I finally got around to reading the “Blue Ocean Strategy” by Kim and Mauborgne. The message of the book is that competition becomes irrelevant when companies create “blue oceans”, new innovative industries, the way Southwestern Airlines did for the airplane industry or CNN did for the TV industry.

I’ve always been interested in business strategy, but only from a purely academic level. You can do Porters Analyses, financial models, and BC matrices until your blue in the face, none of that matters for early stage startups. In my eyes, startups are about listening to customers, iterating, and making sound decisions based on solving real world problems.

When it comes to internet based companies, differentiation means everything. Investors won’t back me-too social media companies; they look for disruptive technology. Everytime I hear about new social media sites claiming that they are the new Yammer-for-doctors or Facebook but for the financial industry, it makes me cringe. Me-too social media applications are dead. I physically recoil. Makes me want to punch them in the throat.

Thats mistake that we made when we first started our medical staffing website. We were a me-too social media site. I looked at sites out there that were allready doing the same thing, thinking “if we only specialized in the senior care community we’ll strike gold!.” We were in the right industry. Home health care was and is growing. There is a growing need for inexpensive long term care. The problem was we didn’t differentiate ourselves enough. There were other sites out there providing the same service in addition to other forms of care; pet, child, tutoring etc.

We switched up our business model to resemble more of a B2B operations staffing RNs and CNAs at hospitals and small practices. In the end it turned into more of a recruiting business than a technology company. My day-to-day duties changed along with it. My duties changed from being a product and marketing to direct sales. Cold calling and getting biz dev deals done became the order of the day. I was no longer doing what I was strong at doing which was managing product and marketing the product.

In the end, we chalked it up as experience. I certainly learned a lot in that experience.

I’ve set a few criteria for the next venture I dedicate myself to:

1. Mobile/Web based

2. Subscription or Freemium model

3. Differentiated and Disruptive technology

4. Huge Market

5. 1 other founder (Tech-whiz)

6. Healthcare IT market

7. Solves real problems