Review of a Startup Business Idea – Ask Evan

hi I’m Evan Carmichael welcome to
another edition of ask Evan in today’s
video I’m going to answer question from
when my readers Jed it was a forum
member who wrote in asking me to review
his business concept and instead of
creating the video with my face on it I
thought it’d be easier if I did this
quick screen capture so we can look at
the PowerPoint together and break down
the concept so he wrote in here hi Evan
thanks to your feedback invariance
here’s my prototype let me know what you
think what you like what you don’t like
more importantly would you use this so
let me load up his presentation here so
the company’s called focalized and what
it allows you to do is find
professionals in your area so if I’m in
Canada and I’m looking for an accountant
I can find one you know in my city of
toronto and basically eyes you to put in
different criteria so country area how
many years of experience that person has
what language I want them to speak what
areas of practice what industry focus
they have certifications the size of the
clients that they work with and then you
search and basically we’ll come back is
different people who have you know
different sets of experience different
names and you know gives you those
search results and then I can click in
on each one and see their profile and I
guess end up contacting them if I want
so my thoughts on the surface it looks
very interesting you know it solves a
need finding the right professionals if
it’s accountants or otherwise is super
helpful for entrepreneurs the challenge
that I see here is not so much the
technology but the marketing you know a
lot of these people are not the most
tech-savvy if you’re looking at
accountants they often don’t need extra
marketing a promotion of themselves
because they’re so busy with all of
their current clients or getting lots of
referrals and most of the accountants
that I’ve found have been through
referrals and that’s how I know most of
the entrepreneur friends of mine find
their accountants us through referrals
and I don’t see too many counts out
there actively marketing themselves
because they’re so busy with their
current clients so how do you convince
these super busy people that go online
and fill out these profiles and that’s
going to be a big challenge I think
on the flip side is how do you get the
entrepreneurs to then leave feedback for
these professionals so you know
entrepreneurs are super busy as well and
how do you convince them that once you
can use the service assuming you do get
the accountants on board too how do you
convince the entrepreneurs are going to
want to leave this feedback so it is
nice to help people but a lot of a lot
of times people won’t take the time to
do it so that’s the biggest challenge
and you may have figured some of that
out I don’t really see the marketing
plan on here but I think that’s gonna be
your biggest challenge so I would
probably look at it I would use it it i
would also still talk to my friends but
i would only use it here if if there
were people who serve my market right i
wouldn’t want somebody who’s in my city
who had all the experience that I was
looking for and had some good reviews
and finding that might be a big
challenge so my recommendations I would
first start with a niche so if you look
at every major successful web based
business if you look at facebook you’d
look at even before that myspace you
want to start with a niche so myspace
started with musicians right they
started targeting bands and made the
entire website around promoting your
band and that work for them there were
to expand facebook started with
university students college university
students and they made something really
good for them and then I was able to
expand to hit everybody else so same
thing for you I try to focus in on one
area and even a geographic market as
well so target a certain state or target
a certain province and just start around
that and then slowly expand now from
there focus your efforts because you
want people to get good results that
have a good experience so target a
smaller market make sure it works for
them and then slowly expand I also don’t
know what your revenue model is
presumably there’s gonna be some kind of
fee for either doing the search or for
the accountants to be listed on here or
maybe there’s a free listing and is
upgrade to a paid membership lots of
different opportunities for business
models again not including the slide so
can’t really get my comments on that but
overall again i like i like the concept
it’s about can you get the people on
board you know can i find my sean
roberts here who fits all the criteria
that i’m looking
for and I want to then go out and hire
so Jed I hope that helps if you guys
liked the video please give it a thumbs
up below and I’d also love to hear your
thoughts and feedback if you want to
leave a comment below this video and
stay tuned to next episode
you
you