This caught my eye today, in an email from Richard Millington, who runs the community management training business The Pillar Summit in response to the news of investment by the Winklevoss brothers (oh, and Divya Narendra) in a new financial community.

Part of the reason it stood out is simply that I started off my professional life in community management setting up..drum roll..a new community for financial professionals! Well accountants, to be precise. And then worked on the FinReg21 community for a short while.

But enough from me, over to Richard to express his concerns to members of The Pillar Community:

Here is a quick challenge for you all.

Yesterday, the Winklevoss twins invested $1m in SumZero – a community for financial professionals.

I can imagine them debating the math: “Too bad we only made $65m from that Facebook idea, but this community for financial professionals sounds much smarter (and more original!). Financial professionals are rich, so let’s charge $1000+ per year for membership. If we can get just 5000 of the 5m in the USA to join, we’ll be making $5m per year!”

Do you know how many entrepreneurs have approached us with idea to build an exclusive, paid membership, community for financial professionals? 6.

That may not sound high, but these are just the tiny number of people that approached us. It’s a slither of the pie. I’d estimate there are 100 to 200 people in the USA working on this very idea right now.

Here is an open challenge to you all.

Based upon what we’ve covered on the Pillar Summit so far, tell me what’s wrong with SumZero?

Why is it unlikely to succeed? What do you think they are doing wrong?

Now without being on Richard’s course I can’t directly comment. But I get the drift, that the SumZero idea is unlikely to take off in terms of probability. But enough from me, over to Divya to explain the proposition: