Several years ago some well-meaning entrepreneurs approached me about helping them develop a pornography free online book seller, that would compete with Amazon for the minds and dollars of people and families desiring to not be subjected to pornographic material.  Sounded reasonable and right enough.

There were several interesting dynamics at work.  First, I was a porn addict who had yet to reveal my addiction, and only did because of my courageous, fierce and committed wife who was too precious in my eyes to lose.  (A whole nother post.). Second, I was unaware that Amazon at the time was the largest seller of porn in the World.  (They may still be.  I don’t know.). And third, the question ‘was the targeted consumer aware that Amazon was the leading porn source?’

The answer to the third question was, “the Amazon user was likely not aware of the porn issue unless they had searched for porn on the site.

My entrepreneurial approach has always been to solve a problem, or jump on an evolving trend.  Books were certainly not an evolving trend, so success depended on solving the porn problem that Amazon presented.  The real problem with the purpose for the new concept was that the consumer did not know that Amazon was a purveyor of porn.  So the strategy had to shift from problem resolution to a cause driven purpose.  Extremely difficult to do because cause-based marketing is very costly to present and response even more costly to elicit.  

So, my question to the good people launching this effort was “how much money do you have to lose?”  Harsh!  The point was, don’t do this because the behemoth that you are going after has a very favorable consumer perception.  And perception versus reality is very challenging to move.  They chose to move forward with millions of dollars committed.  I gave them 24 months.  They proved me wrong and lasted close to 25.

The value of outside eyes is often not in the wisdom or incremental things that they add.  The value is usually within the clarity in which they see what is presented.  A common statement involving personal or business analysis is ‘you’re too close.’  Expanded this means the person or team who has created the concept has an emotional attachment to the project that may be overriding the flaws or unidentified challenges to the plan.

Unfortunately the business concept did not succeed.  Even more unfortunate is that a simple change in strategy of moving from the frontline brand to the technology imbedded in already existing, very large organizations likely would have resulted in phenomenal success.  This shift would have addressed the underlying issue of porn accessibility to their targeted consumer.  A consumer base that would have rallied to the ‘cause.’  A preexisting consumer base that would have addressed the issue of prohibitive customer acquisition cost and maximized mutual values.

Blind belief in a concept can be dangerous.  Commitment to a concept is critical to success.  Terms like unwavering or immovable can be deadly to a new endeavor.  Agility and flexibility in the early stages of any venture are critical to increasing the probability of success.  

I often encourage startups to function as a speedboat in a world of ocean liners.  It takes an ocean liner as much as two miles to do a 180-degree turn in the ocean.  A speed boat, 50 feet.  Your new business’s competitive edge may not be in the concept, but in its ability to adjust paths quickly to better align with the targeted market.  Be a yoga business.  Stretch.  Pause.  Examine. Move.  Begin again.

So this particular endeavor did not die because of market opportunity.  It ended because of inability to connect with the market who would respond to the purpose.  A simple shift in alignment would have achieved the desired impact.  Alignment can be a frustrating thing, can’t it?