I am a software developer, experienced primarily in database systems (some internals, some application development). I've made half-hearted attempts to stay current with UI technology but stopped pre-Ajax.
Years ago, my family joined a babysitting coop. Parents who know and trust each other join and babysit each others' kids. There is a ticket system used as currency, and there is a formula for tickets involving number of kids and length of sit. The coop aims to have 30 families. As families leave, new ones are recruited from acquaintances.
The coop had been running for years before I joined, doing everything with phone and email. In one of my efforts to learn UI technology, I built a website to run the coop, using Python, Django, Postgres, and Apache. Members request and volunteer for babysitting jobs, an administrator select volunteers, a president controls membership. It's plug-ugly but gets the job done. It's a very simple application. The real value in the work is that the features have been designed and fine-tuned by very involved members.
I have no talent or interest in the business side of things, but it occurs to me that this could be turned into a small business. A coop of this sort has a specific set of interests and is in a single zip code. Ads (which are not on the site currently) could be targeted extremely precisely. The coop collects some annual feeds, so its possible that a website like this could charge an annual fee per coop.
The service could easily be generalized in obvious ways, e.g. swapping other kinds of services and goods. There are other coop sites on the web, but they rely on random people signing up, and to my eye they appear to be pretty inactive. One insight from my coop is that you'd need a more active sales approach to find existing coops who could use the automation.
So what do I do with this and how? I know that I'm the wrong person to do sales and business development, so any expansion would involve bringing in people who have such interests.
Years ago, my family joined a babysitting coop. Parents who know and trust each other join and babysit each others' kids. There is a ticket system used as currency, and there is a formula for tickets involving number of kids and length of sit. The coop aims to have 30 families. As families leave, new ones are recruited from acquaintances.
The coop had been running for years before I joined, doing everything with phone and email. In one of my efforts to learn UI technology, I built a website to run the coop, using Python, Django, Postgres, and Apache. Members request and volunteer for babysitting jobs, an administrator select volunteers, a president controls membership. It's plug-ugly but gets the job done. It's a very simple application. The real value in the work is that the features have been designed and fine-tuned by very involved members.
I have no talent or interest in the business side of things, but it occurs to me that this could be turned into a small business. A coop of this sort has a specific set of interests and is in a single zip code. Ads (which are not on the site currently) could be targeted extremely precisely. The coop collects some annual feeds, so its possible that a website like this could charge an annual fee per coop.
The service could easily be generalized in obvious ways, e.g. swapping other kinds of services and goods. There are other coop sites on the web, but they rely on random people signing up, and to my eye they appear to be pretty inactive. One insight from my coop is that you'd need a more active sales approach to find existing coops who could use the automation.
So what do I do with this and how? I know that I'm the wrong person to do sales and business development, so any expansion would involve bringing in people who have such interests.