Archive for the 'Ideas' Category
Mary Schmidt: Don’t we all wish that life was as tidy as biz school case studies? Well, it’s not. It’s also not fair, and smart people do stupid things. All of which should be factored into real-world business planning. Thus, my idea: MBA the board game! Instead of systematically working a case with defined variables [...]
Home Based Dental Handpiece Repair
Chuck Huckaby on the WAH Business Opportunities Blog: You can’t get much information out of them without signing a non-disclosure agreement. But my purpose in checking their ad was to disclose things on my blog… right? So I went to the part of their website which tells prospective retail customers what they do… Here’s the [...]
Paul Graham: The fact is, most startups end up nothing like the initial idea. It would be closer to the truth to say the main value of your initial idea is that, in the process of discovering it’s broken, you’ll come up with your real idea. The initial idea is just a starting point– not [...]
Investing in the Future, or Indentured Servitude
Noah Kagan may be onto something with his idea for indentured servitude: Sponsor someone from high-school/college to professional. Not just a scholarship but a life-ship. Still unclear? I am saying you recruit a high-school or college student and mold them into a professional photographer: Pay for their schooling to learn photography, $150 class + books [...]
ABC News: Joan Coukos’ transition from international banker to artisanal chocolatier began when she found a set of chocolate molds at an antique market in Belgium. “I felt like I was on the verge of some discovery,” said Coukos. “I couldn’t put them down.” She began gobbling books on chocolate and making chocolate once a [...]
Can A Home Wind Turbine Make Money?
BBC News: Domestic wind turbines have been described as “the new handbags” – the latest luxury items craved by those who want to be first to try new technology. But this description overlooks their green credentials, because any electricity powered by the elements is reducing CO2 emissions, which are blamed for global warming. And there [...]
Rob on What Business He’d Launch
Rob has posted his answer to the final question If you weren’t doing what you are doing, what business would you launch tomorrow? from OPEN Adventures in Entrepreneurship: The field that I think will drive future change more than people give it credit for – artificial intelligence. Yeah I know it’s been making huge promises [...]
My DIY Audio and Video Production Center
Today question from OPEN Adventures in Entrepreneurship is: If you weren’t doing what you are doing, what business would you launch tomorrow? Surprisingly, this is an incredibly difficult question for me. Not because I’m not full of ideas for potential businesses and adventures, but because it requires that I stop, and take a step back [...]
How a Jam-Maker Found Her Recipe for Success
Startup Journal: Ms. Braunschweig and a co-worker, inspired in part by their job covering the venture-capital industry, would discuss “get-rich-quick schemes” over lunch. One day, the idea for a jam-of-the-month club struck her fancy. “I wasn’t an engineer or doctor, so I wasn’t going to come up with the next great technology or medical invention,” [...]
Forbes: Cacophony reigns inside Michael Biddle’s 45,000-square-foot recycling plant in Richmond, Calif. Pieces of fax machines, telephones, keyboards and cell phones are fed into green hoppers atop 20-foot-tall chutes. Pipes and conveyor belts run everywhere. Amid the whirring fans and clanging grinders, you can pluck out the sounds of metal clinking as it gets sucked [...]
Selling Old Magazine Pages Online
Seth Godin found, and bought, a copy of the the first big full page advertisement he ever did in a magazine. Where’d he find it? Someone is selling it on eBay. (Not any more, I bought it for $5). This guy buys old magazines and sells them online, one page at a time! Is there [...]
StartUpNation: If you’re truly concerned about the competition licking at your heels, check it out thoroughly yourself. You need to experience what customers are experiencing there. See how their pricing or product mix or the overall encounter fares with your own. Certain other ways of spying on your competition can be helpful as well, as [...]
What Small Businesses Need To Know About Market Research
SFGate: Before selling a product or service, it’s important to know the market you will be entering. Research includes finding out what potential customers need, what they want and don’t want and why. Your goal is to build a demographic profile of your customers. A research or business library can prove helpful for studying the [...]
Your Idea Isn’t Good Enough To Keep Secret
Ramit Sethi continues his excellent series on personal entrepreneurship today with a topic that all entrepreneurs fret about: Should you keep your idea secret? Ramit and I agree that the answer is no. Ideas are easy, its how you put them into practice that counts: One of the most rookie mistakes young entrepreneurs make is [...]
Jeff Cornwall: Many aspiring entrepreneurs may have the passion to strike off on their own, but they sometimes lack the business idea to make it happen. Most of the time they are trying too hard to find the “next Microsoft” or invent the “next iPod.” … Don’t over think of ideas for new businesses. The [...]
Ramit Sethi has begun, what will undoubtedly be an excellent series of posts on what he call “personal entrepreneurship” and I refer to as “the entrepreneurial lifestyle.” You may not be actively starting, improving and flipping companies, but you can think and function like one: The myth of The Great Idea is a dangerous one. [...]
Confidentiality Agreement vs Patent Pending
Bob Shaver: Many companies view independent inventors as a total waste of their time, a pain in the butt, and a potential lawsuit. They often have policies that they won’t sign confidentiality agreements, and really don’t want to see an inventor’s invention. The danger for them is that people in their own organization may be [...]
Everyone’s an Expert (about something).
Seth Godin’s new free ebook, Everyone’s an Expert (about something), is out. I’m reading it right now. Nothing groundbreaking, yet — but Seth is a great rearranger.
Entrepreneur Almost Daily: In Japan, where fertility rates are dropping and pet ownership is booming, the Wall Street Journal reports Honda Motor Co. is getting ready to target a growth market with a new concept car designed for pet owners (subscription required to read article). The glove compartment of the car, which will be revealed [...]
Seth Godin: Novelty for the sake of novelty is not only risky, it’s more often than not a recipe for irrelevance. A study of 1,300 publicly traded U.S. companies in fifty-five industries by Chuck Lucier, senior vice president emeritus at Booz Allen Hamilton, found that only four broad ideas, copied over and over again in [...]
Moms Turn Their Ideas Into Viable Businesses
Startup Journal: Missy Cohen-Fyffe’s business began when other moms gave her unsolicited feedback as she strolled down grocery-store aisles with her son riding in blanket-like protection in the shopping cart. “I just didn’t want my son biting on the gross, grimy metal,” she said of her Clean Shopper invention. Seven years and four employees later, [...]
Ideas in Progress: Places that will sell you custom wrapped candy are common and, of course, custom decorated cakes are nothing new. The point of the M&M evolution is the change from a product that used to be a commodity into one with both a wide variety of “standard options” and that for a little [...]
This week’s Brain Brew Radio episode is online. This week: Lorenzo with Parable Venture Partners, LLC in Florida seeks out the Brain Brew Crews advice on how to create a buzz about their children’s read along books… Aaron with Treepot, Inc. looks for ways he can raise money to take his company to the next [...]
Directory assistance calls are an expensive (over a $1 on my cell), but handy necessity when you’re doing business on the go. 1-800-FREE411 is a new advertiser supported service from Jingle Networks that provides these calls for free: 1-800-FREE411 was created to provide callers with a free alternative to the skyrocketing rates being charged by [...]
Entrepreneurs are Great Rearrangers
David Lorenzo: Most successful entrepreneurs are great re-arrangers. They take something that has been useful somewhere else and rig it so that it is groundbreaking and disruptive to a completely different industry. An example of this is the demand forecasting model that Marriott employs in its hotels. This system was originally modeled after something that [...]
The Growing Marketing for Slightly Used Books
Startup Journal: The Internet is creating a new and fast-growing category in the book-selling market — the barely-used book. An increasing number of consumers are snapping up used volumes online at invitingly cheap prices. These aren’t yellowing copies of out-of-print titles but often unblemished copies of newly published books — sometimes available just a few [...]
Start A Home Based Wedding Related Business
Work at Home Business Opportunities: How To Start A Home Based Business Related To Wedding Planning.
Make Podcasting Part of Your Business
Engineer2Entrepreneur: The thing of it is is that it take 600-1000 hours of study to become expert in something. Interestingly most people spend between 500-1000 hours in their car every year. Smart people, the people who will be going places are listening to audiobooks, making good use of that time to build their own knowledge [...]
Wine Tasting Meets Network Marketing
The Traveling Vineyard: The concept of The Traveling Vineyard was born in 2002 when The Traveling Vineyard President, Rick Libby, began hosting friends for casual wine tastings in the comfort of his home. A novice wine drinker, Rick realized that many of the people expressed interest in “buying after trying�. Thus the mission of The [...]
Smart Idea: Copying Human Products for Pets
Entrepreneur: The saying goes, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. In Patrick Meiering’s case, what’s good for the owner is good for the pet. In 1995, Meiering was out on a four-hour hike with his chocolate lab, Zuke, when he noticed his canine companion was looking a bit worn out. He [...]
Erik Sink: I don’t know squat about whether you could actually sell this, but here are my two cents: Some products ideas fall into a category I call “Just Do It”. This is probably one of them. It sounds kind of cool. It’s not going to be all that difficult to implement. You have the [...]
Make Money with Your Typewriter
From 1952: 125 Ways to Make Money with Your Typewriter. If you replace “typewriter” with “computer” this sounds like the modern work at home type marketing fluff, but there really are some gems in here: Regardless of your talents, and whether you live in a small rural hamlet or a widespread metropolitan area, your typewriter [...]
How to Create and Sell Information Products
Michael Pollock: In this episode, I speak with James Maduk about creating and selling information products. More specifically, how to create information products from what you already know and do in your daily activities. Running time is about 60 minutes. Enjoy! via Yaro Starak.
Ideas in Progress: In Roman times, all the average person could do is listen to stories and daydream about what other times, places, or occupations might be like. By the time of the Late Unpleasantness, printing presses and widespread literacy at least allowed the average person to read* history, fiction, or travelogues in what free [...]
Researching Your Business Idea
Dan Sherman: Here’s a great way to fund a cross country trip/vacation. Buy about 5 good used Segway machines and get an RV to haul them (and you) around in and set off across America. Stop along the way at parks or parking lots (get permission from the owner… perhaps pay them a measly daily [...]
Getting Rich, Slowly, From Shareware
The Escapist: “Selling shareware games has been very, very good to me. And I’m certainly not the only one,” Thomas Warfield wrote in a March post on his blog. “There are lots of other people who have been quite successful selling shareware games. Steve Pavlina at Dexterity is well known in the indie game world. [...]
Mobile Phone Camera Business Opportunities
Springwise: Cameraphones are ubiquitous and inseparable now, picture quality is increasingly outstanding (2MP is fast becoming the standard in Europe, while in Asia, 5MP is widespread), and subsequently consumers are getting used to taking pictures of everything and anything, all the time. All of this is a golden opportunity for you to dream up services [...]
Springwise: MyFoodPhone and Nutrax are life caching based diet services: with their cameraphones, users take pictures of everything they eat, and send them to their own Registered Dietician. Once a week, on a personalized web page where customers keep track of their weight and other biometric information, they’ll get video feedback from their dietician, who [...]
Staffing Company for Truck Drivers
Western People: A Ballina [Ireland] man is embarking on a new venture to match potential employers with qualified drivers who are available for work. Tiernan Gill, who established Gills Driving School thirty-five years ago, has had the idea in the back of his mind for a long time that there is a need for a [...]
The Donut Franchise: Still A Sweet Deal
Franchising.com: Despite headlines about low-carb diets and Krispy Kreme’s recent financial stumbles, it looks as if there’s steady growth and a solid future ahead for donut franchises. In June 2005, food research and consulting firm Technomic released its Top 500 Chain Restaurant Annual Report. According to Technomic, donuts as a category continued to be a [...]
One year ago today: Selling Cars Without A Lot.
TrendWatching: Increasingly, consumers are participants instead of passive audience members, and this mega-trend manifests itself in a variety of ways. In fact, the more we hear about GENERATION C making money from its creations, and the more we focus on the financial rewards consumers are reaping from participating in CUSTOMER MADE projects, the more the [...]
This week’s Brain Brew Radio episode is online. This week: Don from the Veggie Depot in Arizona finds out from the Brain Brew Crew and former guest, Kevin of Bounty Seafood how he can increase the foot traffic through his new store… Doug and David discuss the future of scrapbooking and marble making this week [...]
Fortune Small Business has a great excerpt from Paul Orfalea’s, the founder of Kinkos, new book, Copy This!: In the fall of 1970 I rented a small storefront near the university, only 100 square feet. I was still a student at USC, but I couldn’t put off this brainstorm. The rent was $100 a month. [...]
One year ago today: Local In-Home Eyeglass Representative.
From Land Line To Cellular Phones
Jeff Cornwall: This trend away from the old land line phone [to cell phones] is amazing to someone who remembers party lines, Ma Bell, and rotary phones. The big telecom companies have been preparing for this trend for years. And as it continues, this trend will create more and more new opportunities for entrepreneurs to [...]
How To Sell A Website – How Much Is Your Website Worth?
Yaro Starak: It is a joyous time when you are ready to sell your website. While you will be fraught with questions and unknown variables when ultimately you decide to sell your website it can be like winning a jackpot and a big change to your life. You might have been building your web business [...]
The Next Step in Outsourcing: Online Tutors
Entrepreneur Almost Daily: Earlier this month, we blogged about the federal funds available for tutoring companies. Today, the New York Times features a company that’s doing quite well in the online tutoring arena by outsourcing their work to Indian tutors. According to the article, customers are charged $20 per hour compared to an average of [...]
Advice to Entrepreneurs from Entrepreneurs
Southeast VC: There are a lot of good new ideas out there. What differentiates companies and makes them great is the execution. Entrepreneurs shouldn’t debate whether or not this is the right time to start a business. That is almost like trying to time the stock market. The advice was to ignore market conditions. Also, [...]
