1. Domain Expert: François Chollet
Chollet is the creator of Wysp, an art community that focuses on practice improvement. She is my domain expert since I also want to create an art website with strong community features, albeit with a different focus. I found Wysp via a blog post, and found Chollet's contact info on Wysp's FAQ page. Since Chollet appears to be a normal young person just like you and me, in my email I basically asked about things I was worried about concerning my own project- getting the word out, unexpected challenges, and how she created the website. Additionally, I noticed there are no ads on Wysp, and there doesn't seem to be a paid membership system, so I was curious about where Wysp created revenue. Having her in my network will add a nice sense of camaraderie as well as a possible mentor- small website moderators have to stick together!
2. Market Expert: Silvia Barnett
Silvia is a digital artist who's been in the artist roleplaying community for over five years, so she's representative of my market. Since I'm in the same community, we met through there and have been friends for a few years now. I chose to contact her through a freeware application, Discord, since that's where we usually chat to keep things casual.
In my message to Silvia, I asked her mostly about her views on how big my market is and what kind of features should be free versus premium on my website. Having her in my network will be helpful since she is deeply rooted within it and has a large reach of her own. She could help me spread the word about my website.
3. Important Supplier: Allison Zhao
Zhao is a freelance coder who works with clients in building websites and small video games. When your service is a website, coding and technical help are the most important supplies. I found Zhao through a tweet advertising her coding commission services. When I contacted her through Twitter, I basically described my website idea to her in hopes of getting suggestions and a quote. The more you know! Having this person in my network is vital for my website's creation due to her expertise.
Reflection
I can see that networking is super vital, as I've been told since I was a freshman at UF. They give you the info and boosts that classes and money can't buy, and I wouldn't doubt if they were the gap between some businesses succeeding and failing.
Haley,
ReplyDeleteIt seems like networking is an extremely important aspect of succeeding in your market, so I think its great you are reaching out already! Allison Zhao seems like a person who could play an important role in making your product successful, did she ever respond?
Hey there Haley! I think you chose an amazing roster of people to try adding to your connections and I hope you get valuable responses from each of them. Keep me updated on whether they got back to you! Chollet sounds like a really good source to ask about the startup process and ow you can do the same. Keep up the good grind!
ReplyDeleteHi Haley, while I don't really know much (anything, if we're being honest) about the community that seems to be your target, it seems to be as fairly tight knit as an online community can be. I think it'll be important to have other website owners as allies going forward, since they can recommend you and vice versa. There's not really a limit to creativity, so these people could be your friends instead of your competitors.
ReplyDelete