an old domain a great idea
We all have a few old domains sitting around (don't we?). I was looking at mine and thought it may be interesting to share a story of a business that never was and may never be.
One of the first ideas I had years ago for a startup was to build a small business intranet application. I have two domains for this idea, sbintranet.com and smallbusinessintranet.com. I came up with this after having developed a few intranets for my job and clients. The intranets were immediately useful and I think a no brainer for any small business.
I even started coding this, but eventually lost steam. It was the end of the dotcom era and with so many intranet companies going under I figured it may be the wrong time. It was the wrong time in my life to take it on anyway so it's probably better off.
Looking back though I understand even better why it wouldn't have worked. The problem with intranets for a small business is that small businesses don't know about intranets and what they can do for you. Hence they're not looking for intranets. Hence it's damn hard to get sales! Especially in a bootstrapping scenario where finances for advertising would be limited to none.
I always keep this idea on the back burner though. I think the communication possibilities in a small business are huge, especially now with the rise of wiki's and ajax based chats. Perhaps in a few years the time will be right.