I'm starting a startup! An apartment with a view finder!

I can't tell you the name. Because I have not thought about a name yet. But I already know what it is about. It will help you find apartments with a view. This is my personal itch that I am scratching. I spend frivolous amounts of time on finding such apartments. You can read about it here.

Business Plan

  1. Build it
  2. ? (Probably learn a lot)
  3. Happiness or profit or something. Don't know yet :)

Values

In case this becomes a billion dollar unicorn, journalists will probably ask me 'What was the magic trick? How did you get from nothing to a company that changes so many lifes for the better and makes hundreds of millions in revenue along the way?'. To prevent my then rich and arrogant self (hi dude, glad we made it!) to talk nonsense, here are the core values I bet on:

* Do something that matters to you

So far, I have gotten zero positive response for this idea. Everybody says the market is too small and it's too hard to do all the research. All I can reply is: but it matters to me. And my bet is that this has more power then market size or how hard it is. Actually, I love hard problems.

I love startups. I like to attend startup meetups. And I like to talk to startup founders. I am often surprised that people work on something that does not matter to them personally. And I think 'Is this really how you want to invest your time and energy? You only have one stay on planet earth. And you want to use it to build a marketing tool for loan comparisons? Or a management system for SPF headers? Is this really what life is about?'.

I have been putting time into finding the right apartments for years now. And this will probably not change. This is the key reason why I think this idea is the right idea for me.

Doing a Google search for "apartments with a view in bangkok" brings up nothing. Not even a spammy "Best 10 Apartments with a view in Bangkok" page which I would have expected. Let alone an up to date, user friendly, honest, comprehensive list. That's what I want to build. That's going to be my contribution to the internet.

Of course it might possible to broaden the approach later. My bet is: It doesn't matter how small I start. As long as it matters to me.

* Speed Uber Alles

I plan to spend zero time on planning, bureaucracy, design and best practices. Just iterate based on user feedback. Take one step at a time as fast as possible. At the moment I am the only user. So I scratch my own itch. Whatever comes to mind, I do it. I want to only act on real user feedback. Never want to waste time speculating about what others might want. If you have any feedback, let me know: getnothingless@outlook.com

I will stick to free tools. Anything I have to pay for would just slow me down. I would hesitate to sign up, I would hesitate to switch (if I already paid a monthly or yearly subscription) I would hesitate to continue (if I have running costs). So no paid services. That's why you are reading this on a GitHub page. Thanks GitHub! I want to keep it that way. Whatever free tool comes in my way: I will just happily click and try it. Since it's free, it's ok if it sucks. I can just stop using it tomorrow.

* Reach out and be open about everything

I plan to be open, be vulnerable and never hesitate to ask. As of yet, I have no idea how to do this. I don't even know how to set up an email newsletter which everybody says is so important. If you want to be updated about this journey, just send me an email.

Being an introverted person, my typical approach would be to figure it all out on my own. Sit in front of my computer, plan, analyze, research and compare until I have all information to make an informed decision. My hypothesis is that this is way inferior to just ask and try. So I will make an experiment and go against my natural habits.

* Measure

"What gets measured gets managed". I don't want to run around blindly. So I will try to find good indicators of whats going on and measure them religiously. First of all I will measure the time I put into this. Let's start now. 2018-02-19 10:08 UTC. 0 hours. 35 minutes. 0 seconds invested. Yeah, I have been writing this text for 35 minutes now. Embarrassing, I know.

I will keep a public log about the invested time.

So these are the 4 guidelines to my new startup. Let's see where this goes. I will make an updated list if I learn more along the way.