It’s been a couple of months since I had taken Tapprs seriously.
However, I know very well that I cannot sustain it on rentals alone and certainly cannot scale it up soon.
Naturally, the question is ‘what next for Tapprs?’.
I have been thinking of it a lot. There are many paths.
- Travel & photography brick and mortar retail
- Travel & photography click and mortar retail
- E-commerce site for books, travel & photography (I feel Flipkart’s diworsification has created a void for book retailing)
- A hangout for travel & photography in Kunzum style
- A platform for professional photographers
Most of the ideas above are capital intensive and hence I need to be sure I want to do it before stepping in. Of course, I wouldn’t commit much initially just like am doing currently for the rentals. I believe in phased roll outs with the first few phases being purely experimental on tiny budgets. I am just figuring out options as of now.
On the tech front, I have been getting a few requests, both for consulting and training. I haven’t been taking up any. Also, haven’t set up a consulting and training company yet, as I thought I will spend a couple of months more purely with the non-tech ideas. If the non-tech ideas don’t work out or if they take more time to roll out, I would definitely need to get the tech stuff rolling, both from a career and financial standpoint as well from a ‘something is happening’ standpoint.
I would love to run a Data Warehousing online education company. But that is extremely time consuming and given the other ideas I have, doesn’t appear feasible anytime this year. Also, instead of starting a tech venture on my own, joining a good startup appears to be a better idea. If nothing works out, I might just do that.
Just like anything new in life… there are days when I wake up feeling ecstatic and a few when I get up wondering what the heck am I into. I am used to handling uncertainty in life, but this phase of my life is far too uncertain than any other. It just feels like an eternal wait after rolling your dice to know whether you hit the ladder or the snake.
It is not the snake or the ladder that is the issue. It is the wait!
Inactivity is the biggest enemy during these times. Keep your die rolling fast and repetitively. Keep doing something, however small or stupid. I guess one should be okay. Get bit here and take a ladder there. Slide down a while and climb up a bit.
Keep your chin up and going! Make sure that the stakes are small so that the bites don’t really push you out of the game. But keep going!
That’s what I am trying to do these days.
In other news, Tapprs is closing in on another month of a decent five figure rental and reservations for August are not bad either. However, at these figures.. I am just running around break even margins.