An Old Domain, A Great Idea
If you're in the market for a powerful and user friendly Help Desk solution, please take a look at my company's flagship product HelpSpot.We all have a few old domains sitting around (don't we?). I was looking at mine and thought it may be interesting to share a story of a business that never was and may never be.
One of the first ideas I had years ago for a startup was to build a small business intranet application. I have two domains for this idea, sbintranet.com and smallbusinessintranet.com. I came up with this after having developed a few intranets for my job and clients. The intranets were immediately useful and I think a no brainer for any small business.
I even started coding this, but eventually lost steam. It was the end of the dotcom era and with so many intranet companies going under I figured it may be the wrong time. It was the wrong time in my life to take it on anyway so it's probably better off.
Looking back though I understand even better why it wouldn't have worked. The problem with intranets for a small business is that small businesses don't know about intranets and what they can do for you. Hence they're not looking for intranets. Hence it's damn hard to get sales! Especially in a bootstrapping scenario where finances for advertising would be limited to none.
I always keep this idea on the back burner though. I think the communication possibilities in a small business are huge, especially now with the rise of wiki's and ajax based chats. Perhaps in a few years the time will be right.
Discussion
I agree with Ian. We've had a couple of beta customers kicking the tires on the system (including our own team). Internal discussions are one of the most widely used features. People seem to look at it as a good way to replace the "cc everyone" email thread.
Discussions have enough structure to keep the chaos manageable but not so much that nobody will use it.
Created by Dharmesh Shah on 05.23.2006 8:05 pm
Ah that's what you're up to Dharmesh. I didn't realize that. Good luck with it!
Actually Sevenoaks I've found the exact opposite to be true. The discussion boards were the most used feature of the intranets I setup for small businesses of 10-15 users. It allowed people who don't often communicate to do so. It also left a nice public record for later reference.
Created by Ian on 05.23.2006 8:05 pm
Hard to believe, but if it's firsthand experience it must be true. I thought that things that avoid looking up for something coud be the most populars (phones, addresses, orders or delivery statuses etc.).
Anyway, it's true that if you never see a technology in action you'll never know if you need it.
Created by Sevenoaks on 05.23.2006 8:05 pm
Maybe the point is not to propose the intranet technology tout court, but to show them what they can do with an intranet to accomplish common tasks.
What features should have, in your opinion, a Small Biz intranet application? For example, discussion groups for a group of 10 people should be worthless...
Bye
Created by Sevenoaks on 05.23.2006 8:05 pm
I agree that it is difficult to sell an Intranet solution in the small business market (especially as a bootstrap).
Our experience so far has been that only certain types of small business customers are interested in an Intranet -- and even then, just Intranet functionality is not sufficient to motivate them. There has to be more there.
That's what I'm pursuing in my latest startup: Internet+Intranet+Extranet for small businesses
-----
Created by Dharmesh Shah on 05.23.2006 8:05 pm