Eric Edelstein, incuBeta founder and roving VC, has started a series of blog posts entitled "Don't screw up the Start up". I reckon these posts are going to be essential reading for anyone who is looking to start up an internet venture, or any other venture for that matter. I first met Eric in the late nineties when I was consulting in the internet gambling industry and hooked up with him again at the last JHB 27 Dinner. He really knows his stuff - I am going to be following all of these posts avidly.
Eric is also making an interesting play in the suddenly crowded African blog aggregator space. The past month has seen the launch of Amatomu and Afrigator, and Eric is building another one. It is going to be really interesting to see how he differentiates his service from the other ones, and how he appeals to the broader market out there. In his words:
How do we give the average man in the street value? This is the million dollar question and one we’ll be working on really hard in the next few weeks.
That is a key question. The average internet surfer (ie, not geek) has never heard of Technorati, IceRocket, Digg or Reddit, never mind the African equivalents of these services. How do you make your service useful to these people? If you can aggregate and track enough blogs, and extract decent intelligence out of them then there are a number of business models that come into play. Getting there isn't going to be easy, but the service that manages to answer these questions is going to have a winner on its hands.
Eric Edelstein » Don’t screw up the Start-up - PART 1 - Research