Cogito, Ergo Sumana for 2006 September 30 (entry 0)

# 30 Sep 2006, 08:54AM: Another Rejected Business Idea: I've lived in a house my parents owned, but it was in sunny Northern California. In less temperate spots (say, Indiana), homeowners have a heck of a lot to remember to do. Courtesy Ben:

• mortgage
• taxes
• seasonal - weather-related maintenance
• shoveling sidewalk
• clean gutters
• water softener tablet (?)
• heater inspection
• air conditioner inspection, filter replacement
• various yard work - water, fertilizer, mowing
• trash
• recycling
• driveway patching
• sweeping sidewalk
• vermin inspection/spraying
• smoke detectors - replace batteries, test

No software on the market specifically helps people manage the workflow of home maintenance. Homeowners have to keep track of mortgage payments and refinancing, taxes, and seasonal and weekly maintenance tasks. An organized to-do list that polls weather and government data to automatically remind a homeowner to clean gutters and attend homeowners' association meetings would relieve tension and inconvenience. A domain-specific iteration of existing bug-tracking or task management technology could solve many of their problems.

A web-based, desktop, or mobile software application could be to this domain as Quicken is to personal finance. The application could borrow quick diary functionality from blog technology, and task or request tracking from bug tracking. It might also interface with Flickr to organize before-and-after photos, Quicken to manage payments, and email, SMS, or instant messaging for reminders. The application could also offer background checks on other neighbors using publicly available data.

In a related opportunity: A third of US residents rent. We know we should take notes and pictures to document our tenancy, in case we need evidence when we argue with our landlords, but we don't do it because it's inconvenient. Tracking tasks, rent, deposits, and repair requests would help renters reduce late fees, reduce confusion with roommates, and get our deposits back.

BillMonk and BudgetSnap are working in this market, so there's opportunity here. But I don't know nearly enough about the domain, I have only the fuzziest idea of how this product would look or work, and my grasp on business-to-consumer marketing falls far short of my grasp of business-to-business marketing. I find this the most promising and interesting rejected idea for my master's project.

And I see that others are already on the road to developing temple/church donation management technology.

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