The office in Second Life is mostly set up and I’ve had curious parties meet with me a few times. Overall I do think there are some serious possibilities for small business here, but I’ll collect a little more data on this before I draw any conclusions.
For information on the specific business I’m experimenting with, look here.
Today is the public launch of Project Alpha, which has taken the form of the File Courier. See this post for details.
List members got a sneak peek at the device, and will continue to get the same advantage going forward. Join the list and group if you’d like to be in on future developments.
The other issue that needed to be addressed here was about bringing small real-world businesses into virtual space. What works, what doesn’t, and is it even a good idea?
I’ve posted on my blog in the past some ideas of who virtual worlds can really work for, but when looking at testing this in the lab I realized that I really shouldn’t use someone else’s business as a guinea pig.
So, with a mind to sell a product or service from the real world on my own through virtual worlds, I decided to take a good look around my house at the things I use every day. After all, the #1 rule of entrepreneurship is that you should never start a venture involving something you don’t care about. Make sure it’s for something you sincerely feel is worthwhile to you and would be to others.
(Yes, I realize you knew that already, but I’m just explaining my thinking here.)
While I’m doing this I’m reminded that the new car insurance paperwork just came in, so I forward it off to my lawyer for a quick review (so that I can understand what it all means) and go get a cup of tea. Sell teabags online? I could buy in bulk and… nah, keep thinking.
A short while later my lawyer calls back and goes over everything for me. He points out some loopholes in my insurance that I can expect to be screwed on if I ever wreck the car, and gives me some advice on how to plan ahead, but I have to admit that my head wasn’t in it. The whole time I’m thinking: “hmmm, should I try to sell car insurance online? But I hate insurance…”
And then it dawned on me that there’s one thing I have that almost nobody else does: a killer legal service.
I made some phonecalls, and when I mentioned it to my wife she was pretty keen on the idea too, so she ended up handling the paperwork for me. (It wasn’t much but I have this “filling out forms” phobia after trying a new Web 2.0 app each day.) A few meetings later and now I’m able to put lawyers on retainer for almost anyone in North America at around $25 per month.
Things that make this a good project candidate:
So, now what? Currently I have a great product that can be purchased through a website, but it’s something most people know nothing about. What are my next steps for bringing this small business into the virtual world?
Well, more to come. Meanwhile, please comment with what you think would be the best ways of tackling this project!
The first project at Caleb’s Business Lab will focus on creating a tool for businesses. Now, when trying to figure out what tool to create, some simple questions often do the trick:
If you really put some honest effort into it, thinking along those lines can generate a good list of about a hundred or so potential tools. This is how we came up with Zebra Presenter as well as most of the gadgets and buildings you’ll find in the Zebra Corporate package.
Following this line of thought one of the very first questions I had about Second Life came up: how can I give someone a file from my hard drive through Second Life? Moreover, how can I sell them one?
Soon, we’ll have an answer for you.
Meanwhile, please join the mailing list to get insider’s information on upcoming developments.
Clearly this area is under construction. If you’d like to sign up for advanced access to the lab’s experiments, however, click here.