I had a terrific idea while honking on the phone with my pal Harry yesterday. He was talking about mounting an Internet startup that could be transformed within a year or so from a cool idea into a cash bonanza of $500 million when it was purchased by a larger online company, and I thought to myself, hey, I could do one of those.
Once I got the idea into my head, I couldn’t seem to get it out of there. So I figure it’s a good one, right?
Here’s the twist. I’m going to let the first smart person to snatch it up have it for only $100 million, if they move immediately. The way the market is going right now? That’s chicken feed.
Here are some of the big assets my new project will bring to the table from Day One:
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A very fluid concept and operating principle: Right now, I’m wide open. I’m thinking it’s some kind of widget by which people can mash up their wiki. There will definitely be streaming and searching, possibly with a business bent of some kind. Within months, we’ll have established a community of people who are getting tired of the same-old stuff they’re moshing at already, and flock to us. Every one of those community members is a potential customer of a range of products pretty much for life, which I’m thinking should be very interesting to marketers looking for a slice of the Gen-Zero pie;
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No overhead: right now there are no employees, no office space, no serious operating expenses beyond those involved with the legal establishment of the entity and the papers involved with its sale to you;
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Nobody knows about it yet. Every venture capitalist in the industry is looking for the next big cultural phenomenon to sweep the digital landscape. More importantly, VCs and hedge fund managers are also looking hard for ways to spend the appalling amount of money they have in hand. This would give some lucky and sagacious investment steward the chance to plump down a nice but not scary chunk of green for a start-up that has quite literally nothing but upside.
Clearly, this is a very protean idea, but it’s hard to see how it could fail if we take it a step at a time with the right people, the right overall concept, the right marketing and public relations. While I believe I could be important to the effort, I would be willing to step aside and let a new team of talented young folks take my baby to the next level. I’m not greedy. Any eight-figure payout would do.
