Opportunities and An Oculus

The past couple of weeks have been incredibly busy but in a good sort of way. I sat down with my business partner (David) and we had a page full of great ideas, serious partnership opportunities and a number of realistic possible investments. Faced with this plethora of options is any businesses dream.

As an example, one possible partnership will potentially add 30% to our client’s revenue line at ParkLogic. We’ve already put together a test and it will be interesting to see how it pans out over the next couple of weeks. It’s constantly looking for ideas like the one we’re testing that get me excited about the domain business.

ParkLogic Next is progressing forward and we have a number of clients migrated across to it already. The client interface that we demonstrated at NamesCon was an instant hit but we still have a lot of plans to refine it further. The goal is to place decision making metrics in the hands of clients.

So with all the things that are happening and opportunities available how do you choose the right ones to work on? A lot of it has to assessing both the business impact and potential downside risk. For instance, we were looking over a detailed business plan for a particular venture this past week and spent most of the time assessing the “when to pull the plug” scenario.

It’s great getting caught up in the excitement of a new idea but working out when you’ll cut it lose if everything doesn’t work out is vitally important. I’ve seen many people almost get “pot committed” and feel they have to add more and more cash into something that’s actually failing.

In terms of investing in a business venture both David and I have one guiding rule. We will only invest if we are both in agreement.

For example, I identified a significant new opportunity but I still went through the due diligence of putting together a complete business plan. This was then put up as a “straw man’ so that David could shoot it down and I could defend it. If it survives that treatment, then we work out the minimal amount of investment to get to the first dollar of revenue. We’ll worry about the automation and streamlining of the product/service later on…..let’s just see if there are real customers who want it first!

When you have so many opportunities you will end up disappointing a few people. This can’t be helped; you can’t do everything. If possible, leave some of these on your list to be reviewed in six months time….more on this topic at a later time.

I would like to say thank you to all those people that wished me a Happy 50^th Birthday. I had an awesome time and have now purchased an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset with the unbelievably generous gifts (thank you Roselyn for organising this).

Yes, I’m a real geek….I look forward to seeing you in cyberspace….watch out, I’ve already started investigated the Unity VR games programming language. Have a great weekend!

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Michael Gilmour has been in business for over 32 years and has both a BSC in Electronics and Computer Science and an MBA. He was the former vice-chairman of the Internet Industry Association in Australia and is in demand as a speaker at Internet conferences the world over. He has also recently published his first science fiction book, Battleframe.

Michael is passionate about working with online entrepreneurs to help them navigate their new ventures around the many pitfalls that all businesses face. Due to demands on his time, Michael may be contacted by clicking here for limited consulting assignments.