Re: Solutions

January 1, 2025

Which startup business model makes the most sense?

Spend one year building something, and the next year selling it.
Spend one year selling something, and the next year building it.

Ideally, you'd do both -- but if you must choose, there's no question that you're better off with #2. Start by talking with potential customers. Understand their needs before you commit to development.

Over the last year, I attended the Northwest Event Show, the SEATTLE HOTEL CONCIERGE ASSOCIATION Tradeshow, the International Downtown Association Annual Conference, and the Puget Sound Business Journal Reset Seattle Conference -- all affordable opportunities located within walking distance of my home in Convention City Seattle.

At each of these events, I was able to learn from practitioners in the tourism industry about how they work and the tools they use. From that, I've been able to refine my ideal customer profile and get valuable feedback on my ideas for innovation in guest journeys.

Now, it's time to build.

Or rebuild, to be precise.

What I've done so far works for demos, but it's got several areas to be redone, cleaned up, or refactored before it's ready for the market.

My QR Cards app is essentially three systems in one: it's a ticketing system that generates any number of unique QR codes; an invoicing system that attaches line items to each ticket; and a content management system with a tagged taxonomy of neighborhoods, destinations, and activities for visitors.

But at the moment, it's all bundled in a messy tarball, everything in one environment.

Fortunately, that's not that hard to fix using Power Platform's approach to application lifecycle management (ALM).

For starters, I'm putting database tables and model-driven apps into a separate "base" solution in its own environment. From there, I'll use solution layering to divide up the subsystems, each with its own Power Automate flows, Power Apps canvas apps, and Power Pages sites.

What that means is that I'll be able to make any number of changes for specific use cases without modifying the base solution. This is a highly flexible approach built for partnership. If an organization wants to use any part of the solution as a jumping-off point for internal development, we're good to go.

Separately, I have been experimenting with ways to move reference data from one environment to another: Dataflows, Configuration Migration Tool, and pac cli. These tools will also help to ingest external sources of data, whether public data sources, a database operated by destination marketing organization (DMO), or content from generative AI models.

Because if there's one thing that's changed in the last year, it's the standard for a minimal viable product.

Last year, I was able to show AI on the roadmap.

This year, AI takes the wheel.