I have not posted a new business idea in awhile. This one was inspired by a Tweet. It's not my usual $100 million dollar company idea, but it could provide a nice living to someone one with creativity and humor. I suggested it to my daughter but she never developed it.
Facebook is filled with lots of people and all those company pages (which are really boring), but there are very few dogs that have Facebook pages. Let's do the analysis of this idea:
- Problem: Facebook is getting boring
- Innovation: Humorous character on Facebook
- Barrier to entry: the wit and creativity of the posts
- Size of Market: dog lovers on FB or people on FB that need more humor in their lives
- Sales strategy: duh-Facebook or FB ads
- Capital investment required: about two small boxes of dog bones and working capital for merchandise inventory
- Competition: all the other FB pages that are funny (13 as of 11/9/10)
- Revenue: sales of merchandise featuring the dog, e.g. t-shirts that say "I friended ________ on Facebook
For those of you who feel the need for some market research I provide the following:
Ms. Tripp (@michelletripp) is a brand strategist. The respondent at the far right is the noted social media commentator Mr. Ben Parr (@benparr). With such thought leaders engaged in the idea of dogs on FB we have clearly documented the market potential of the idea. The first mover advantage is still there but you may need to move quickly....and don't forget to walk the dog.
Additional posts on dogs and business are here and here.
My new book, Billion Dollar Company: An entrepreneur's guide to business models for high growth companies, is available on Amazon. Learn the fourth strategy Michael Porter should have included, how to determine if a market opportunity is large enough to interest venture capitalists and how product differentiation is more than just a feature set. Book website.