My friend Josh Newman is shifting his film production company to be a venture capital firm that will focus on growth opportunities in unsexy industries:
I think he's right about the gap in attention and money to that quadrant.
There are many opportunities in stodgy industries that go unexploited because it's not mobile / real time / social / insert-buzzword-of-the-day-here. I always enjoy Marty Nemko's blog, and he often champions unsexy business ideas. In his entrepreneurial ideas tag, you can read about his business ideas for organic perfume, food carts, velcro shirts, and more. His entrepreneurship tag has even more.
One more random thought on generating business ideas: look at segments where most of the businesses feel scammy — and then do the exact same business but in a buttoned-up way. Google "mystery shopping" to see what I mean by "feels scammy." Anytime dozens of weird AdWords pop up, you know there's real money being made, but often by scammy entrepreneurs.
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Alex Mann awhile back had good tips for how to get into the entrepreneurial swing of things even if you're in college.
This is new, and unique. No other business like this.
I’ve developed multiple financial arbitrage’s, that allowed me to developed a new business model. Most arbitrages produced in the range of 40% a year without risk.
The model allows the buyer to receive a 100% rebate on anything they buy. The model also allows a buyer that financed a product/service to have their monthly payments paid by the business model. The model decreases any business expenses up to 20% a year.
A couple of example’s:
1 Company X has expenses of 100,000 dollars a month, my business model can take that amount and return $2000, and still make a profit. Too reduce expense’s 100%, 50 times the monthly expenses would be needed. (Business model will profit $1000 plus that month).
A buyer can purchase on credit a product/service, my business model will make all the financed payments.
2 You buy a house full of furniture for $5,000 and my business model will make all the monthly payments. House hold items usually have a 500% to 1000% markup. I’ll use a 400% markup.
I sell a furniture set for $5000. That means my cost is $1000. I create a long term arbitrage of 30% with $5000, and create a asset of $6500. Take out an asset based loan of 80%($5200), and use that for short term arbitrage to make monthly payment for the buyer and part of asset loan. At the end of year(loan Period), do the same until the buyers loan is paid. There is a small profit monthly and a $5000 Plus profit when the loan is paid in full. Notice that if I didn’t do an asset based loan, I still have $1500 to make the monthly payment over the year.
All i need is a minimum of 100% markup(depending on situation) on the product or service(200% or more is better). A 100% markup will take a longer period of time to refund/rebate/make financed payments. I take part of the retail amount and pay the wholesale/manufacture cost, and the other part I create an arbitrage to make the monthly payment.
This has never been done. This can help bring people that are poor out of poverty. This can give all people/business more to spend. There are more scenario’s.
Athenapro.com is in development, but open for preview. Take a gander and imagine the possibilities.
This business arbitrage model fits into any and all business plans.
Former military pilot, owned multiple small business ventures, B.S. in Aviation and multiple other studies. Developed multiple arbitrage’s from a decade ago that produced approx. 40% a year.
I am looking for a partner.
Thomas Adair
[email protected]
Ben Horowitz agrees with Josh Newman. He says he likes “dead industries” or industries that the conventional wisdom says are “dead.”
I think his rationale is that its primed for technology disruption & allows a start up to compete against non-competition.
Blogging is a mystery to me. Why are there not 500 comments on this post? First of all, it’s an excellent headline, and I am assuming it got tons of clicks even if it did not get tons of comments. But also, I think people do not like to admit that they like to hear good ideas for how to spark ideas. People who have a lot of ideas like to think they come from God or something. Not from a blog post about how to leverage the slime online or the lameness offline. And people who do not have ideas think ideas come from God and so they are scared to say they need jump starts.
Or something. i just have to say I’m stunned there aren’t more comments. I loved this post. So short and it changed how i see things.
Penelope
Thanks so much for this, i am actually searching for this type of interesting post and this has been extremely informational.