Pretty Please .com guy?

I wrote a letter to the guy who owns the dot com name today. This guy really doesn't want to be found. The who-is showed fake emails, fake numbers... I'm hoping the address he listed is real.

Here's to hoping for the best...

What is entrepreneurship to you?

I saw this quote from the Entrepreneur magazine and thought it was great!

"Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won't, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can't."

So true...

Database Design

Having done programming, design and e-commerce stuff; I must say one of my favorite things to do when starting a new business is designing the database. I am by no means a DBA but for some odd reason, my artistic mind likes figuring out the linking structure and design complex databases that would rival some designs from real DBA's. It's really a shame my talents are spread out all over the place and not focused on any one useful vertical.

So last week I was able to turn what should have been a simple web project with three to four tables in the DB to some rather complex design with about 15-20 tables. I really don't know why I needed that many but that's what we ended up having once I decided I wanted to track everything that happens on this website.

For now, the design is set. However I still have to talk to the car dealers to see what would make their lives easier; not what would make my life easier. One mistake that most programmers make is that they design a new sites or applications with 1000 cool features only to find out that the features are way above and beyond what their target audience needs and the over blown product is left sitting there collecting dust. I would say the Yahoo! Search Marketing interface as well as Microsoft AdCenter are great examples of this. I cringe every time I have to login and use those things... but again; I'm veering off.

So now that the DB is done (at least for now), time to move on to the site design.

The Domain Name Race

Wow... I underestimated the saturation of the autos industry. The first hurdle of starting this business was to lock down a catchy .com name. After trying every combination under the Sun and have it be already taken, one can only be discouraged by the competition.

While I know .net and dot everything else for domain names are pretty much worthless, I've decided to start this off with a .net name. The .com version of the name I want is currently taken but not used for a commercial or personal site so maybe there's a chance that the guy will sell it. Slight chance... but still a chance.

So last week after picking out a domain, I posted a job on Guru.com and hired a designer to come up with a logo based off of the name. While the guy seemed professional, timely delivery was just not in the books. Can I really blame him considering what I paid? Maybe not... Granted he said due to all the weather and storms, he had a power outage which delayed first draft for a couple of days. However, second and third draft seemed to be pacing slower than he promised which is annoying.

Business Lesson #1: Under promise and over deliver. Although we (internally) set a due date for the project for mid September when seeking RFP's and wouldn't have minded a delivery date around that time; the proposal from the hired designer said everything would be done by the end of August.

We're now a few days away and I feel like we're not even close to the end and of course there have been no updates!!! Note to all contractors: If you don't think you can complete a task by some crazy schedule set by you, then set my expectations correctly. You were hired for your creative skills, not your speed. What would have been a perfect feedback will now have some scars mainly due to the fact that my expectations had been raised and they've not been met.

Tangent... the above reminds me of a story about a sign that someone I know had saw.

We can do fast work, cheap work & quality work. However, you can only pick 2 out of the 3 choices.
If you want it fast and cheap, it won't have quality.
If you want it cheap and high quality, it won't be fast.
If you want it fast and high quality, it won't be cheap.

I guess I picked option number two.

edit: btw, does anyone reading this have a good autos domain name they'd like to donate or sell?

A New Car! (site)

The first post... this blog will either serve as a documentation to something great or it will be a documentation of my failure. Whether it works out or not, maybe there will be some good lessons for everyone to learn here. Unless you mis-step along the way, get side-tracked or simply loses interest in a project... there really is no half-assing when it comes to starting a new business. So the journey begins here; or maybe more accurately, a few days ago.

So what is this blog about? Well, about a week ago I decided that I wanted to start a new auto-classifieds website. The autos industry you say? Isn't that market a bit saturated? Yeah, perhaps... even if you don't pay attention to all the commercials, I'm sure you've heard of all the big names: AutoTrader.com, Cars.com, AutobyTel.com, Vehix.com, CarsDirect.com, AutoGuide.com, AutoMart.com, CarFax, CarMax, Autos.com, eBay Motors, Yahoo! Autos, Craigslist and so on... so why another website?

Well, in all honesty, one of my biggest... bigger dreams is to create a service that people will use. I like to be the problem solver in my daily life so if I can use my ability to help solve other people's problems; all the better!

Not convinced? Well... it may have something to do with the fact that advertisers in the autos industry have deep pockets and the opportunities here are plentiful. But I'm sure you can find that kind of supporting data in almost any kind of industry. I guess one of the main things is: people NEED cars! From the dawn of man people have been looking for short cuts and easier ways to travel. I mean, who was the first person who decided riding a horse would be a good idea? What about an elephant? But I digress.

I think there really could be a better solution out there for used cars sales. All the major brands above with the exception of Craigslist charges private parties to list their cars. While I understand every company needs to make money, I'm hoping to offer the same great solution for free while also solving the problem of the scams that are running rampant on Craigslist. How can people shop in a medium where all the sellers are over seas and their cars are stored somewhere far far away? Who thought that was even a good scam? Anyway, I'm hoping my new website will take the best of both worlds and help people in the process.

This blog will document the beginning stages of my new dot com. I hope the story will have a happy ending but only hard work and time will tell...