Naysayers vs. hope & setting the record straight!

Perhaps it is the British way or just human nature but whenever you start a business / do anything out of the ordinary, you can guarantee the following:

1. There will be naysayers and those waiting to say "I told you so"

2. People will be suspicious of what you are doing, perhaps because of an attachment to the known / the status quo

3. If you offer something for free, people will wonder, what is the catch?

In the case of ShareandComparePlay.com, I am delighted to say that we have successfully attracted all three responses.

1. People have been concerned in terms of whether we will lose the clothes off our back.

2. Some suppliers of equipment to the Soft Play market are concerned that we will rock the boat and the degree to which the market will change, perhaps leaving them behind.

3. Prospective operators have written to me asking how we make our money and if we are not making any, what is the point of it all?

I thought this would be the best way to answer all questions raised thus far; one thing to say though is that whenever we have met people face-to-face, the response has been worth every ounce of effort during the last twelve months.

1. Firstly, for those of you concerned about us (thank you) but our backs are well covered. Although we are not a Silicon Valley start-up, we have sufficient financial backing to take time to build our community. Indeed, in the next few weeks we will be adding new features and outlining our plans for International development, starting in the USA.

2. Our mission is to help transform and grow the indoor play market. Although change requires more hope in the future than attachment to the past, we believe that our community will help the market evolve to become more valuable for all participants, this will be in financial and non-financial terms.

3. We are still finding our way in terms of revenue (just like most Web 2.0 start-ups); we list all suppliers and allow them to write a company description for Free but we charge them for premium features such as:

- Advertising the capabilities of their organisation (this is limited to only a few companies on a first come first served basis)
- Adding additional details regarding their organisation such as case studies and photographs
- A lead subscription service to make it easy for customers to contact the suppliers that they have chosen as potential partners

“Free” is now a common business model; just think how you can now access the world’s information for free, get all kinds of software without charge and even take a flight for free…we are doing the same for indoor play.

We hope this clarifies a few things, please keep the questions coming.