During almost four months last year, I've been working quite hard with a friend of mine to setup a new venture, so-called Wahoom (okay, I know what you're saying : just another Web 2.0 crap thing). Wahoom was intended to be a Design & Decoration firm, aimed at selling high-priced luxury items to * rich people *. From porcelain hand-made furniture to fiber-optics-illuminated swimming pools, we were going to make big money with the big guys of Dubai, L.A., Moscow, and Miami.
Actually, Wahoom was my friend's idea. He wanted me to work with him as a partner, because of my ability to develop new business from scratch. Brainstorming the business plan was an interesting exercise, writing down the product plan was fun, and putting together the sales strategy was exciting (hey, I never thought I was going to sell something to a sex-shop in Castro ;-)
Also, I discovered a couple of new areas : 3D-modeling, resin-made over-sized objects, sculpture...
Nevertheless, I pulled off. Because, according to my experience and more, to my convictions, this project was a dead-end. Making money just for the pleasure to make money doesn't make sense to me. We were willing to sell upper-priced stuff to super-upper-class people : what's the point here ?... We couldn't succeed on the long run.
To understand why I terminated the Wahoom project, there is no better explanation than reading the slide, from the famous presentation on the real secrets of success by Richard St. John at TED'05. 
I got all the points on John' s success factors' scorecard but two of them :
Wahoom was no passion to me, and it didn't serve anyone for good.
To watch this remarkable 3-minute slideshow, which is a star on YouTube and blogs, please click here or... stay there and click on the video right now ! Enjoy the ride.
