So they say that one learns by failure. We have worked on FinGad for quite some time and have finally concluded that the model is fundamentally flawed. Not that the idea is bad or would not work, but that it would require an intense amount of capital for advertising to get the word out. It seems that the site in its current form is not viral – and generally folks find finance boring. One exception to that theory is PayPal – which brilliantly executed on making finance ‘cool.’ Greg Galant at Venture Voice has excellent interviews and one of them is with David O. Sacks. David was the COO at PayPal and also produced a movie I enjoyed, Thank You for Smoking. David talks in great depth about how PayPal was started and what led to its growth.
For FinGad, we have essentially changed our focus. The one key word that came out of working on the startup is ‘focus.’ One interesting VC told me once that focus means taking a lens and burning something with it. You know how you get the tiny dot that’s very powerful and burns wood? He made that analogy to a focus of a company. We are finally beginning to learn.
With that, we have developed interesting new technology and made substantial changes to our team. The objective is to make investing a lot easier. I’m not ready to divulge the product yet, however this is by far the most challenging and interesting thing we’ve done so far as a company.
So stay on the lookout J
