MIT Concept Clinic Event

I went to the MIT Concept Clinic for the first time last Thursday.

The team presenting was Rob, working on an mobile advertising start up, Brring.com, where you can earn money every time someone calls you. When people call you, they will listen to a 10-15 sec advertisement, and you get paid. They have been running since September, and are pretty much all sweat, running on friends and family money for now. This specific clinic focused on their primary problem: how to quickly and cheaply prove their concept.

The layout of the event was really good. The event went from 6pm to ~8:45pm. The founders get to present their idea for 1 to 1.5 hours, then break up into groups focusing on different topics (product, raising money, marketing, etc). Then we regrouped for comments from the panelists and general audience.
The panelists present seemed to have varying backgrounds, with
many of the local venture groups represented, people tapped into the Boston start up scene.

The overall tone was people trying to give suggestions to help get Brring to the next level. The consensus was that they are trying to fight two problems at the same time:
1. get users
2. get advertisers

If I were in their position, I would try to simplify the situation to solve only one problem, and then look for the quickest way to get cash flow. One of the key points Rob indicated was that advertisers want a minimum of 1 million impressions per month before they start testing things out. I would try to locate different sources for users in large volumes, and then find advertisers. This makes the advertiser problem much more easy to manage.

I think Brring really needs to hone in on an initial niche market, and figure out what they want. For instance, they could spread this service very quickly across college campuses to offer local restaurants a convenient way tell college kids about their promotions. Imagine around dinner time, you call a friend, and hear a local advertisement about $5 specialty pizza at Papa John's for the next hour only. Or, because business is slow on a Tuesday night, a bar owner advertises "1st drink free, no cover" to get more bodies. Getting college students should be pretty straight forward, using internet marketing, or on-campus recruiting campaigns.

Another suggestion I thought would get much better reception is monetizing wasted "on hold" time. If you need to hold to get Verizon customer service, and you don't really have many other options, they might as well be selling that hold time to advertisers. The same thing could be done with call centers. Even though this is not the ideal market, it is readily available, and you can start making money right away.

I wish I had these types of panelists questioning me during my real estate start up. Getting grilled by a bunch of bright, experienced people is not the most pleasurable activity, but you really come out better from that experience. I am really looking forward to the next one.