It’s incredibly easy to have what constitutes as a ‘startup idea’, you take an emerging behaviour (streaming movies online, using YouTube as a music player, tweeting about the weather) and pair it up with a new business model (subscription, micro payments or let’s-build-it-and-see).

Next step is coming up with a name that ends neatly in a url ( .co or .ly). Register it.

Done. Or so you think. It feels like you exist.

But you’re almost further away from realising an idea than you were before you had the idea. Because the effort and excitement you’ve put in so far, will keep you from rethinking it or adapting it to the reality you now face.

Before you even start thinking about if anyone would want it, what gap in the market you’re exploiting or the famous exist strategy. Ask yourself 2 things:

Can you build it? Are you central to the idea?

Your Spotify for travel, Groupon for experiences, Foursquare for music or AirBnB for cars.

I always have to say no to those two questions.

You will always learn a lot during the process of trying to get one of those things of the ground, how to write a business plan, how to pitch, how to make absolutely ridiculous risk calculations etc.

But you will mainly learn, that if you’re starting a web based business, the first thing you write, should be a line of code. Not a business proposition.

The next thing I’m doing with my friend Tom, starts from what we can do ourselves, and what we love doing. An idea which we’re central to and can build with existing tools.

Update on that soon.

•  30 January 2012

After spending 9 months trying to create a communications solution that we knew wouldn’t work, for a product that no one wants, I almost a lot of hope in what I do. An incredible amount of dough is wasted on clients’ behalves - but more depressingly is how much of talented people’s time is wasted.

In those 9 months, with the team and budget we had, we could’ve launched a competitor to the product we were marketing. Fixing all its flaws instead of trying not to talk about them. 

But we didn’t. 

So I thought, why not try to spend the next 9 months of my spare time to try and launch a product. And I did.

But I didn’t launch anything.

I tried to create something I didn’t really know how to do and became too dependent on other people.

I tried to create something too big in scale so it became too big of a leap.

And I focused wholeheartedly, on the plan of the business rather than the business. The blueprint for a house I didn’t know where to put or even why. I just wanted to build a house. 

It was almost as wasteful as the prior example, in that case we still launched something, but I only invested time, not any money.

So for 2012 - launch a business - then plan it. Reversed order to make it right.

•  25 January 2012

The core purpose of this blog (still feels weird saying it) is reflection. To reflect on my work, the wider context of it (the communications industry) but also, about what has come to be what really inspires me: To start a business. 

During the last 6 months, pretty much since the moment I got my wonderful Kindle, I’ve been going deeper and deeper into the phenomenon startup, I’ve read too much of the literature, I have Techcrunch and the usual suspects in the RSS feed and I’ve drafted a few business plans. But still not a business.

Why? 

Topic for the next post.

•  15 January 2012

My project One Thousand Cranes for Japan has been nominated for Design Museum’s Designs of the Year 2012. Can still not really believe it and looking at the competition is humbling - we will never win but it is an incredible honour. The site isn’t live anymore bur you can read more about the project over on Dezeen.  

•  12 January 2012

Facebook’s timeline made me realise, that the more public and open the platform has become over the years, the less I have used it for reflection. I used to report about both sad and happy times, about the struggles during projects, not just the end results.

Now Facebook is like a social CV - which means you only share the good and inoffensive bits.

It’s not a big problem, and I don’t wish for Facebook to necessarily change. I just need to switch things around. My blog used to be a broadcasting tool - I used it to tell the world about something - to openly reflect or document processes -  but it became too public. Now when Facebook (and Twitter, but it has always been) is too public, I’ll start a blog again for the more personal stuff. As Ben said, “no one reads blogs anymore” - perfect.

Now I don’t have to worry, because people will actively have to search this stuff out - something that people who care about me and what I do hopefully will. And I was 

So here’s to a new blog.

•  9 January 2012