Eureka moment
“It’s just text.”
I was standing in the doorway of our apartment when it hit me.
Classifieds in the newspaper are just text. So an online classified just needs to be text. Simple, nimble, easy for anyone to post.
It felt as if the universe unfolded one of its secrets, and I eagerly told my then-partner, who looked at me like “What am I talking about?!”
The year was 2007.
It seems obvious now. Almost ridiculous to call it a revelation. But you have to remember where we were, and more importantly, where Trinidad was.
To put this in perspective:
Broadband (High-speed Internet) was only beginning to roll out across Trinidad. TSTT’s (Our local service provider) telecommunications monopoly had just ended, and dial-up was still what most people knew. 3G mobile internet was years away for us. The first iPhone had been on sale in the US for exactly one month when this idea hit me.
The Dark Ages of the Internet
Most people accessed the internet via desktop or laptop computers. Online life was chat rooms, like ICQ, MSN, there were bulletin boards, Hi5, MySpace, and static pages. YouTube was just finding its footing in Trinidad thanks to broadband. We used Kazaa or Limewire to, um, “get” content, which meant leaving your PC on overnight and hoping for the best. Streaming meant lag. Facebook was that obscure platform nobody really talked about, yet.
If you were online as much as I was, you were considered a geek. Socially inadequate. In need of help. Now people look at you sideways if you’re NOT glued to a screen.
“Apps” were still called “Applications” (I know, exhausting!). The iPhone had just been announced. Third-party mobile apps were still a year away from existing.
The world was still slow. Trinidad, exponentially slower.
Research & Revelation
The next morning, I went into the office, where my computer was, with the idea still burning. No smartphone to research on the spot, just a desktop, a browser, and my “eureka idea”.
To me, the idea was novel, but lo and behold, it turns out Craigslist had been doing this for years. Not so novel after all.
But here’s the thing: for Trinis, nothing like it existed. Not even close.
Limitations
I was a self-taught Basic HTML Coder back in those days; suffice it to say, my technical capabilities to create such a dynamic, user-based website were very limited.
The mindset around that period was that a team of qualified professionals should be behind something like this for it to work. You had to be some sort of certified web developer to even think about doing one.
I was not.
Startup culture did not and sadly still doesn’t exist in our country.
So I let it go. Told myself that some company or team would eventually build it for us. I was honestly looking forward to seeing it.
Online Auto Venture
Fast forward to around 2010. I was in a business partnership, and we were about to disrupt the local auto market with the first fully online automotive e-commerce website in Trinidad.
We found a developer. He pulled out when our requests got too ambitious.
So I did what I had to do. I upgraded my own skills, self-taught again, reading books, physical and digital, consuming online resources, all while looking after my one-year-old son during the day and heading to the office in the evenings to execute what I’d learned that day.
Eventually, I built it myself. More basic than we’d envisioned, but launched, and fully in my control.
On to bigger ventures
With the basic Automotive website out, I was on a sort of undeclared, non-stop journey to build bigger, more dynamic ones. I had seen a new world of sorts and wanted to venture deeper into it.
Much like my days of scripting on mIRC, something I’ll dive into eventually, I knew there was something there I could learn and improve on, bit by bit.
I eventually launched my dynamic blog and was on to bigger things.
The thought of connecting
Then one day I needed to get rid of my son’s crib. Still in great condition, and somewhere out there was a parent who needed it badly. But I had no way to reach them.
For all the connectivity the internet promised, we still weren’t as connected as we should have been.
That’s when the 2007 idea came back.
And there was still no dedicated classifieds platform for Trinidad. Not a real one.
That was my first major reality check about Trinis and progressiveness.
I entertained the thought of it, but didn’t act on it since I was tied to so many responsibilities.
Starting something new
Then the auto partnership collapsed. My partner chose to become another regular offline dealer, kept the earnings we’d finally started making after years of sacrifice, and I was ousted. Unceremoniously.
Greed kills innovation.
I sat with that for a while. Then I looked at what I actually had: a clean slate, more capability than ever, and a gap in the market nobody had filled in fifteen years.
I’m not sure if it was the Steve Jobs biography I’d just finished, or the profound impact of watching The Social Network, or both. But something shifted. I knew I could actually pull this off.
So in early 2012, I started building the online classifieds platform Trinidad had deserved for years. It needed a name that felt Trinidadian without explanation. Memorable. Unmistakable.
‘TriniSpace’
A bit reminiscent of MySpace, which captivated the general online culture in the early 2000s, but Trini.
So, on the 20th of June 2012, I registered the domain Trinispace.com and launched it later that year.
What I know now, then
Had I known in that moment, standing in the doorway, when the idea hit me for an online classifieds website in 2007, it would have completely changed my life forever, I’d probably begun work on it sooner. I do believe things happen the way they happen for a reason. TriniSpace’s social media presence was once an impactful source of news and info, and continues to be a part of our Trini culture.
TriniSpace wasn’t the finish line
Trinispace was proof that a self-taught builder from Trinidad, with no startup culture to lean on, no funding, no team, and no blueprint, could look at a gap in the market and fill it. That the idea standing in a doorway in 2007 was worth holding onto for five years until the skills caught up with the vision.
The platforms that came after grew from the same instinct. See what’s missing. Build it anyway. Figure it out along the way.
I don’t come back to TriniSpace out of nostalgia. I come back because it reminds me what’s possible when you stop waiting for someone else to build what your people actually need.
That’s still the work. It’s just getting started.
by @amitgiant