The Future of Your Inbox

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Drew Meyers

There was an interesting comment from Anne Libby on Brad Feld’s post awhile ago that got me thinking about the future of the inbox.

Here is Anne’s comment:

If I were to write a similar post, it would be titled “Email is no longer working for me.”

Every day, we all create transaction requests, questions, introductions, responses to questions, needed data, jokes, attempts to be understood, negotiations on a meeting time — and so on — into what’s essentially a giant pipe called “email”.

Then we press “flush,” and expect it to be sorted out on the receiving end. (Yeah, we can set filters. It’s somewhat helpful, but for me it’s not enough.)

My five year future would include the emergence of email “process owners” in organizations. Industrial engineer/design specialist tasked with understanding the cost of the sorting out process, distributed across every person in the organization (i.e 100 emails/day * time to process each email* people in the organization). Then they’d figure out ways to get info where it’s meant to go…bypassing email where it doesn’t make sense.

It’s not just about tweaking the email client, but creating alternate and more effective communication behaviors.

I whole-heartedly agree. My inbox sucks, and there is an opportunity for an exponentially better experience. The inbox is certainly not a small problem one individual can solve. It’s a big crazy idea to totally redefine what an email inbox looks like and how it operates. Big risk, big reward.

The other day, I finally got around to putting together what I believe the future of the inbox is and posted it over at Geek Wire. Head over and give it a read and let me know what you think!

Work Productivity Screen Share App (aka POW)

Posted on May 5, 2013 by Drew Meyers

You’ve all spaced off while “working.” Maybe that means watching a YouTube video, perusing Facebook (for the 36th time that day), g-chatting a friend, or checking ESPN for the 15th time. It results in hours and hours (and hours) of lost productivity.

What if there was a powerful and simple way to avoid wasting so much of your time?

Sure, there are already apps and browser extensions that enable you to “block” social media sites, or provide visibility into exactly how much of your life you’re wasting. They are great in theory.

The problem? They all rely on YOU to initiate and execute them. And even if you do turn them on, you can turn them off with a flick of a switch (click of a mouse if we’re being picky).

The solution?

POW – a work productivity screen share app that uses the power of your friendships to keep you productive.

Crowd-source your work productivity, and rely on the power of friends to keep you in line. I’m much more likely to stay productive if real people, or even better yet, current friends of mine, are the ones keeping me in check. The human aspect is why I prefer working at co-working spaces or coffee shops — because there are other people around which makes it harder to just goof off and do nothing.

How exactly would POW work?

First of all, you’d be paired with 4 other people to form work teams of 5. In the upper right of your screen, you’d have a small window which gave you a quick view into what your friends were doing right that moment (think TV-in-TV from the 1990′s). If you noticed one of your 4 friends was goofing off, you could click the “Lazy” button on them which would trigger a quick takeover of their screen indicating they’ve been spotted. See the quick wireframe below…

pow productivity

I firmly believe this would work. But I leave it up to someone else to build it…please send me a note if this exists, as I’d love to try out a service like this. And if this doesn’t exist and you build it…I’ll be your first beta tester.

PS: It doesn’t have to be named POW. Name it whatever you like

The Airport Gym

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Joel Gross

While traveling to South America and back last month, I spent a LOT of time in airports. I had 26 hours of travel time one way: 2 hours in the Buenos Aires airport, 3 hours on a flight to Santiago, 8 hours in the Santiago airport, 10 hours on a flight to Dallas, 2 hours in Dallas and a 4 hour flight back to Los Angeles.

airport gym Almost all of that time was spent in a sitting position. My body stiffened up and I definitely felt very unhealthy from the lack of exercise and having to eat airline food.

It occurred to me that I would be willing to pay $15 for one time access to an airport gym where I could get in a good workout. I would pay $20 if that gym also had a basketball court.

There are tons of other businesses that operate beyond TSA security in airports (restaurants, gift shops, etc), why not a gym? I mean some airports even have those weird smoker aquariums so it only makes sense that someone should build a small gym to let people burn off some energy before their flight.

It could be monetized on a pay-per-use basis or with monthly or annual memberships for frequent travelers. The airport gym could be a franchise opportunity for an existing brand like 24-hour Fitness to widen it’s reach.

Getting some exercise would have been extremely good to help get my body moving again and pumping out all the toxins just sitting in my extremities. Traveling is inherently unhealthy in that you’re sitting idle for hours at a time, breathing in recycled air and probably not eating the healthiest food.

I think a lot of other people are like me out there and would happily pay a fairly large fee to get access to a gym with free weights, machines, and possibly a basketball court. Add in carry-on sized lockers and showers and you’re all set.

It would take some investment to lease a space in a busy terminal, but wouldn’t take long to prove if the concept would work or not. A major hub like LAX would be a good place to start because many travelers are coming in from (or about to embark on) long-haul flights and may have a lengthy layover — and would probably love to get some exercise.

The Code for Equity Platform

Posted on March 30, 2013 by Nick Loper

Small businesses and startups often have a hard time finding qualified technical help to build out their grand ideas.

code for equity Founders can turn to freelance sites like Elance or oDesk, but it can be difficult to sort through the dozens of applicants to find the diamond in the rough.

On top of that, top-tier talent is expensive. Bootstrapped operations may find themselves compromising on quality just to meet budget.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

What if you built out a platform to connect talented web designers, web developers and software developers with cash-poor but idea-rich entrepreneurs?

It could be a win-win for both parties. The companies could get the technical work done on the cheap or free, and the developers could get an ownership stake in the company or a share of potential future cash flows and growth.

The platform could be monetized in a similar way, by taking a small equity stake in each project. Over the long-term, that could be a very lucrative strategy if you end up facilitating some big hits, but might be complex to execute. Another option would just be to charge a flat listing fee for each project.

Strengths

This unique set-up allows developers to essentially play venture capitalist, except with their time and skills instead of with their money. If they don’t need the income today, but have an eye for a great idea, the payoff could be much greater in the long-run than doing the job as a standard freelance gig.

In addition, there would be a greater incentive to build it right because they would have a legitimate ownership stake. Some skin in the game, as it were.

For business owners, your code for equity platform would solve the problem of finding and motivating engaged talent. And if your project lingers with no one jumping to help, perhaps that’s an early indication the idea isn’t that good.

Weaknesses

Freelancers are freelancers and most of the time just want to get paid. They take on risk with each job and might not have the stomach for even riskier work — with the distinct possibility of never getting paid at all.

Even though the platform would allow them to pick and choose which projects they take on, I think it would still be a big hurdle to overcome. They can’t buy groceries today with startup equity and the promise of potential income tomorrow.

And in the reverse of the strength above, in the long-run the companies may end up dramatically overpaying for the initial development work if the project really takes off.

Opportunities

As far as I know, no one else is facilitating these kinds of freelance arrangements. (OK, I didn’t research it at all.) The concept could generate some buzz in the industry — positive and negative for sure.

But I believe there is a large market out there of entrepreneurs and wannabe entrepreneurs who have good ideas but don’t have the time or money or capacity to build them out. This platform would give them a low-risk alternative to go out and try and make something happen.

Threats

In terms of competitive threats, if this business idea takes off I imagine it would be pretty easy for Elance or oDesk to add “code for equity” checkbox and even provide some boilerplate legal contracts to set up the arrangement.

But if you can gain some traction I think there’s definitely room for this kind of unique niche in the freelance market.

Wrap Up

I like this idea because it’s not just about building one business, but about building hundreds or thousands of new businesses. And it’s about sharing the value created from those new enterprises.

What do you think? Should we build this? Better yet, should we try and get it built on a code for equity model to test the idea?

5 Business Ideas for Stay-at-Home Moms

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Nick Loper

Do you ever get the feeling life is passing you by because you’re always stuck in the house?

Even if you go out and do things during the day it still might not be enough. You chose to stay home and look after the kids, which is great, but it doesn’t mean you can’t try to make your life a little more exciting.

Have you thought about what you could do to pass the time when you have any available? Why don’t you try and start your own little home business?

Moms don’t need to sit around doing nothing and if you have an entrepreneurial spirit it’s quite easy to make a little cash on the side. At the end of the day, it doesn’t even need to be about the money, but watching your bank account increase is fun even if you aren’t struggling to put food on your table.

You might even be able to turn it into a bigger business once the kids have grown up, so if you’re interested we can look at a few ways you can get started building a home business.

Baking Cakes

If you are great in the kitchen you could easily bake cakes all day at the same time as looking after the children. The cakes you make will depend on your skills, but if you could get people to order birthday or wedding cakes you could easily turn a nice profit.

You don’t have to limit yourself to making cupcakes for the village fair. You will need to do a big of marketing to generate some business, but once you have started word of mouth could help you along.

Selling Clothes

If you love designing your own clothes you could easily bring your creations to life faster than ever before. Once you have the proper machines you just need to go around collecting the materials and you’re set.

If you make a few garments for people you know they can show them off to everyone and rave about you. People are always looking for custom clothes that are unique and it means there should be enough people who will order from you.

Writing

If you love writing then doing it at home with the intention of selling books is easy. You can easily write them all day long and upload them to somewhere like Amazon for free.

In the beginning it’s going to be tough, but after you built up an audience that loves your work you can easily sell a decent amount of copies. You might not become the next best-selling author, but at least you will have fun doing what you love.

Build an Online Business

If you were a businesswoman in a previous life you could start your own online business that can slowly be built up over the years. If you don’t have something to sell online you could think of something, or you could even provide a service to other people.

As your company grows you could slowly start to hire more staff and because everyone can work from home they will be easy for you to manage. You just need to find something the market wants.

Daycare

Some moms are not so lucky and they have to keep working because there might not be enough money coming in. That means they need someone to look after their small children.

You could start a little daycare center in your home because you’re going to be looking after your children anyway. If you love children it could be a fun way to pass the time, plus if you see how much daycare centers charge these days you’ll know you can make a nice bit of money.

Creative commons image credits:

Kish Winner is the author of today’s guest post and also an expert blogger. You might be interested in his Guide to franchise article, which gives tips on starting your own franchise.

Common Business Idea Mistakes

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Alex Genadinik

Nine months ago I created an Android app which helped people plan a business. While I didn’t have a budget to advertise the app, the users of the app loved it, gave it great reviews and shared it, helping the app grow organically.

Recently the app hit 50,000 downloads and out of those downloads, there have been over 10,000 businesses planned on the app!

However, I noticed that the entrepreneurs on my apps were consistently running into difficulties in the idea-generation phase.

Since the topic of business ideas is such a common one, I have written extensively about some of the best-practice ways to come up with business ideas that are right for you. It is precisely at the idea stage that many companies make big, but very avoidable mistakes.

In this article I want to focus on some of the common problems with business ideas, and what the common pitfalls to avoid.

IDEAS ARE THE EASY PART

The overwhelming majority of entrepreneurs who need help with business ideas are first-time entrepreneurs. The reason for that is that there is a very low barrier to entry to begin thinking and dreaming about an idea.

But in reality, dreaming and hoping does not make someone an entrepreneur. Execution makes someone an entrepreneur. Ideas are worthless without execution. To the point we give them away for free on this site. Like the header says, “Ideas on us. Execution on you.”

So naturally, I observe a very high rate of people simply quitting their business ideas once there is no further material to dream about, and once there is actual work that needs to be done.

Part of the reason is that people often dream up ideas that do not take the full picture into account, largely because they do not have the experience to draw from in order to conceptualize what the big picture is for a particular idea. That commonly results in ideas which are simply not a great fit for the entrepreneur.

IDEA-FOUNDER MISMATCH

Often, people do not take their skills, strengths, and passions into account when evaluating their ideas. A good founder-to-idea match should have a balance of all three of these while also avoiding any weaknesses.

For example, if a person loves to cook, they may dream of opening a restaurant. And even though food is a passion of theirs, restaurants require quite a bit of money to open and run until they can break even financially. So if the person cannot raise that money, then this kind of a business is not really playing to their strengths as much as it originally seems. Additionally, enjoying to cook is one thing, but running a restaurant is an entirely different thing — where the owner has to do everything else except cook.

IGNORING FINANCIALS

First time entrepreneurs almost never know how to think deeply about the financials of a business.

Let’s take the same restaurant example. How much money does it take to open a successful restaurant? Most people find it difficult enough to count up the costs to start the business.

What is more difficult is to understand how many months the restaurant will be open, but will be losing money on a month to month basis, and how much money it will lose during those months.

But this is not even the most difficult part. The real challenge is gauging customer demand at various price points, while covering the costs to operate the restaurant at sustained long-term profitability.

And those concepts barely scratch the surface of the financial analysis that might be required to manage or run a restaurant (or any other business).

A first time entrepreneur rarely thinks that far ahead, let alone explores this issue with the care it deserves. Which means they’re often faced with ugly financial realities when it is already too late.

IDEA AS A PERSONAL FINANCE SOLUTION

As we just saw in the example of a restaurant, getting into a business you may not understand deeply can lead to a substantial financial loss if you put your own money into it.

That is counter-intuitive to many people because many people see the idea of starting a business as something profitable. In reality, businesses started by first time entrepreneurs have a shockingly high failure rate, and require substantial commitment of money, time and energy. The odds are high are that starting a business might actually make a person’s financial situation worse than it had been before, at least at the onset.

So as we’ve seen, a business idea is very different from actually starting a business. It is fun to dream and think about, but if you are actually planning on doing the business, you must approach it with a lot of care and discipline, and if you are able, get mentors who can help you.

The Treadmill Desk Revolution

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Nick Loper

Background

Study after study after study keeps coming out with new findings about how bad sitting is for you.

Employees and employers are both starting to take notice. In recent years, we’ve seen dramatic increases in the number of alternative workspaces: desks with adjustable heights, exercise balls for chairs, standing desks (and chair-less conference rooms), and even the holy grail of them all — treadmill desks.

The Opportunity

There are literally millions of office desks in the US and all around the world that will be replaced with more “healthy” models. Understanding the long-term health risks of a sedentary environment, workers will begin to demand it, and employers will need to make the investment to attract and retain the best talent.

In the coming decade there is a HUGE opportunity for a motivated entrepreneur to step in front and ride this wave. Remember, “find a parade and get in front of it?” Well I sincerely believe this is going to be one giant parade.

Even if you only manage to capture a tiny fraction of the market, the office furniture business is a huge one, and it’s ripe for some serious disruption.

The Product

A treadmill desk, if you’re not familiar with the contraption, is simply a tall desk that stands over a treadmill. This way, workers can walk at a slow pace while they work. Of course it also works in “off” mode as a standing desk for when people get tired of walking.

I wouldn’t try and manufacture the treadmills yourself, but rather find a reliable existing model and look for either an adjustable desk you can customize around it, or have the desk portion manufactured.

One modification that will likely be necessary to the treadmill is some sort of noise dampener.

I built mine over a year ago (and absolutely love it!), but it is noisy. Both the treadmill and desk were acquired on the cheap on craigslist. The motor casing is just cheap plastic; I think with a little foam or other noise insulation it would run much quieter.

The benefit of sourcing from an existing supplier is you don’t have to worry so much about maintenance or warranty issues — done right, customers can be covered under the manufacturer’s product warranty.

And of course there’s the additional profit center opportunity of selling extended warranty plans for each treadmill.

The Competition

The treadmill desk idea has been around for a few years, but many entries in the marketplace are very expensive. Like $2000 and up!

At the other end of the spectrum are the hacked together DIY-jobs that are potentially unstable and loud, especially for an office environment.

An opportunity exists for a quality product with a middle-of-the-road price point. Do you think you can build and deliver that product to world full of unhealthy office furniture?

Next Steps

Begin researching the marketplace. How are office furniture sales typically made? Who are the decision makers? Make some calls and find out. Imagine landing an entire floor of an office, or an entire call center or complex as a client.

Find a suitable treadmill manufacturer. Inquire about volume discounts or wholesale pricing.

Do the same for the desks.

OK as I’m writing this the more and more I think this could really be a viable venture with a giant market. Anybody interested in checking it out and testing the waters?

The Craigslist Arbitrage Game

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Nick Loper

In every big city, there is a healthy Craigslist community. Among the many sections of the giant classified ads site is a popular section for free stuff.

craigslist arbitrage Of course, a lot of this stuff is pretty junky but in many cases it still has some value. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, right?

Last week I posted a dresser to the free section of Craigslist. I probably could have sold it, but it had been through several moves and was pretty banged up. Within 10 minutes I had half a dozen calls from people to come pick it up.

The family that made the first call arrived with a passenger van (seats removed) full of stuff, presumably all from Craigslist as well. It made wonder if they were running this as a business.

Here’s the basic premise:

Find free or otherwise undervalued stuff on Craigslist or Freecycle.
Re-sell it for a profit.

What you’d need:

A pickup truck.
A garage or other safe place for storage.
Cleaning supplies, tools, fix-it know-how, and a nice camera to take pictures.
Salesmanship.

For example, today I found an almost-new rowing workout machine listed for free:

“Wife bought, didn’t use. Can you? If so, come & get it. Please.”

Brand new, the same item sells for more than $300 on Amazon!

Think you could turn a profit when you’re “cost of goods sold” is zero?

I like this business idea because it’s very simple, requires little to no start-up capital, and can be done without any specialized training or skills.

Be quick and courteous on the phone, grab the goods, clean/fix them up, take some nice pictures and re-post the items for sale.

I’ve actually heard of people doing this quite successfully with used cars (which is essentially what dealers do with trade-ins), but there is a lot more red tape to deal with in the car-flipping business.

As an added benefit, you can donate to charity any items that don’t sell and take a small write-off against your business profits.

I thought semi-seriously about doing this during college when I had a truck but never pulled the trigger. What do you think? Is playing the Craigslist arbitrage game a viable business idea?

The Playground Sports League

Posted on January 19, 2013 by Nick Loper

Beer league softball and flag football have been around for ages, which shows there is a strong demand for adult recreational sports.

Rec sports are popular for many reasons. For instance:

They give you a chance to burn some calories in a fun way
They offer face-to-face human social interaction
They let you relive your athletic glory days

Recently, I’ve seen a rise in “non-sports” sports leagues. Kickball leagues have taken off. A friend of mine even plays trampoline dodgeball on Monday nights!

Naturally, there’s an opportunity there.

Could you build a league of your own (or collection of leagues) that specializes in playground, backyard, or bar games?

Beyond kickball and dodgeball, what about:

Wiffle ball?
HORSE?
Ping pong? or Beer pong?
Shuffleboard?
Darts?
Croquet?
Capture the flag?
Kick the can?
Frisbee golf?
Ultimate frisbee?
Tag?

If you have access to public spaces for the games, you could start with almost no overhead. All you’d need is a website to promote sign-ups.

The challenge would be in creating a critical mass of players and teams, but after that, many will stick around season after season if you provide a good experience. In that sense, it’s a lot like a membership site in that it becomes a recurring income stream.

People are busy, but shouldn’t be too busy to have fun with friends and meet new people. Plus there’s always the nostalgia factor of playing some old-school games. Retro is in, if not just for the irony!

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