I have been sitting on an idea for a year now. Finally, I was able to organize a team to pursue it. It's a niche business, not scalable as it's currently configured. We are targeting the financial services industry.
The thing I have learned is even when you do a niche business, it takes time, and you follow the same lean start up models that all business should follow. I have advised businesses and invested in start ups, but my entrepreneurial experience is far different than what they are doing. So, sometimes my advice might not be on the mark.
However, we are learning. For example, I had a subjective idea about one facet of the business. My co-founders had no exposure to the business, so they assumed something else. We were all set to program in my supposition, then we talked to some potential customers.
It turns out, the market has changed and we learned something. Theleasingexchange.com will launch using the information we learned from the customer.
We have a great road map ahead, with a lot of features we want to program in. However, when we launch, we are only going with MVP's! As we build, we will program more and more in.
To scale the product, we will have to look for other targets of opportunity in other markets that relate to what we are doing. I am sure we can find some if we search hard, but in the meantime we will stick to our initial target market. We can make a lot of mistakes without ticking a lot of people off-especially because we are launching something far better and more efficient than what they already have.
It's been an interesting process. Let's see if it works. Follow us on twitter @leasingexchange.
