[TriLUG] need an employee --- scratch that -- need a business partner

Tim Jowers timjowers at gmail.com
Thu Apr 5 15:22:38 EDT 2007


On 4/5/07, Greg Brown <gwbrown1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ok, people, my desperation level is reaching new highs regarding wireless.
> There is NO WAY I'm going to be able to do the work I have on my plate by
> myself.  Here is what I have coming up:
>
> 1. medium town in NC.  They want FULL MUNICIPAL wi-fi coverage.  This is
> going to be a big one, and I'm not sure I even want to tackle it.  I know
> I
> don't want any part of it on my own.

2. one 320 unit condo unit on the crystal coast (salter path, nc area).  The
> competition is going to charge these people $13 per unit, PER
> MONTH.  Folks,
> that is $4160 a month, over $49,000.00 per year!  Half of that, even with
> eating the hardware costs up front, is $2130 per month.  Once you are a
> place like this YOU ARE IN.  You can't tell me that a new company (me and
> whoever) making over $25,000.00 per year on one contract, our first one,
> is
> a bad thing.   Granted I might come in even a little lower, just because I
> know where the competition is doesn't mean I'm going to gouge them.
> Besides, I know the owner of this property owns other properities as well.


   What is the vacancy rate? Assuming all units can face one or maybe two
towers  and about $500/month for a T1 this does seem like a very lucrative
business plan. Have you also considered an apartment-wide website? E.g.
maintenance requests, events, buy/sell? A friend of mine spec.ed a business
plan on this website idea in 1999 but we ended up doing a webserver startup
instead.
   FWIW, we were in an apartment complex like this in LA. One company had
the apartment-wide monopoly on internet, cable, and washer/dryers. They also
kept charging us for 8 months after we left despite repeated phone calls.
They were based in Gardena, CA. We finally canceled the credit card.
    Is Internet _required_? You may find the % of tenants who actually
subscribe is much lower than you think. I've done test marketing (1999,
2003) in Columbia, SC for instance and the % using the Internet is actually
closer to the teens in the lower and lower-mid income areas. Don't believe
all of the hype you see on the news. Outside of the tech areas, the Internet
is still being slowly adoped. So much for the "Internet year" being 7 normal
years. :-) Might also ask how many people in the complex are Section 8 and
Social security. You can just about be sure they are not going to pay for
Internet.

    Some thoughts on cities. City officials think they are businesses. They
probably want to monopolize all services (utilities, phone, net) in the
city. This is what cities in rural GA do. I co-authored a business plan for
a high speed local loop in downtown Columbia, SC for some investors in 1998.
Long and short is the city would not grant permits to lay the fiber as they
wanted us to rent their [non-existent] network from them! Our annual rent
was to be 25% of the total build-out cost! I shoulda been so smart to let
them swallow their own poison pill. That said: Get a revenue sharing and let
them spend the tax dollars doing the support and installing the system. City
governments want to compete with business and use their status as a
competitive advantage. They want to take on more and more responsibility and
employees. Sort of like us paying toll on I-540 when we've already been
paying taxes for so many years. Oops, they spent those tax dollars on
something else I guess. Or did private investors build it ?!

3. 45 condo unit on the outer banks (speculative, but quite possible)
>
> 4. TWELVE APARTMENT COMPLEXES IN GREENVILLE (speculative, this is in the
> very early states)
>
> What I'm saying people is this could be a great money-maker as a side
> business until it grows to the point that it could be full-time.
>
> Who am I looking for?
>
> Must know and love all things open-source (even if you just like open
> source, it's okay, but be prepared to get to know OpenWRT very, very
> well).
> Must know wi-fi *REALLY* well, including amplification and issues
> associated
> with amplification
> Capture and release portals would be a good thing to know
> payment systems would be fantastic..
> ordering of provisioned circuits: T1s, T3s, high-speed Internet over
> fiber,
> etc.
> networking (of course)
> knowing a good bit about construction doens't hurt either, a lot of
> antennas
> get mounted externally through walls
>
> The bad news is a lot of the work, site surveys, etc, will be done one
> weekends, at least for now.  How far can this be taken?  I don't know.  It
> may end up just being a good money-marker on the side for both of
> us.  Maybe
> it will become a profitable company.  It might totally suck and we both
> end
> up hating it and walk away.  I don't know.  What I do know is I'm over my
> head.  I'm either going to find someone who shares the passion for this as
> I
> do or I'm going to walk away from a lot of money and jobs.  And I don't
> want
> to do that.
>
> Reply to me off-list of you are interested.
>
> Greg
> --
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