LFGSS: Turning a hobby into a technology startup

which gym you at bossman?

Good man!
Keep up the work and spartan living, you seem very determined and that will pay off for sure.

which gym you at bossman?

Virgin Active in Twickenham.

I discovered a loophole in their pricing system. If you can find a gym which is in a wholly residential area, then the fees are much lower. I chose a membership which gives me access to other clubs (even though their fees are higher), and was able to get the advertised price down further using a discount that I didn't realise was available to me.

The one thing I've now got in my favour is time to research things properly.

just make cards with name, email and url. no need for more now and too soon to start a branding exercise

as with everything else, keep it simple and cheap. moo cards?

Who will buy the cow, if the cow gives away the milk for free?

Free is an attractive price, but my experience with free in the past suggests I should pay.

If this is how I represent myself, then I get 1 chance to get it right. I know good people might offer me free work, but then I'd feel obliged to accept it, whereas if I pay I can be sure of the time needed to communicate my thoughts, listen to theirs, and to develop it right and get the right thing.

I know I can blag: hosting space, branding, design, development, etc... but really, I want the business not to be like that. I want to make it profitable, and to pay it's way properly. I want to reward people who work with me and treat them well.

The people I'm having these chats with are exactly the kind of people who may invest or help in the future. I don't need luxury cards, but when they dig it out of their pocket they need to remember the energy and excitement of the idea, me, the product, the company.

No half measures. I want to do the right thing for the business, you guys, me, everyone.

I was called an idealist the other day for saying something very similar to that. But hey, it's the way I want the world to be, and I want my company to reflect that.

I agree on everything. But there are different way to pay...

You can start with bonuses for anti-banning.

So, if someone sell you something for the price of three bonuses, that person can do three things which deserve banning and not being banned.

It sounds still profitable to me.

Don't be evil. Until you branch out in to China, of course.

Run a 'Velocio' logo competition on here.

People do this sort of thing for fun - you'll be inundated. Choose the one you like, say thank you, when you're a millionaire look them up and pay their mortgage.

Simple.

logo competition sounds good :) and vista print are doing a great deal for 250 cards for a fiver + a silver case

not being payed by vistaprint

Idealism doesn't pay the bills.

The bills will take of themselves when you find the ideal life

The thing which pays the bills is advertising. I really don't like it though, advertising demands breaches of your privacy as third party companies want to know more and more about you, just so that they can throw the most appropriate adverts in front of you. They demand that you give up privacy, just so that they can pollute the space in your browser window with ever more vulgar and loud adverts. You give up privacy for what?

No, I'd rather have idealism, and I'd rather find other ways to pay the bills. I'm not kidding when I say that prostituting myself appeals to me more than advertising. I loathe advertising, and the way that advertising perverts good to evil.

In fact, I've been pondering this week whether to write into the fabric of the company a very simple couple of statements:
1) We will never track you in any individually identifiable way that isn't required for the function of the site
2) We will never allow anyone else to track you

The 2nd clause means that I would never actually accept advertising on the site that is served by a third party... therefore you could not be tracked. It doesn't rule out advertising, but means that advertisers would have to adapt greatly to a reality in which they no longer invaded privacy.

And if anyone is wondering... yes, it means disabling Google Analytics.

Whilst I understand your concerns / views on advertising; disabling google analytics and blocking even the most basic of tracking will alienate almost all serious advertisers, not just for LFGSS but for any other community that may end up using this platform.

Our agency billed $13bn in 2011 and I don't know of a single client who would have approved their spend without tracking data...

I guess it just depends on where you see the revenue for this being generated.

I didn't say I wouldn't track... I've said I wouldn't let a third party track.

I would use Piwik or a homebrew solution to get accurate numbers. And rather than vanity metrics about page views I think it's more important to get things like cohort charts showing X people logging in each week, Y people reading the emails, Z people engaging in creating content. Though obviously I'd still have page view counts underneath.

I'd rather advertising switch from CPM to a more affiliate model, where you pay for the performance of an advert based on what it produces in revenue.

And I see revenue coming from affiliates, and from the complements of community needs (classifieds, events, tickets, etc)

The 3rd party is the key though. Accountability is hugely important and using DFA or a similar 3rd party tracker is a must in order to roll up activity and report on it.

I guess it really depends on the size of the potential communities and whether or not they will attract large advertisers. If you see most communities as receiving similar ads as we have at the moment (independent sellers etc) then they may accept the lack of tracking.

I think the advertisers have asked too much though, as in: advertising hasn't ended in newspapers, magazines, billboards, TV, etc just because of a lack of tracking.

The best the advertiser gets through those mediums are estimates based on numbers printed, foot fall or passers by for a location, ratings figured guestimated by TV stations, etc.

Those may be third party normalised estimations... but there isn't any tracking.

I know part of the argument is that it has to be that way because they can't track, and yet on the internet they can track. But the tracking is now so pervasive and constant that far more than just advertising impressions and conversions are tracked. To the extent that almost all online activity is now observed by the major advertising platforms and advertising companies (which includes Google and Facebook, as that is where their money comes from).

I strongly believe that the pendulum has swung too far, and that the user should be protected from such a level of intrusive behaviour. I think that advertising has got away with things it shouldn't have done, and that it needs to be corrected.

It doesn't preclude some basic tracking by myself and the methods audited by a third party, but denies them (the advertising platforms) the ability to intrusively track users of this platform.

That's what I'm aiming at, not for no advertising or no tracking, but a very balanced and controlled amount of tracking serving advertisers who value the market offered to them.

The very basic question remains: If I can offer you access to a community of people who are already highly targeted (e.g. fixed gear cyclists in London), then would you accept less intrusive tracking as part of the deal? And would you accept performance based payment structures in which you'd only pay for the conversions and not just for impressions or clicks?

The great part of it is that last question.

If the answer is yes... then my job is to build those communities, give them (the community members) the tools they need.

If the answer is no... then my job is just to ramp up page views, give them (the advertisers) many channels to a wide audience.

Which one is going to deliver you, as a user of LFGSS, the best community website?

Very inspiring read.

Don't forget that if the group offered is too targeted then it offers less value as a resource. I'm sure that you can largely call the shots as you're offering a pool of contacts / peers essentially. However, advertisers will try to cream whatever they can. Don't be shocked or surprised by this it's simple market behaviour for what is a massively capitalist market.

It's a no-brainer that you have a great resource through the forum and marketeers will want to get as much of it as possible as cheaply and quickly as possible. I PMd you ages ago about talking about marketing etc. I'd be happy to offer advice as someone who's been working in the industry for the past 18 years but doesn't particularly like the more cut-throat elements of it. It may be idealistic to a degree but there is a middle ground and when you have the cards it's up to you how you play them. The big boys might not like it but don't let them bully you because trust me they will try.

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The very basic question remains: would you accept performance based payment structures in which you'd only pay for the conversions and not just for impressions or clicks?

I haven't a bloody clue what you are talking about.

It's something about money. We don't know much about them.

It would appear that the Flouncer's been to "Secrets" in Hammersmith.

Flouncer spending old fifties? Smells of money laundering....

Stuck your blog on my reader, interesting reading.

I can do 2KM rowing in 8 minutes

Good benchmark - will one side effect of this project be an improvement in that time?