and dirty’ way. The driving philosophy will be ‘we don’t have to get it right first time, we just have to get it going’.
The domain name for the website will be www.serialentrepreneur.com
Serial Entrepreneur will be the mother brand of the resulting twelve businesses. Each company will be a serious and viable business in its own right and independent of its more ‘sensational’ TV origins.
At that website, there will initially be 12 empty slots corresponding to each month of the year. The slots are only filled as each episode of the series airs, week by week for 12 weeks. Each program to air weekly and each company to be added to the appropriate month on the website only after each episode has been shown, thus encouraging repeated visits to the website. The screenshot below gives an idea of the layout (and the icons that can be clicked on to go to the website of that new company):
What will the twelve companies be?
There are some possible approaches to this: to allow the people involved to brainstorm and generate the business concepts themselves.
Alternatively, to agree on the 12 in advance. Below I list some business concepts that I have earmarked as having potential:
- Pandatext: a company that uses SMS technology to send daily text messages that teach English (or any language). While in Germany I conducted market research into this over a 28 day period with a focus group of about 20 people and the reaction was overwhelmingly positive. Time constraints while relocating to New York prevented me from investigating this business idea further.
- myAudio: a company that produces audio recordings of any book or text the user has in his/her possession. The phenomenal success of the ubiquitous iPod and the increasing interest in audiobooks indicates market potential for people having their favorite books recorded. The audiobook is created using the voices of actors. It is delivered inexpensively to the customer via the internet (each chapter is one MP3 file) or burned onto CD Rom and mailed. The fact that the customer already owns the book and is having it recorded for their own personal use means that no intellectual property is being infringed upon.
- World Rep: a company that sustains a network of ‘agents’ in every city and country in the world whose time may be hired out on an hourly basis in order to complete certain tasks in that particular city/country. Such tasks might include purchasing something, selling something, videoing or photographing something, acting as a courier to deliver something. Imagine someone in America who will be relocating to France. They could arrange for someone to go on their behalf to a certain street and video the neighborhood for the customer.
etc.
What is this going to cost?
Funding
gathering volunteers who will work with me in exchange for a share of the equity in each business I set-up
- 13 domain names in total
How will the documentary series be made?
Someone to film a documentary of me as I open a series of twelve new start-up businesses over the course of a year. My business concept is idea is to begin as an army of one, attracting and gathering volunteers who will work with me in exchange for a share of the equity in each business I set-up, month by month. I'll be pushing to attract media coverage too of this event but you would have exclusive filming rights. Interested?
Your input or criticism is welcome. What do you think? Is there a TV station out there that would buy into the idea of such a documentary? Would you buy into it? Would you join in? Add a comment here or email me at the email address listed elsewhere on this page
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