Need advice for a local search startup

[saurabhbhide]

Hi everyone,
Thanks to everyone in this community for helping me out in my last holiday startup.

In the forthcoming holidays, I want to start a “local search” website for Goa (a state of India where I live).

The plan is like this
1) I form a team of 2 or 3 foot soldiers
2) We survey local business and internet users, and see what they expect from a local search engine
3) We go around the major cities giving out forms to all the shops and other businesses asking information about them which we’ll type and put in a database
4) Code a local search website and initially fill up the data we collected
5) Launch the site
6) Make the site famous through newspaper and billboard ads
7) Make a premium package for businesses gives them extra features on their listings such as video commercials, photos, etc.
8) Sell the premium packages and make money

Today I came across this post in a thread on this forum and it was very enlightening!
Can anyone(especially akula) tell me how can I use this technique for my startup? Sell premium listings before making the site? or some other way ?

Also, please point me to all the articles and blog posts you have read about local search startups. I am reading as much as I can about local search startups all over the world. Articles such as the one from vitamin

[akula]

Hi everyone,
Thanks to everyone in this community for helping me out in my last holiday startup.

In the forthcoming holidays, I want to start a “local search” website for Goa (a state of India where I live).

The plan is like this
1) I form a team of 2 or 3 foot soldiers
2) We survey local business and internet users, and see what they expect from a local search engine
3) We go around the major cities giving out forms to all the shops and other businesses asking information about them which we’ll type and put in a database
4) Code a local search website and initially fill up the data we collected
5) Launch the site
6) Make the site famous through newspaper and billboard ads
7) Make a premium package for businesses gives them extra features on their listings such as video commercials, photos, etc.
8) Sell the premium packages and make money

Today I came across this post in a thread on this forum and it was very enlightening!
Can anyone(especially akula) tell me how can I use this technique for my startup? Sell premium listings before making the site? or some other way ?

Also, please point me to all the articles and blog posts you have read about local search startups. I am reading as much as I can about local search startups all over the world. Articles such as the one from vitamin

Ok...let's get through two important points first

1) I'm not an expert on indian local search. You'd have to talk Alok Mittal and the rest of the guys from VentureWoods about guruji.com and other Indian local search players

2) personally, I think you're very unreasonable to want do a consumer facing startup at your age, and in a market with <10% internet use penetration. It's not a subjective belief, it's a totally objective conviction. My business needs 2 customers to breakeven and turn profitable. That's why I can approach these guys before we launch and get an agreement that they will buy our stuff when we have it available. Your business needs thousands of daily users and dozens of paying advertisers to break even. All I need is to get 2 people to use my website (one HR manager, one recruiter). You need thousands; therefore your risk is much higher...what if your plan in point 6 doesn't work out? where will you get the money to pay for more ads? At your age, I'd focus on doing sure things. When you're a millionaire, then you can afford to play around with some long shot, consumer facing lottery ticket, but now you can't.

Before getting all excited about local search, I need you to think properly about opportunity selection, and the kind of hole you're gonna be digging your self into when you choose to do this total bitch of an opportunity (i.e. local search)

...so you still hot on doing a consumer facing startup?