December 2, 2011

The Iron Doors

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So I had this lengthy discussion with somebody who claimed himself truly experienced in startups, information technology and businesses in general. I met him in one restaurant in Plaza Senayan a couple of days ago. I deliberately asked him for a meeting to discuss about the possibility to help with an iOS app I'm designing for Ransel Kecil, my Indonesian-language travel blog.

I won't discuss about the details about the app I'm designing, but for sure, the whole concept is not something entirely new. I just utulized some existing technology, and the content is what I'm focusing more of. There's a habit-changing aspect of this app that I also want to bring on to the table.

Long story short, I explained things to him. Immediately, as I expected, he would say, "So, what's your offering?"

I stopped speaking for a bit, and thinking what this could all mean. This must be about money. I said to him that for my entire life, there's a little chance that I could afford him, so I was trying to engage him in this project as a partner instead.

Turned out it wasn't easy. But I was prepared for this. As a designer myself, I know how picky ourselves are regarding projects that we put our partnership in.

His worries deal less with the production of the app, but more on the continuity and sustainability of it. There's of course financial aspect in it. Would it make sensible return of investments? It all comes down to the money. In cases where an app requires a dedicated server or backend infrastructure, the cost will continue to rise if users love it.

As for my own app, he thinks it's a good concept, only that it's technically resource-intensive, and judging on the character of Indonesian app users, it will not make good success. Indonesian users are lazy pricks. They are not good content producers, if we are to speak about user-generated content apps. Thus some alternative ideas churned up, which was very kind of him.

At this point, he cannot decide whether he would help. I don't think he's interested, probably my concept just doesn't cut it. But that's perfectly fine. I hope to find other feasible solutions, probably to code on my own and build a web app instead. Web apps are something that I'm more closely familiar of.

All the discussion items in that meeting really opened my eyes, but also left me with one big question: Should we just pursue to do what we love and believe, or leave it to the market? I am probably such a hopeless romantic when it comes to crafting something related to what I really love to do, and getting it to the iron doors of commercialism does not seem that appealing to me. I will see.