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For the past couple of weeks, I've been working on a couple products in the event/ticketing market. I need to buckle down and focus on one specific area, and I'm having trouble deciding which. Let me know what you think, or if you think of any other opportunities to explore.

1) Build a Search Engine for Facebook Events. Localize/Categorize the events. There isn't an official API to get ALL events, but there are a couple workarounds that could probably be used. Build a facebook app/website as a frontend for the events.

2) Build a Native Facebook application for creating events that you can sell tickets to. Essentially a "super" events app. Ticketing is built into the app.

3) Build a web app that integrates into Facebook Events. ie. You create an event on my website, I ask you if you'd like a facebook event, then I create it for you.

4) A Subset of (2), build an application solely for Facebook Pages that allows you to create events and sell tickets within the application.

I don't have a huge amount of time or resources, so I'm trying to figure out what the best MVP would be. I'd like to keep the product as simple as possible (obviously).

Please let me know if you have any suggestions, critiques, or ideas.

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4 Answers

up vote 4 down vote

Question: What do people in your target market want?

Have you run a few polls, called a few prospects, emailed a few followers and get their opinion? While many of us may have an opinion, we may not be in your target market, therefore our advice could be 180% opposite of what you should do.

Given the above comment, I would be leaning towards (4). Seems to be focused closer to the potential pain point - "how do I sell tickets to events from my facebook page?".

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up vote 1 down vote

You need to do a mini-business plan on each - and that can be a few bullet points to help decide.

How much time do you estimate you'd have to invest to develop each of the options?

How long to get a completed product to market for each?

What does the competitive landscape look like for each?

Back of envelope, what's the potential market size for each?

To jimg's comment, have you gotten feedback from your prospective target markets for each? Is there a real value proposition for each to make them successful?

How much revenue do you think each option could generate given the variables above of market size, competition, etc.?

You've got to do your homework before making a decision like this.

Best of luck,

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up vote 0 down vote

Having 4 options is great as it means you have a choice.

I would be asking myself:

  • What is the problem I am trying to solve? and getting really clear about that.
  • Will people pay me to solve this problem for them? ie. How easy will it be to generate money from this (assuming that's your objective)
  • Who are my target customers? And then talk to them as jimg suggests

These questions may knock a couple of options off your list. Then with the ones remaining, have a look at the competition, the trends in the market, and what business model you think you would use.

You can also test the interest in your options using a Google Adwords campaign or survey if you like.

Good luck!

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up vote 0 down vote

Charlie, I would suggest checking out the existing competition to get a sharper focus on what is missing from their offerings. Unless you already picked a vertical market that you think is not being served or under-served.

General purpose meetup sites like upcoming.org and meetup.com, to name a couple are very popular and a lot of people and small groups leverage these for event setup and billing. Even within FB.

For general info on event marketing businesses check out this article as a starting point: http://www.entrepreneur.com/startingabusiness/businessideas/startupkits/article37892.html

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