I'll look it using this in my dreary day job. You would be suprised how hard it is to keep track of 12 staff that report to you and know what they are actually up to when you are extremly busy yourself. It would add a lot of pressure to their working weeks to commit to what they are doing and have to report against it.
If you could actually guarantee that I would get a really high quality product, that worked, and didn't have lots of bugs (it can have a few tweeks still needed), I can customers people being interested. What you would need is to ensure that the end product is awesome and DOES work. More so what I can see is this as a business idea - where people can come to a company for an amazingly fast turnaround time. Dealing with web design and development firms is a disaster from my experience. Even the level of customer care they provide when you approach with a potential $20,000 is terrible.
So you don't have to put up with bureacratic bullshit that goes on in all companies or government departments. Once you have worked in organisations for long enough, you learn that often the people in management above you are often quite incompetent. Their ability to make decisions is hamstrung by the person above them, and those above them. Control freaks are everywhere, and drag down the independence of staff. Having your own start-up or working for one means you are either in control of the decision making, or very close to those that are, and you aren't stuck in committees and meetings to make even the smallest decisions. Freedom from these work practices is enough motivation for anyone. I make pretty good money now, I would like to make more through my start-up, but if my start-up made me the same I would be 5 times happier than in my current work environment.
Definitely not. Check out the values of Bebo and MySpace and how much they are worth now. News Corp is trying to sell MySpace for $150million when they paid $500million for it a few years back. Don't bet that the same thing won't happen to Facebook.
Welcome to Australia where there have always been caps - partially because we download so much content from the USA that someone has to pay for the fibre under the ocean to carry it all to us. Caps do change consumer behaviour a lot, but that said the caps are getting generous enough these days to not be too restrictive. If you shop around you can get a Terabyte a month for a reasonable price and can only use that amount by streaming video content. Part of what aussie ISP's do now is offer steaming content free if you are their customer. iiNet does this with its Fetch-TV service, and also has unmetered access to iTunes, ABC iView and gaming content.
Great initiative and a fantastic list of mentors. Well done for putting this together.
Also like the idea of the Tech Venture Creation course at Syd Uni. I'd like to see every uni in Australia have something similar running, then we'd be sure to get some real hits emerging.
Thanks for the great feedback and comments everyone, I didn't expect to get so much great feedback! I will definitely take up a number of the suggestions and hopefully meet some of you at the various meet-ups and events (in Melbourne at least). And I've touched base with Pollenizer and hope to be at a Bootcamp soon.
To answer some questions such as to why can't I go to the USA. I've got a 7 month old son these days, so the international thing is a bit impractical at the moment. Plus I think there are some great opportunities to be exploited domestically, which obviously isn't taking on the world but I see a lot of opportunity to build good local businesses in Australia.
Jamessg, I agree it's not so much the money, but the access to people that have experience and have done it all before to provide that important guidance and save $ from being wasted on the learning curve.
Anyway thanks again to everyone, really appreciate your help, and hope to meet up with some of you in person soon.
Techcrunch used to be my favourite site a few years back because (from what I can remember) it was very much about start-ups. Now its got all sorts of junk about general tech stuff, products, bla bla bla. If I had my way get rid of all these new blog posters at TechCrunch and just have Arrington and one or two others. They just seem to be writing opinion and waffle pieces these days. I wish I could just get Arringtons posts, rather that the rest.
You seem to have left your thinking about a lot of important issues to too late. You seem to have assumed that you would be equal business partners when the two of you should have been smart enough to work all this out in advance.
I don't see why you are concerned that you have signed an NDA. As you say it means you can't tell other people about the workings of the start-up, which is exactly what the NDA is designed to do. Why would you want to go and divulge information about the company to anyone outside it - thats really concerns me as a business owner. Your friend is working full time, and you might be capable of 3 hours a day five days a week by the sound of it so the relationship doesn't seem equal. Sure you have the technical programming skills, but the real value is in the idea and execution of the idea. He could just hire someone to do the technical parts but obviously he may not have start-up money to do this which is where your real value lies in being able to negotiate some equity for your work.
You shouldn't question trust in your friend because of the NDA, you should see that he is smart and looking to protect the start-ups ideas in the best interests of everyone (yourself included if you have an ownership share in the end). I am in a similar situation of executing an idea I have had for years, and its very scary to think about others stealing your ideas for their own benefit after you have put so much thought into something.
Great tool I say!