Vishal from WedWell here.
Thanks for the breakdown of the shortlisted startups. It's really thorough and I largely agree with your assessments.
Your breakdown reminded me of a PG essay (http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html). It's essentially a long form checklist for coming up with and testing your start up ideas.
I had a doc that I created, that distilled this essay into a sort of checklist to help validate some of the ideas I came up with. Feel free to take a look at my checklist here -
https://medium.com/@vishalkgupta/how-to-get-startup-ideas-a-...
I'll try to answer some of my check list here to validate why we think there is a great deal of promise in our small little startup.
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Problem/Solution —
1. Are you solving a problem that you, as founders, have themselves? Yes. We have all either gone through the painful process of planning a wedding or see that process happening in our horizon. Speaking for myself, I'm starting to budget the money and time necessary for my eventual wedding, and I kept asking myself.. Why can't I do something a bit smarter when iterating with vendors. After using 99designs, I thought that their process of iterating with potential designers could work well for wedding vendors.
2. Is this a solution you/your team can build? Yes, Absolutely. We don't think this is necessarily a hard technology build and we have backgrounds in electronic trading systems/marketplaces.
3. Do few others realize that this is a problem/solution set worth doing/building? While the wedding space is big, we have yet to see any innovation in the process behind actually planning a wedding, iterating with and paying vendors.
Well —
4. Is there a small “well” of users who need your solution urgently? Yes! We have already a small group of clients who don't have the time to try to line up vendors, sit with them, and iterate with them to produce a proposal.
5. Who wants this “crappy first version” now? Pretty much anyone who wants to save a bit of time when it comes to wedding planning and wants someone else to do the leg work to get vendors to bid on their ideal wedding.
6.Starting with a small market is good, but do you have a fast path out of it (to grow into a bigger market)? As mentioned elsewhere the wedding market is globally as big as $300 bn globally.
Self — “Live in the future, then build what’s missing.”
7. Are you a “leading edge user”/”living in the future” of this silo? Yea! I kept asking myself, when I looked at budgeting time/money for wedding, why can't I do more of this online? Why does iteration have to be face to face?
8. How is this a “gap in the world”?
Literally anytime I hear anyone say the word "paper checks" my startup mind turns on. There will be a world where not only will a couple get to iterate quickly through technology, but we will be able to pay initial and final payments with the press of a button.
Those were just a few questions/answers from PG's essay, but it could be helpful for other startups to think about these. Would love to hear from others.
Thanks again!