News: Introducing MyPerfect.com.au

Introducing MyPerfect.com.au – a locally built internet empire with global aspirations.

First up, my apologies – this month, my advice comes in the form of some shameless self-promotion – if you have a moment, I’d like to tell you about my new business venture: it’s a brand new type of search engine, online now at myperfect.com.au

The basic idea of My Perfect comes the fact that traditional search engines (yes, Google!) are getting harder and harder to use, as they return many thousands or millions of results for even a fairly specific search.

My Perfect turns that idea around completely: instead of typing in one word and finding thousands or millions of results, we *start* with thousands of products, and we play a very smart game of 20 Questions, until you end up with just one, perfect product. We’ve coined the phrase ‘choice engine’ to describe it.

So far, we have 1300 mobile phones on My Perfect Phone, 1200 digital cameras on My Perfect Camera and over 1000 Aussie beers on My Perfect Beer.

We’re working on My Perfect Career right now, and we have over 50 more domain names purchased, so we can roll out: Car, Bike, Boat, TV, Computer, Bank, Homeloan, Insurance, Man, Woman, Pet, Holiday, Resort, B&B, Present, Uni, Course, School, and many, many more…

For you as a consumer, it’s a very smart way of finding out what suits you best, in non-technical language, whether you’re in early research mode, or whether you’re wanting to buy something right now. The best part is that the amount spent on marketing by the big companies doesn’t affect your choices – it only uses hard and fast tech specs to decide what stays, and what goes – so you’re more able to find the hidden gems amongst the noisy crowd.

For businesses, it’s the ultimate in marketing: we allow businesses to list themselves against products only if they can actually supply that product, which gives that business a perfectly qualified sales lead. No more advertising to the masses with low success rates – this way, we match one person to their perfect product, to a business that can actually fulfill that product. 

James Rickard and I have been working on this project in what’s know as ‘stealth mode’ for well over 12 months – we’ve kept it mostly hidden from the public while we’ve been building it and trialling it. Since January, we’ve been slowly releasing portions of it to test audiences for feedback and analysis, and only last month did we turn all the features on, and begin promoting the site to the public.

One early test was back in late 2007, when we turned on myperfectparty.com.au – to allow people to decide who to vote for in the Federal Election. We asked over 70 questions, and after each question you answered, graphs of the political parties would rise or fall depending on their specific policies. In the two weeks prior to the Election, we had over 10,000 visitors to the site, so many that we were able to fairly accurately predict the winning margin well before polling day.

In the future, we’ll hand over most of the ‘smarts’ of the site to the world at large: we let users add new products to the site, as well as fill out 2-minute reviews of the products on the site – in that way, the site will grow with the accumulated knowledge of the world’s internet users. Exciting stuff…

If you have a moment this week, I’d invite you to take a look at the site: http://myperfect.com.au is the best point to start from.

Then the last thing I’d ask is that you let others know about the site – word of mouth will be the most effective promotional tool, especially once people see how simple and smart the ’20 questions’ (choice engine) part really is. We will be promoting the site heavily within Australia over the next 12 months, then expanding it internationally from 2009 onwards. We are also on the hunt for an ‘Angel’ investor, so that we can grow the venture – but until then, word of mouth will be our biggest driver…  (Hint, hint!)

Thanks for taking time out – and many thanks for being involved in the early stages of my little ‘Internet Empire’…  Who knows, maybe one day the Bellarine Peninsula will be known as ‘the Silicon Bellee’.

AB out