A business with a difference

I have been thinking a fair bit about what kind of startup I would do some day. It seems that there is two main themes around startups in the tech space. The first is to focus on bootstrapping a service and flipping it and the other one being to build large with pools of VC money and then flip or IPO it. However once in a while you get a view of a different model like the one 37signals use. It got me thinking about what kind of startup I would want to build when the time comes. I have spent a couple of years in one or the other form of startup and I think it’s time to start a different trend. I’ll call it the mom&pop internet startup with a social conscience. Confusing right, but consider starting a company that’s your lifelong focus in our business. A company you would work for the rest of your professional life. So what would you want that company to be doing ? I came down to the following five points that described what I would want that company to do.

1. Provide a valued payed service

2. Create a small loyal community of users to develop the service on and on

3. Be socially responsible

4. Invest in new startups to help grow the space of mom&pop internet companies

5. Transparency

My personal answers to the point above are fairly simple but will vary from person to person.

1. Provide a digital life vault service with focus on privacy(dropbox + delicious +.. only the future will tell) as a paid service (no freeloading, but 30 days trials available)

2. Cap the number of customers to a max of 10 000 with a small growth each year after that to keep the income in line with inflation. Invest in the community organizing meetups, giving away prices etc.

3. Provide micro-lending through services like Kiva, etc. Being completely transparent and including the community where possible.

4. Angel invest a big chunk of the profits and also provide help and mentoring to new companies.

5. Provide information to the users what their money is being spent on.

I think it would probably employ 3-4 people once it’s fully up and running, and dependent on the pricing and cost structure would generate between 1.2 - 2.4 million euro a year once 10 000 customers are reached with a cost structure of around 0.4 - 0.5 million eur. That would leave between 0.8 to 1.6 million eur for angel investments, micro-lending and community activities. The idea is not to revolutionize a sector of our industry but to provide a valuable service that people choose not only for the technical merits of the product offered but also for the social and community aspect of it. Consider it your local mom&pop shop you buy your coffee from each and every day. So what do you think? Is it a viable way of organizing a business and would you choose such a service if it was available?