Harvard Business Publishing

You are meeting with a VC. I assume that he knows something about you or he wouldn't have given you an appointment. You'll get about 30 seconds of bandwidth to make your pitch before he starts (a) asking a lot of really interesting questions, or (b) thanking you for your time and running for the nearest exit. Your illustration, your focus, is great. What you have to be ready to answer is why you are the one(s) who can make this idea make money. Good luck!!

David -
email me if you are interested in talking with someone who has started and failed at what you are attempting to do... would love to help you not make the mistakes I did (unless you want the bruises)
Cheers
- Cannon
cannon.fletcher@gmail.com

Good post David.

I think your graphic works well when you discuss what "niche" means to your company - exactly as you did in this post. Obviously, it's hard for entrepreneurs to focus on "niche" when they see companies like Google, Craigslist or Facebook surrounding the masses. However, lest we forget that these three businesses always had short, mid and long term goals where the niche was crystal clear: Google (search), Craigslist (hyper-local classifieds for the Bay Area) and Facebook (an intimate network for Harvard Students).

Outperform by underperforming and realize small scale works to your advantage.

I am glad to see that industry is stepping towards personalization. For a long time I have been thinking that music industry should experiment with subscription services where fans get an early release of an album (or song), get stage tours, get to meet the band members, get free concert tickets when the band is in town, etc. I think fans are willing to pay premium when they get specialized benefits.

Industry should realize that they are not just selling music... they are selling an experience.

David:

As your partner is JamSeed, I have become keenly focused on creating the "Jamseeds" that will bring bands and fans closer.

We have many ideas for "seeds," but, as we listen and exchange ideas with our communities of friends and colleagues, we have yet to clearly define the unique goods and/or services that artists can readily replicate and fans will happily purchase.

In essence, our business will succeed or fail based on our ability to define the unique "commercial intersection" between artists and their fans.

As part of our approach to defining the "commercial intersection," we are planning on using social research tools to extract and analyze the best ideas and insights from the members of our communities. In essence, we will be innovating by applying the principals espoused in the "Wisdom of Crowds" by James Surowiecki - in effect, large groups of people are smarter than the few.

As we plan the project, I will continue to join the discussion to describe our "crowdsourcing" tools and how we collect and analyze the data.

The process of innovation has many flavors; let's see what JamSeeds we can create.

Mmmmm. I don't think the JamSeed model makes sense. I'm a music artist and I'm actually going the other way. I'm pricing my CD at $30 or above. And I'm trying not to sell MP3s. If you really like my music, buy a CD. Afterall, people never question why different books have different prices and are willing pay different prices for them (or other items).

If somebody is particularly fond of a certain artist or group, maybe you could become known as a go-between? The prospective customer could contact Jamseed and ask how much it would cost to have a private performance, or song written, etc. by a certain artist of *their* choosing in addition to bands you've already signed.