I’ve watched many of my projects crash and burn because I tried to do too much.
So when my mom proposed that I create an online curriculum marketplace, I wondered if this project would also turn into a long drawn out mess, sketched out a few user interface ideas with a sharpie, and filed the idea away for later.
Then I saw One Month App, and a thought struck me. I had been burned by expensive, months-long entrepreneurial projects before. I didn’t want to go down that trail again. And one month, while an incredibly short time to build a web app, is much more time than I had available. So I asked myself, “What can I do with my sketches, $100, and one week?”
$62.50 later, I had everything I needed to create CurriculumSearch.com.
And today, I started work. I am going to build a fully-functional curriculum marketplace by January 8th, 2008, and I’m going to blog about the development process at OneWeekApp.com.
The idea for CurriculumSearch.com came about when my mom, who homeschooled me and homeschools my siblings, was trying to sell her used curriculum online and becoming frustrated with her options. eBay prohibits the selling of teacher’s textbooks on its website, and the other options available for selling curriculum feature frustrating user interfaces.
My thesis is simple: homeschooling parents have more important things to do than figure out how a curriculum marketplace works. The marketplace should encourage buying by requiring nothing more than a PayPal account, and selling curriculum should be as simple as possible. And there is no reason to browse through disorganized categories to find what you need: just search for it!
Will Curriculum Search be perfect when I launch it? No. But I no longer want to let perfect be the enemy of good. I can improve the marketplace as time goes on. But no one will benefit if launch day never comes.