Business 2.0 has a great article about "Instant Companies", which seem to have similar characteristics to "One Day Ideas". Their suggested 3-Step process for creating these companies is:
From: http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB113261806930503580-lMyQjAxMDE1MzIyMjYyMTI4Wj.html
How Selling Pixels May Yield a Million Bucks
November 22, 2005; Page B1
It was just a few months ago that 21-year-old Alex Tew of Great Britain was stumped about how to pay for college. He'd filled a notebook with ideas before jotting down this simple, if rather audacious, query to himself: How Can I Become a Millionaire?
In the annals of entrepreneurship, what followed is an instructional tale of how a brainstorm, coupled with the Internet's powerful word-of-mouth culture, can set a trend in motion with lightning speed. Mr. Tew says his strategy was to find an idea simple to understand and cheap to set up, with a catchy name that would garner attention online, where he gained experience from having free-lanced as a Web designer for a few years.
Today, I had a great conversation with the co-founder of PBWiki. He is a recent graduate of Stanford and a few months ago, he and friend created a site where consumers could easily create a wiki. After softly promoting it, he got 1,000 registrations in the first 2 days and now has over 15,000 and is the leading consumer wiki web site.
I think there are many things that led to the success of the site. However, from an outside perspective, I think he created a perfect metaphor. Many people have heard about wikis, especially via the wikipedia, but they didn't know where to get started (myself included). The idea of having a wiki for a free in a matter of a few minutes is just very appealing.
Overall, I think there is a big shift to simplicity. In fact, I just read the Fast Company cover story on this topic. "For Dummies" has done very well in the book publishing industry. In fact, becoming the first or second most successful book franchise ever. In a way, Google is the "For Dummies" for software.
It seems like there are many opportunities for "momentary enterprises" based on simplicity. I think a particular hole to fill would be making "getting started" easier. I think a lot of people don't start stuff because it's fuzzy in their mind. However, when it's broken down into its smallest components, it can become very easy. One specific thing I've heard mentioned by many people recently is the complexity of starting up a business. Many people are extremely interested in this, but never do it.
Check out this blast email I got from thebusinessexperiment.com. It is fascinating and has a lot of ideas that we could learn from:
Hi Everyone,There seems to be a problem at TBE. We put something up for a vote, and we get emails and forum posts about how we aren't ready to vote on that issue yet. Nothing is getting done. The business plan has been "open" for weeks and it is going nowhere. This wisdom of crowds process for creating a business simply does not work. There is no accountability. We are experiencing the classic free rider problem where each individual lets everyone else do the work, and hopes that the crowd does good work and they get their cut of the next big thing. As a result, nothing gets done. Yet the moment I talk about moving away from giving out equity to everybody, I get a bunch of complaints about how then there will be no incentive to participate. Let's face it. Participate in what? As of now there is no business.
Think about this for a second. In this era of WEB2.0 hype, we have the only company attempting to bring users together to create a real business or businesses. We have a talented and creative user base that is interested in these ideas. And we are getting ready to get a lot of attention as a major business periodical will publish a story about us late next month. Don't give up just yet.
The major change at TBE is this - we are going to create an "upcoming vote" blog and "upcoming vote" forum. The blog will list polls opening in the next few days. The forum is where you can discuss options that should be in the polls. When the polling day comes, the poll is posted. If you didn't get a chance to contribute your opinion, it's too late. Options will be pulled out the forums and posted so that you can vote. If no options are posted, Sean, or the teams, can make the decision without input from the crowd. We can't wait on every one of you to give us your opinion because this has to get done someday.
Finally, the equity issue is becoming a very big problem for us. Seriously, there may be no way around it without spending a whole bunch of money. Even if we give options or warrants or promises or anything like that, if there is a chance you end up with equity, the SEC requires us to go through an expensive disclosure process. However, if groups stay small, that is irrelevant. If you want to use TBE to find 5 people to start a company with and split the equity in that yourself, it is fine because that is a small number of people. So, next week there will be a vote on how TBE will solve this problem. If you have a proposed solution, post it in the forum and we will put it up for a vote.
There is one new open poll, about whether TBE should pursue other businesses right now or just focus on WOU. Many users seem not to like WOU, so perhaps those of you that don't would rather work on something else.
This has been an experiment, and round #1 has failed. Help us define the next direction for the site. Somewhere in all of this, there is a new way of doing business. Yes I know, you don't want to share it with the crowd because you want compensation for your idea. Didn't we cover the value of ideas already? Log in. Make TBE what you want it to be, but let's make it something other than a freerider's utopia.
On Seth Godin's blog, he points to a school that was built in Nepal as a result of ebook sales he donated.
I think that this is a very smart move. It seems like everybody is jumping on the cause-related marketing band wagon. This means that it's less unique to say, "A % of sales are donated to charity."
With that said, do you think the desperate for money idea has a relation to this. Corporations could donate to the best stories and get a better return on their donations.
In my experience in the nonprofit world, many sell themselves with stories of top alumni, not statistical analysis on the impact they've made.
Million Dollar Home Page is the perfect example of a one day idea. It was created by a graduating high school senior and only involves basic HTML knowledge. It was setup in a few days with the only costs being web hosting and domain registration. Two months later, it gets over 100K visitors a day and has made its founder over $300,000.
If you had thought of this idea, would you have pursued it? While this idea is one of the rare ideas that manage to breakout, I think it is possible over-time to refine one's thinking to the point that the probability of having a breakout idea is high. Furthermore, I think we live in a unique era where the time and money involved to create one of these ideas is extremely small.
It is commonly accepted that 10% of an company's success is inspiration and the other 90% is perspiration. One day ideas turn this upside down.