OP: I’ve got the marketing, sales, platform development, product development, and operations handled.

So I’m looking for a partner.

ITT: 🤨

There’s more than a few applications for building websites from information in Google sheets, csvs, and excel files. The attractiveness of the websites can very widely but they seem to be in the niche you’re looking at.

If you’re that concerned why don’t you just keep your sensitive info on an airgapped device and everything else on your normal device of choice?

Why do you think this is a good market? Globally, DSLR and mirrorless camera sales are down and will probably continue to go down as phone cameras get better and people don’t feel the need for them.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/799526/shipments-of-digital-singe-lens-reflex-cameras-worldwide/

You are probably thinking too much about this rather than looking for strategies that make the best use of your abilities.

Public speaking is a skill that can be learned. Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are by Nature absolutely terrible public speaker. They only got better at it when they were older and got practice, and very likely were trained. I mean dude, Zick only stopped sounding like a compete Android within the last year or so and even now it’s not that great.

It is not a requirement to be a founder. Focus on maximizing the skills that you have now first, and worry about public speaking later, perhaps if it’s necessary for fundraising, which actually I don’t think it is because many investors understand then Engineers don’t talk well, then learn it when you need it. Otherwise don’t worry about it until it becomes an issue like it did for Zuck and Elon.

Is the person’s job actually is business development, then it doesn’t stop at finding VCs. They would take on duties related to demand generation, partnerships, and sales. Do they not have the appropriate experience for this? If they do have a decent network and good experience then it sounds like a good fit. If not, then I think business development is not an accurate way to describe with their doing for you

Historically, economies in societies that advance beyond meeting basic material needs shift towards services.

If AI renders a lot of existing jobs obselete then new services that we don’t currently have the capacity for will start being offered.

150 years ago very few people could afford to eat in restaurants. Now nearly everyone can and it’s the main way a lot is people eat. Its a service that became affordable as technology made the equipment and labor avaliable.

AI will make equipment and labor available for even more services than we already have. Maybe thinks like personal trainers, nutritionists, psychiatrists, and cooks will become more and more affordable and common. Who knows?

The adjustment period is the tough part for those left without options.

Starting a business because it is convenient and suits your schedule is probably not a great reason to do it.

Starting a business because you have an idea that you strongly believe solves a problem in a industry that you know well is usually the best reason.

Mr. O,

I have a agency background. Mostly digital marketing for travel.

This year I gave several talks to travel industry about generative AI and spent a lot of time researching it in detail and dialog to potential clients/users.

I have come to the conclusion that there is a clear path to AI integration for most businesses that starts with GPT-based internal productivity tools that are refined until they are reliable enough to be tweaked and used for b2c purposes like customer service, support, and lead generation.

I think this needs to start with one use case and expand from there. I am currently speaking to a large travel agent franchise about building a product for travel agents.

I see a lot of similar startups in this space in other industries. I believe that USPs and moats will come from case specific integrations, case specific knowledge bases, and early customer acquisition.

I see this business model for this as being a SAAS that has a large amount of customization for customers perhaps somewhat similar to salesforce.

I have spoken to a few technical people but have not yet found a technical co-founder. I could probably grind out an MVP myself using a third party platform, but it would be incredibly slow I need to do so and not sure how good the results would be.

At the moment I am a bit stuck about whether I should spend more time looking for a good co-founder that is willing to put in the work, or if I should see funding to pay to build. I think the co-founder is preferable but it’s unclear how quickly I can find one.

I appreciate any insight you can provide on the idea in general and my immediate blocker.

Cheers!