Doing market research? Need access to an expensive database of demographic data? Selling to a particular market and want to know who your target businesses are and exactly where they’re located?
Your local public library may have just the help you need.
As libraries seek a reason to exist in the Google age, many are becoming increasingly adept at helping customers find the precise information they need for highly specialized tasks.
From Start Up Journal
Denise Upah Mills, an entrepreneur who keeps her local Johnson County Library on speed dial, camped out there for nearly eight months while crafting a business plan.
She was convinced there was a need for a rural high-speed Internet service — it was 1999, still the early days in terms of the high-speed Web — but didn’t know the first thing about broadband. So, with the business librarians’ help, she and her partners tapped databases and other resources for statistical data, demographics of Midwestern cities, and articles on trends in the telecommunications industry.
“The librarians there became our market-research department,” says Ms. Upah Mills. “They became part of our unpaid staff and truly were invaluable. We wrote a business plan that was so complete and detailed that it impressed people that look at business plans all day long. That data was [all culled at] the library. And we paid zero for it.”
A small investment-banking firm found investors for them, and, in 2001, they sold the company, Invisiband, for a “comfortable sum,” she says. After closing the deal, she and her partners met in the library parking lot to celebrate.
No comments yet.