With a good cause comes a little kick in the butt! The blog Inspiredstartup by Andy Liu is holding a contest where for One Blog Entry…One Child gets 1 Year of Tech Training through the non-profit Future Hope. This is a great catalyst for international development and my benefit is a chance to win a ticket to either ThinkTank or Startup Day.
But!
I’ve got a confession…..I started BrainGoals formally (Innervate Systems) in 2006 and completely ignored….one could even say shunned social media.
Why?
I’m not really sure, probably because I was successful with direct sales, attending tradeshows and sending out brochures. However, these are all high cost customer acquisition methods in terms of money and time then you add in the economic crisis and boom things aren’t working so well.
New Year’s Resolution 2009
The great thing about a New Year’s Resolution is that you are super motivated for a month or two. If you attend a gym regularly you know that in January and February the place is packed then it trails off come March. My New Year’s Resolution for 2009 was to learn about and get involved with social media. So I started a blog www.businessplancritique.com, signed-up for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and spent a lot of time researching about SEO and all that good stuff.
The Result
Motivation and two months of trial and error and I started generating revenue through ads and customers on a couple of business plan content based sites.
The Opportunity
My start-up, BrainGoals is in the Brain Fitness Industry. Initially, we created a product for the athletic industry providing brain fitness systems to college and high school athletic teams to improve a number of mental skills leading to athletic and or academic performance improvement. (e.g. Team Building, Life Skills, Effort, Concentration, Memory, New Skill Introduction, etc.) Unfortunately, the economic climate resulted in budget cuts at all schools. The good news is that we were using the athletic market as a launching pad into other markets, specifically the growing Senior population. Seniors face a number Brain related challenges including Alzheimer’s Disease, Dementia-Memory Loss, and Depression. We can offer help in the form of Brain Fitness Activities.
The Challenge
How to go about reaching the Senior population? There is tremendous opportunity in the senior market but it’s Not Sexy. The result is limited conversation and expertise in this demographic especially by those on the cutting edge of social media. Do the same rules apply to Seniors as to other demographic segments? As a start-up company social media has proven to provide tremendous value however, does this hold true with Seniors? These are the questions I am trying to figure out because the answers will help define the business model.
The Brain Fitness software market is growing rapidly. However, a quick review of these well financed, VC backed companies reveals limited Senior targeted social media. I’ve reviewed their sites, advertising placements and other activities and they seemed to be as clueless as me. The shotgun approach is being employed by most in the industry, which includes traditional media, social media and good old fashion individual partnerships with anyone who wants to sell direct. Is this a good strategy?……Definitely not for a start-up.
The Solution
We’re still looking to find or create a case study for the start-up company in the Senior market….pre-funding of course! This BrainFitnessCoach blog is a first step.
What should the next one be?
Brain Fitness Coach