Circles, Networks and Ideas

Yesterday, we met with SCORE®, at the Small Business Administration office in San Francisco looking for feedback and ideas and exploring funding opportunities. Excellent dialog and props to the gentleman from SCORE®, for listening to us, challenging our concepts, providing us some excellent feedback and really helping think through some key product and business questions.

Yesterday, we met with SCORE®, at the Small Business Administration office in San Francisco looking for feedback and ideas and exploring funding opportunities. Excellent dialog and props to the gentleman from SCORE®, for listening to us, challenging our concepts, providing us some excellent feedback and really helping think through some key product and business questions.

It turns out that the Small Business Administration works through a volunteer network of entrepreneurs to provide counseling to small businesses in various stages of their lifecycle and getting an unbiased perspective based on experience, and for free, is completely worth it. The primary question for any of these product ideas is ultimately one of fundamental economics, how do you connect the buyer and the seller. There are lots of surrounding questions, such as how to create the demand, how to market the product itself, how to convince the buyer of the return on investment, which are all sound questions, but listening to our counselor ask some of these was very helpful.

The Strong Circles concept is ultimately one of bridging the gap for a small business that is looking to do more in the community as an integrated way of marketing itself and promoting not only its products but its local presence and its roots in the neighborhood. Now, if we could only talk to each one!