Market Size

Small business
Small firms with fewer than 500 employees represent 99.9 % of the 24.7 million businesses in the US (2004 numbers from Office of Advocacy estimates)

52% of these small business are home based (US dept of commerce)

Another way of looking at the potential for this market is by looking at the number of new businesses that are created each year.
Based on US dept of commerce statistics for 2003 – 2007. The number has steadily but slowly increased year on year from approximately 612,000 in 2003 to 637,000 in 2007.


Families
The market for a family archive site is of course much bigger and potentially viral to a tremendous degree:

Average house hold size is 2.61, with a population of about 300,000,000 that’s about 114,942,528.7 house holds in the US.

If we limit our estimated audience to those with sufficient disposable income to have an interest in a family archiving – (those with above mean income – mean being $65,527 (according to us census data 2006)
That is approximately 45 percent of the total population of households.

Or looked at another way there are 74,564,066 families in the US (2006 census data) and approximately 35% of them have a family income above their mean income which is $76,130 – Making a total of: 26,097,423.

In December 2006, 71.3% of those asked said they had a computer at home, 60,7% with an Internet connection. So if 60% of our 26 million households have both a computer at home and an internet connection, then perhaps the total market size is approximately: 15,600,000

What is Shroggle?

What is Shroggle? – ‘Push Button Simple Web Site Creator’
Shroggle is a web based application that allows a non technical user to create a web site in an easy to use web interface.
It also allows the site owner to create sites for others.
They could do so in the context of a, creating & building their own business with the Shroggle tools.
Creating sites that can be linked together around a central site, gives the site owner the option to use the tool to then create a directory or portal, which can be marketed as a subscription based service.
And it allows shroggle to leverage the enthusiasm and expertise of many other business owners, to create a large user base – producing a stable annuity for their company and for Shroggle too.

Business model for entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs

As the world economy slides into a recession of significant proportions – an opportunity arises: Thousands of strongly motivated, intelligent and entrepreneurial individuals, worried about their financial security are starting to look for either an additional stream of income or a completely new start.

Generally speaking these people:
Do not have the capital to create a product from scratch,
They have a sense of urgency and do not have the time to build a piece of technology
They may not have sufficient technical skill sets to build an internet business on their own.
The idea of an internet service is appealing to them – both because of the ongoing prestige of being a technology entrepreneur, and because of the low per unit costs of the service / product.
The idea of an annuity business is attractive to just about anyone
The potential for creating a viral business, or b2b business holds some hope of being either somewhat recession proof, or being a success on a monumental scale.

Keys to Shroggle's Success

A unique feature set: Allows our users to create networks of sites, as well as stand alone web sites.

Ease of use: Intuitive interfaces, with clear instructions, and lots of contextual help - targeted at various levels of user expertise: help for dummies through to Help for power users.

It saves the customer money

It makes the customer money

Its viral: People who have a web based business advertise there site, and in doing so they advertise shroggle.com

Its viral: Many of our 'give a way business models' for network sites are highly viral: dating sites, family archive sites, job boards etc.

Competition

http://www.web.com - no online setup, minimal online management.
http://site2you.eturnkeys.com/ - no online setup, minimal online management.
http://www.homestead.com/ - online setup limited to template, text and images
http://www.edirecthost.com/ - - online setup limited to shopping cart, text and images.
http://www.weebly.com/ - online setup includes text, images, audio, gallery, scripts, html, blogs and contact forms.
http://www.tiptopwebsite.com/ - online setup includes: text, images, calendar, e-commerce store, images, blogs, forum, custom forms, password protection, music & video, pdfs, slide show.
http://www.zappyhost.com/ - online setup includes: text, images, forums blog, html / css editing, rss and scrip inserts, flash inserts, video, shared content, password protected pages, customizable templates, custom forms.
http://www.sitecube.com - online setup includes: shopping cart, videos, flash insert, text, images, image galleries, contact forms, tell a friend, web site stats
http://www.webs.com/ - text, images, video, calendar, gallery, blog, forum, insert scripts, password protection, web site stats
http://shroggle.com - online setup includes: text, images, video, blogs, forums, blog summaries, content sharing, customizable forms, customizable registration, contact us, script insert, html and css editing, galleries, audio, pdf, search, form data display, password protection, web site stats, link lists, tell a friend and more.

Shroggle Objective

To build a user base by leveraging the enthusiasm, ideas and contacts of experienced entrepreneurs:

We propose to give away 10viable viral business models to 10 experienced entrepreneurs looking to use Shroggle to create a their own successful online directory business. Focusing on the following fields: Art and Film Festivals, Professional directories, Trade Shows, Match making, Job boards, Geniology, Property Management and more

Large telecom companies looking for ways to encourage their customers to use more bandwidth and storage services.

Shroggle Mission

3 Missions

To make it easy for small business owners to update their web sites. To be dynamic and responsive to market shifts, competitive developments and statistical analysis. To be as responsive as their large corporate competitors.

Making it possible for people to follow their dreams of being an internet entrepreneur - allowing them to quickly start a web business with limited technical skills and no capital investment.

To make it easier for people to archive family data, share it with loved ones who live far away, record the lives and lessons of the older generations, and share all of those great stories.

Shroggle's added value

The Oxytocin argument:
User created content is undoubtedly one of the most important developments of our age.
Societally, economically and institutionally it is reforming our culture, and will continue to do so to who knows what ends.

Shroggle will be a venue for user created content. But Shroggle will be more than that.

The problem and the opportunity of social networking and digital ucc 'sharing' has been identified most audibly in criticisms of face book and other social networking web sites... Digital communication is actually reducing real communication. Filling our hours with superficial contact - we are loosing our ability to connect. Of course 50 years of television contributed to that phenomenon somewhat..

So what?

I would suggest that this is neither desirable in the long term, nor sustainable. Humans have a strong instinct and biological need to affiliate. Its what makes us feel safe, perhaps its what makes us feel human.

We are fundamentally a social organism, and that the healthier we are the more we want sincere personal affiliation.

What is 'sincere personal affiliation'? Its partly about really knowing someone else, knowing more about who they are, what they think and feel, where they fit in your model of the world, and how they relate to you personally...

Feeling another person as yourself, feeling within yourself what another is feeling.

It is this process of mapping that creates feelings of empathy and affiliation.

I believe that seeing the product of someone's creativity is beautiful, but knowing that person - is personally meaningful, even inspirational.

How does shroggle fit in to this: Shroggle allows the creators of content to publish it themselves, in a 'venue' that makes room for more information about who they are, information about other aspects of them. One of the primary ways that we learn about a person is by seeing their unique diversity. A matrix of connections to the rest of their online identity / identities that allows us to understand them in the context of a multitude of affiliations, talents, contributions and networks. This information makes that person 'real', and it increases the significance and impact of their creative contributions.

A central hub that points to all of their individual contributions. A network of hubs, even a matrix of networks that form a community of inter related entities - be they people, organizations, communities or interest groups.

Today this is the technical reality of the Internet.. but it is not our experience of it.

That's the opportunity.

Business plan data points

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/clay_shirky_on_institutions_versus_collaboration.html

Open domain music for our tutorials and demos.

http://www.publicdomain4u.com/
http://www.goingware.com/tips/legal-downloads.html
http://www.pdmusic.org/
http://www.royaltyfreemusic.com

Continuing the discussion

Larry Lessig's 'TED talks' lecture:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.html

Its an amazingly exciting time

http://www.shroggle.com - open beta

We are almost finished with video embeds... aka content modules. Registration and login embeds are done, contact us embeds and logs and traffic reports - all complete this week.

It feels like the complex parts are just beginning, but we have achieved so much.

We launch an open beta on Monday - and real people, who aren't our friends and family are going to be looking at Shroggle.

of course this is where the rubber meets the road.. now we get to make this really good, and truly valuable.

Cognitive Surplus

Chris Shirkey's explanation explains one reason why shroggle is societally valuable.

Tag Lines

So my current favorite is:
Push Button Prefab - Web Site Creation
although that really doesn't quite capture how versatile and customizable it is...
maybe Push Button Prefab - Custom Web Site Creation?

Tight Schedule

Its almost mid September.. and we are three weeks from a closed beta. Its pretty feature rich already although there is work still to be done. We don't really have 'nice' template sites yet.. but that is easy to add, we don't have a lot of the more granular permissions stuff worked out, but the basics are in there. We have text and images, blogs, forums, forum polls, blog summaries, menus, backgrounds, borders and lots more cool stuff. Video and Calendars will be published within a couple of months, and galleries and slide shows will follow shortly thereafter.

As of this beta we will be shifting gears slightly - to a more iterative approach: going live with units of functionality every month or so for the next 8 or 9 months.

There is soo much still to do... but its already pretty cool.

Business Cards :)

They're so cool, they're hot ;)

Phonetics

Without using the technical phonetic alphabet, (because most visitors wont be able to read that) - we need to offer a transliteration of 'Shroggle'. Here are a few ideas...
Our main concern is that it has to sound the way we want it to, when read by any English speaker, whether US or UK, SA, Auzi or Canadian.... turns out to be quite a challenge.

[sh-rog-gl]
[shr-uh-g"gl]
[shr-gl]

Shroggle has a soft 'o' and a soft 'g'...

At the moment I'm thinking we might have to supplement with an audio file.

The Server

BTW. After all that fuss, we sent the server back to the jokers who had built it, (Servers Direct) and when they couldn't do the install, (finding broken and missing components among other things), we asked for our money back, and ordered another one from a second company, ABMX. They built installed and delivered a working server to the same specs in just over two weeks. It was finally installed at Switch and accessible on 4/29. Almost FOUR months after we initially received the first server. It was quite a journey!

Custom Build for a client

We have a client; and with it we have a spec that includes a good deal of functionality that works well for a phase two. We will be building out the existing Shroggle functionality to incorporate a number of new modules that add very significantly to the already impressive offerings. I'll share them with you as we complete them. But suffice to say that it will include more product oriented stuff, more rss stuff, and more e-commerce stuff ;)

Early Alpha

An early alpha is a wonderful thing. For the first time in half a year, i am able to allay that quiet dark fear that the programmers have grossly misunderstood what we need ;) ... or that our specs have overlooked some critical element of usability.

Of course its horrible to look at, and has more bugs than my garden, but i can't help but feel somewhat maternal towards it.... like the Jamie Ace movie says, "It has a face only a mother could love".

The completed functionality now includes: the registration pages, template selection, site creation, page creation, blog and forum creation, add an image, rtf editor, add a menu. The preview pages are a mess and we are still missing a couple of really fundamental visual items....

Yay progress.

M

Solaris install

So it turns out that the install failed because our two SATA terrabite drives were connected to our SAS controller instead of the SATA controller. It should work now, although we will need an external RAID controller. The sad part is that we have had to send the box all the way back to servers direct to correct the issue, hook up the kvm and install the OS because Switch's so called remote hands are impatient and lack the good old fashioned curiosity to figure this shit out. To be honest I smell some sort of politics between Switch multimedia and the parent company.

Phase 2 functionality

We are looking into possible phase two functionality and are really excited about all the possibilities.. I really would love to share them with you, but its all sooo secret ;)

GUI design reviews

So we have finally put together mockups for all the top level interfaces, and are working on assembling reviewers: Hi tech and low tech testers to examine and comment in detail on each of the 20 or so screen we have to date.

So far we have 5 but more would be better. contact me if you would like a sneak peek at what we are doing here. (signed NDAs are of course required).

Solaris issues

The server should be up and running but it isn't. The Super Micro motherboard doesn't claim to be Solaris compliant, and neither they nor Sun offer drivers for this combination, but Igor and Vlad staunchly support our choice. They tell me that they have installed Solaris on this motherboard before and that it will work if only we 'select, deselect and then reselect the drive' hmmm... fingers crossed.

GUI Design

Its like stepping through the looking glass. Each page must be consistent with every other page, each page links to multiple other pages. Back and forth I travel within, and yet creating a world that no one else can see yet. I must be a geek because I don't think that any one other than a geek would consider this to be fun :)

Colo spreadsheet link

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pYJcOyuHXBQLOLOGDab56Xg

Finding the right colocation service

I thought I knew a bit about hosting.. but why then did I find this task quite so taxing.

Did you know that most colo services are sub letting from other colo facilities and just marking up for their management expertise, (or just because they can)?

Then there is the question of Tier's. By some definitions Tier 1 companies are the Internet Providers like Verizon or Sprint. By other definitions every little Colocation facility is a Tier 1.... so which is it?

Some tell me that "you don't want to host with those little Tier 1 companies", you need to host with Tier 2 or above. Tier 2 I can understand - these are the folks who have their own 'transit routes' and buy the service of multiple Tier 1 companies and offer them all, generally providing better service than any one alone. But what about Tier 3? By some reckonings Tier three are the bottom of the pile but according to others they are the best broadest, most reliable places to connect your box...

Make it stop! Can't someone establish some rules and govern this mess!

I've been creating a spreadsheet (in no way exhaustive) to keep some of this straight in my head.. any feedback would be greatfully received.

We need great load times in both the US and EU and even as far a field as Japan.
The site is going to be media heavy with heavy traffic. (1mbps during the development phase, growing to at least 10mbps soon after it goes live. Its just a single 4U box at the moment but should have room to grow.

And so it begins

We bought our first dedicated server for this project today - not bad if I say so myself:
Two - Intel Quad-Core Xeon X5355 Processor 2.66GHz 1333MHz
12 GB of RAM
A pair of raided Seagate SAS 300GB 15K RPM HD
and a pair of 1 TB SATA hardrives.

Its a good beginning.