It’s time to go to the last all day session of the Market Entry Program. This is my homework, though I’ve failed to do it as suggested. I may have gotten into the program a little ahead of schedule. I definitely qualified by having no customers, but I also have no product. Thus I am mostly bringing my brain to market. However, maybe it has positioned me well for a different route.
Last week I got into my #1 competitor’s beta: Quora. This application is amazing and their name is way better than mine. 
I love that they share the same central idea in their product: No duplication of questions. There are some great strengths and obvious weaknesses to me, but I’ll save that post for later. Today I redo my go to market strategy for my non-existent prototype, which I can’t seem to start by myself. I keep saying I’m more of a fixer than a build-from-scratch guy, but maybe I should just get on with it. I’m definitely way behind these guys technically. I hope my story will catch their eye and we’ll talk about teaming up. Either way I’m sure we’ll talk eventually.
My initial target market:
Brands trying to market on twitter and facebook that aren’t satisfied with the effectiveness of their campaigns. As well as, other social companies and organizations, that want to capitalize on their value conscious way of operating in the world.
Positioning statement for economic buyer$:
For socially aware organizations who need to engage with online audiences in a meaningful fashion, the QuestionCollector is a value centric debate community, where we can all share our big picture values. Unlike twitter and facebook we offer a rich cultural experience for brands to grow their online social identity.
Positioning statement for user buyers (free):
For rebels, jesters, believers, and thinkers the QuestionCollector is a debate hosting website for people who care about our collective future. Unlike Yahoo!Answers, StackExchange, and Quora we create a deep cultural experience to organize us around our questions and values, while empowering people to participate in a story of freedom.
Value proposition for organizations:
We believe that organizations with social capital should be able to increase effective engagement with their people by achieving a greater reputation in the marketplace, through our ability to organize people around their deeply held beliefs and values, as a result of our unique multicultural experience.
Value proposition for users:
We believe that honest, caring, thoughtful people should be able to increase their freedom by participating in their own unique way, through our ability to provide an organized, cultural debate site, as a result of our unique ranking and privacy systems.
Just by doing these exercises repeatedly I’m finding great value in the process. The sentences quite often end up absurdly too long, but they are excellent at squeezing out the answer, of what our product will be, and what we know it will do for our subscribers and our users. <~ I think it’s training me to make my sentences too absurX… nevermind. It has also helped me see my business model more clearly, along with helpful advice I’ve been getting. I look forward to getting a whole bunch more. If you have any questions about what these mean, I want to understand your perspective. Please bang out a quick comment or tweet me and I’ll be sure to respond.
Thanks for reading! I can’t do it without you.
Follow us on Vator.tv
What a great day! Thanks to Ralph Turfus, Kathy, Simon, Mark Payne, Paulin Laberge and all the other participants and mentors in the Market Entry Program! Thanks to ACETECH and Discovery Park for putting it all together. I’m so tired, but I can’t stop working.