MindFrenzy » Ideas

Great Presentation: Baratunde Thurston – There’s a #Hashtag for That

Jared O'Toole — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 12:00:23 +0000

I’m a little late with getting this up but better late then never!

I was at the web 2.0 expo a couple weeks ago in NYC and saw this great presentation by Baratunde Thurston called There’s a #Hashtag for That

It is not only informative and gives you some things to think about especially in the world of twitter but is pretty hilarious also.

Get Up To 10 Million Dollars From Google

Jared O'Toole — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:34:32 +0000

Project 10 to the 100th: May those who help the most win

Submission deadline is October 20th.

Google will be awarding up to 5 ideas that are chosen by an advisory board.

Check out the site. Project 10 to the 100th

How can you change the world?

Version 1.0

Jared O'Toole — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:24:15 +0000

Look Familiar?

Remember the days of Netscape? How about Napster? I’m sure you remember but that’s about it. Those once thriving and ground breaking programs are all but a memory today. Since then just think about how many web browsers have come and gone or how many file sharing programs have passed through. Somebody realized that they could make a better program then the original. Netscape was one of the first web browsers, it was great but then somebody made it better. Same with Napster, who didn’t love Napster until a better program came along.

Most of the time the first version of something is not the version that ends up staying. The first version is the ground breaking idea, it turns heads and gets people thinking about the idea. Once that starts there’s almost always someone with a better way to do it.

You don’t have to be the first person to think of an idea, you just have to be able to do it better.

What’s Your Favorite Place to Brainstorm?

Jared O'Toole — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:36:14 +0000

I think is a simple but useful question. I know my answer would be outside at night with decent weather of course. I’m not sure why but that environment just allows me to think clearly and I find that most of my ideas come when I’m in a situation like that.

I think its important to understand where you brainstorm the best. Reason being is if your like me it might not be a great plan to settle down or live somewhere where there’s a lot of cold or bad weather. Maybe a city wouldn’t be great because it may be hard to find a good spot outside to relax that’s quiet. If you base your life around brainstorming and creativity it would not be a good idea to go somewhere that prohibits this.

So think about it. What’s your ideal place to brainstorm?

There’s a better place for your ideas MindFrenzy.com

You Have An Idea. Now What?

Jared O'Toole — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 03:33:22 +0000

So many ideas go to waste because people simple don’t know how to move forward when they have one. Even more ideas become failures because people don’t properly move forward with their idea. Hopefully these few steps can help you take your idea from a piece of paper to reality.

1. Find out if your potential customers would be willing to buy your product/service.

Now this is assuming you know who your potential customers are in the first place but if you have an idea you probably have some group in mind. Now will those people use it? Remember that just because something sounds great to you it may not sound so great to others. There are millions of things out there and its unlikely you have used or heard of all of them. However your potential customers may have. There already may be a useful product or service in your industry and it may be hard to pull users away from it. On that point note that its harder to pull someone away from something they are familiar with then it is to introduce your product/service to someone who has never seen anything like it.

So get out there and tell your potential customers what you are thinking about. You shouldn’t worry to much about someone taking your idea because in the end it comes down to what you do with the idea not what it is, just be practical . Don’t give away all your plans and ideas just enough to make someone understand and be able to give a response to your thoughts.

2. Stalk out your competition

Who else is in your market? What are their products like and how is yours different? These are questions you have to be able to answer before you go after your idea. Search online using keywords for your idea and find out whose there and what their offering. Examine their products or sign up for their web services. Find out if you really have something different or if you can do it better. Just because there’s already people in your market doesn’t mean you cant enter it, you just have to know what to say to someone who says why should I use yours instead of theirs. Also find out how wide spread your competitors reach is. They may have a great product but maybe you are a better marketer and can reach millions of more people. Many times its not the better product/service that wins its the one that got to people first.

3. Figure out costs

Seems obvious but it is really important that you truly know what your costs will be. More often then not people underestimate the cost of making their product or starting their service. Your going to find it very difficult to sell your product/service if you run out of money 3/4 of the way through! Here are some costs to think about.

Products:
- Patent or provisional patent
- Are you selling it? Maybe an LLC
- Graphic designer for product drawings
- Manufacturer for prototypes
- Driving/flying to pitch product
- If graphic designer/manufacturer needs to be replaced (Trust me it happens)

Services: I’m going to focus on websites
- Programming (initial, updates, fixes)
- Hosting
- Domain name
- Promotion (ads, online memberships, SEO)
- LLC

And don’t forget for both TIME and lots of it.

4. DO IT!!!!

It may sound odd but I have found that this is by far the hardest step for most people. People are always questioning themselves. Did I miss a competitor? Am I really a better marketer? Do I have the money? Did I miss something? Is this to risky? If you take your time and go through the basic steps and the numbers and the feedback points to a good project then it probably IS A GOOD PROJECT. By no means is this a recipe for success there’s a ton of work ahead but if you have the drive you will have a good shot of at least making your investment back. But you will never know if you don’t try.

Good Luck!!!

Check out the main site MindFrenzy.com for feedback/advice on all of your ideas!

Where Do You Go For Advice On Your Ideas?

Jared O'Toole — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 23:42:51 +0000

My first reaction to this is a simple one, friends. However I realized that there isn’t really another place I can go for advice. Sure family isn’t a bad option but all to often they don’t have the right mindset. What fellow entrepreneurs see as creative/fresh, family will see as odd/risky.

Don’t get me wrong, going to friends with my ideas is a great resource. They generally have a lot of great input and begin that process of shaping and shifting that idea into something great. But there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to access more people that think like this online. There’s forums for entrepreneurs and maybe you have a lot of contacts on twitter that are entrepreneurs. But I feel it’s hard to get some fresh input from people I have never met or contacted.

Now I’ve used sites like HalfBakery.com and CreativityPool.com which are open idea forums. The problem is that these sites not only generate responses to your idea at a crawl but provide no other platform to take your idea or relationship with someone on the site.

This is one of my reasons for creating MindFrenzy.com. With the hope that down the road we can combine a vibrant community of innovative thinkers with a way to form relationships to bring ideas to life. Join the community to help us reach these goals.

Where do you go for advice or input on your ideas?

There should be a better place for your ideas. MindFrenzy.com

#1 Reason People Build Inferior Startups

Jared O'Toole — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 18:42:05 +0000

I read this great post the other day called How to Build an Inferior Startup.

It’s a funny but true story about the path most people take when trying to start a website. Many people think its a breeze to build a startup especially with the Internet today. All you need is one big blogger to write about you right?

Well something like that will help in the short term but nothing will help your idea more then yourself!!!!

#1 Reason – Not Passionate

You need to be passionate about your idea. Not passionate in the way that you tell a few friends “I’m starting a website isn’t that really cool.” Passionate in the way that every second of your day your thinking about it. Not because your trying to think about it but because you can’t stop thinking about it.

When your at the bar with your friends having a great time you stop and look around and say to yourself “will my marketing plan really reach these people.” “If I had to tell the bartender about it right now what would I say.”

You should find yourself in every situation that society would consider an escape from work thinking about work. Not a bad trait. It just means that you love what you do and truly believe in it.

Just because your passionate about your idea doesn’t mean it will be successful. But if you are passionate you will continue to come up with new strategies. Maybe it takes 6 months, 2 years, 5 years whatever it is you will get it to work.

That’s what separates the passionate from the money chasers.

Success or Failure?

Jared O'Toole — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:42:52 +0000

How do you measure your success or failure on a project?

Is it a failure if it doesn’t make you rich or you don’t make it to CNN? Maybe it’s a failure if you don’t get at least 1 visitor to your website?

Everyone has different levels that they expect to achieve. Some word of advice is to lower those expectations. Especially if your an aspiring entrepreneur you need to lower your measure of success.

The reason for this is that there’s a very good chance your 1st venture will fail. Whether its a blog, website, store, product, whatever it is. The odds are against you. Now I’m not saying you should expect failure or not dream big. But there’s a difference between starting a blog and saying it will only be successful if you make the top 10 on Technorati verse saying I just want 1 subscriber and I’ll go from there.

Realizing something will not work is not a bad thing. Once you realize it you can restructure your website or blog or store and take things in another direction.

The point is you don’t get down on yourself because you view everything you’ve done as a failure. Ask most successful entrepreneurs how many things they have started that failed and they will say “well that depends”. In terms of learning and growing as an entrepreneur they haven’t failed on anything, maybe they failed to make an income but everything takes time.

When I launch MindFrenzy.com in the next couple weeks I’m not completely sure what will happen with it. However I already know that it is a success because I have never done something like this before and the whole process has been a huge growth in my skills and abilities. I will take that good feeling into my next project rather then worry about the site being the next Amazon or eBay.

So look at what you expect from your project and maybe lower those expectation a little bit if your just starting out. That feeling of success will help you achieve bigger and better things done the road.

What Happened To The 1st Idea You Ever Went After?

Jared O'Toole — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:37:01 +0000

This is an interesting question because I hope to see an array of answers. Hopefully some successes but also some failures. If your first idea failed I actually really encourage you to leave a comment about it because maybe we can figure out why and learn what went wrong. It’s also pretty common for a venture to fail, I mean look at how many people have been in the game for years and still talk about how many mistakes they make with each new project.

I can tell you that my first idea hasn’t come to a conclusion yet. It’s still getting going so I guess you can say up until this point its successful because I’m still working on it. Hopefully that’s still the case a couple years from now.

But I’d love to hear some of your stories. I also think it would benefit others to see what went wrong and how they can possibly avoid those mistakes. If we do get some good responses I’ll make a follow-up post and attempt to dissect some of the projects and see what was successful/unsuccessful.

What’s Your Greatest Fear When Pursuing An Idea?

Jared O'Toole — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:38:45 +0000

Now I think most responses to this would be failure. However when I thought about it I don’t think that would be my answer. For myself I think rejection is my biggest fear when pursuing an idea. It’s not that look strangers give you when you tell them your idea but when you get it from friends and family. The “what the hell are you talking about look”. This rejection from the people you are closest to is scarier then any thought of failing. It’s easy to get rejected by strangers because they were never a source of comfort in the first place, while friends and family are. The worst part is when you get the “look” as they say “that’s a great idea”, “that’s really cool”, but you know they are just thinking your an idiot or still don’t understand what your talking about. I just can’t think of a more awkward worse feeling.

Imagine your greatest source of support and then the feeling of getting rejected by that source. Now that’s scary.

What’s your greatest fear?