Beyond Eureka

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The biggest mistake I see in entrepreneurs is they come up with a plan and lock in on it," says Kopelman. "You have to be willing to morph it or dump it."

PRACTICE: Shortly after Puneet Maheshwari moved to Philadelphia from Silicon Valley in 2007, his year-old son developed an ear infection. But the family hadn't yet found a doctor in Philadelphia, and they ended up in the emergency room. Soon after, Maheshwari started working on a business that would match patients who need to see a doctor on short notice with physicians who have openings.

By January 2008, Maheshwari had created a rough PowerPoint presentation that illustrated how patients would use the system. He began showing it around to physicians he met through friends and family, and they helped him tweak it. Maheshwari wasn't sure, for example, how to charge physicians for the service, although he was pretty sure that charging patients was a bad idea. He was considering both a fee-per-appointment model and a flat subscription. But conversations with doctors made it clear that a per-appointment fee would encourage doctors to ask patients simply to call them directly next time. Maheshwari opted for a monthly charge.

He also showed different versions of the nascent Web site to more than 100 former colleagues and friends. That helped him make the system more user-friendly. One version omitted pictures of doctors; a friend's mother insisted that people would want to know what a doctor looked like before booking an appointment. Maheshwari even took a poll to figure out what to name the system. The winner was DocAsap.com, beating out MyCityDoc.com and WalkIn.MD. "This is an iterative process, and the wisdom of crowds really plays a role," says Maheshwari. "People may not react in the way you think they will. Doing this prototyping, validating the concept, the look and feel of the site, even the name, was really beneficial."

By March, Maheshwari was writing code, hewing closely to what consumers and physicians told him they liked. The four-person company's site went live in July. In the first month, Maheshwari signed up nearly 30 doctors and dentists and made dozens of appointments. He's optimistic that he can bring in $100,000 in revenues in his first year.

For more entrepreneurs and their successful ideas, go to businessweek.com/go/sb/ideas

Return to the BWSmallBiz October/November 2009 Table of Contents

Barrett is a senior correspondent for BusinessWeek SmallBiz.