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20 Million-Dollar Businesses You've Never Heard Of

forbes.com

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Re: 20 Million-Dollar Businesses You've Never Heard Of

#31

Post by noodle »

rmah wrote: post #2

These are what I call real startups. Many of them are imaginative and solve real customer needs. I hope that many of them can grow into thriving businesses. One point that I think is interesting is that even though they're all "offline" businesses, most were started with very little capital investment. I sometimes get the feeling that the HN crowd is a bit (understandably) myopic and focuses too much on simplistic we…

> I sometimes get the feeling that the HN crowd is a bit (understandably) myopic and focuses too much on simplistic websites.

i disagree with the simplistic notion. but i'd note that it focuses on software because that is YC's wheelhouse. this is a niche website, for sure. you will certainly find other somewhat similar sites more oriented towards various other things.

Re: 20 Million-Dollar Businesses You've Never Heard Of

#32

Post by AlexC04 »

DevX101 wrote: post #16
DevX101 wrote: post #11

1. Rent-A-Green Box Entrepreneur: Spencer Brown * Product/Service: Environmentally friendly moving supplies, delivery and pickup Start Date: 2005 Startup Costs: $7 million Revenue: $2.6 million in 2009 2. Mabel's Labels Entrepreneur: Julie Cole Product/Service: Personalized, permanent labels for kids' stuff Start Date: 2002 Startup Costs: About $10,000 Revenue: $4 million in 2009 3. Fatheadz Entrepreneur: Rico Elmore…

11. Neuberg & Neuberg Entrepreneur: Larry Neuberg Product/Service: Importing gold for gilding Start Date: 1962 Startup Costs: Virtually none Revenue: Estimated $3 million in 2010 12. Deeplocal Entrepreneur: Nathan Martin Product/Service: Promotions mixing the digital and physical Start Date: 2006 Startup Costs: Financed out of initial $30,000 contract Revenue: Estimated $1 million-plus in 2010 13. BlackSocks Entrepre…

thank you so much. I was interested in the article, but couldn't continue reading past the labels. I'm surprised that forbes.com (ostensibly a reputable magazine) has gone with a "2leep" style layout.

Adsense "clickbombs" everywhere and completely unreadable.

This is 'content farm' quality at best, which is a shame because it seems an interesting article.

Re: 20 Million-Dollar Businesses You've Never Heard Of

#33

Post by taylorbuley »

AlexC04 wrote: post #32
DevX101 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

11. Neuberg & Neuberg Entrepreneur: Larry Neuberg Product/Service: Importing gold for gilding Start Date: 1962 Startup Costs: Virtually none Revenue: Estimated $3 million in 2010 12. Deeplocal Entrepreneur: Nathan Martin Product/Service: Promotions mixing the digital and physical Start Date: 2006 Startup Costs: Financed out of initial $30,000 contract Revenue: Estimated $1 million-plus in 2010 13. BlackSocks Entrepre…

thank you so much. I was interested in the article, but couldn't continue reading past the labels. I'm surprised that forbes.com (ostensibly a reputable magazine) has gone with a "2leep" style layout. Adsense "clickbombs" everywhere and completely unreadable. This is 'content farm' quality at best, which is a shame because it seems an interesting article.

I'm sorry you feel that way. As a Forbes developer, I can tell you we are trying to make the site as usable as possible. If you have any specific feedback I can pass along drop me an email at buley.reports at gmail

Re: 20 Million-Dollar Businesses You've Never Heard Of

#34

Post by patio11 »

vaksel wrote: post #10

revenue != profit. take the Fiero guy...sure 2 mil is impressive...but car parts are expensive...and his profit margin is most likely only 7%(seems to be the average for car parts)...which turns his 2 mil into $140K.

Prior to quitting my day job, I was propositioned by an Englishman living in my town to improve his website, which he had hand-coded in PHP. There are several million owners of vintage Japanese cars in the world, there are several thousand places locally you can find a carburetor for a '82 Camry (I have no clue if that actually makes sense -- work with me here), and there is precisely one man in town who can match up "Customer in England with '82 Camry" and "72 year old owner of used auto store in central Japan."

Which is a long way of saying that I have exactly one data point for the profit margin of a particular niche auto parts business. Suffice it to say that -- after you deduct shipping, duties, and cost of goods -- it is still higher than mine, and all I do for order fulfillment is a SQL call. (Quote: "If they don't like my prices, then they can either learn to speak Japanese or sod off.")

Re: 20 Million-Dollar Businesses You've Never Heard Of

#36

Post by kilian »

corin_ wrote: post #23

What is with the ridiculous use of "In Pictures" features now days? If they want the page views, put each company on a seperate page, but don't pretend that the pictures count for more than 1% of the interesting aspect of this feature, and don't use a terrible slideshow system that makes it actually annoying to read the text.

It racks up page views and saves them from actually writing any compelling content. And it also means they're driving people away from their site as fast as possible.

Re: 20 Million-Dollar Businesses You've Never Heard Of

#37

Post by icefox »

dansingerman wrote: post #21
haribilalic wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's still twice the page views that they would have received if it was all on one page.

But way less user engagement / time on site / likelihood of me coming back

A data point to back this up: after reading high quality articles presented in a good fashion I have actually typed in and gone to http://www.theatlantic.com/. This was a good article presented as if it was on aol.

Re: 20 Million-Dollar Businesses You've Never Heard Of

#38

Post by cullenking »

taylorbuley wrote: post #33
AlexC04 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thank you so much. I was interested in the article, but couldn't continue reading past the labels. I'm surprised that forbes.com (ostensibly a reputable magazine) has gone with a "2leep" style layout. Adsense "clickbombs" everywhere and completely unreadable. This is 'content farm' quality at best, which is a shame because it seems an interesting article.

I'm sorry you feel that way. As a Forbes developer, I can tell you we are trying to make the site as usable as possible. If you have any specific feedback I can pass along drop me an email at buley.reports at gmail

Summarize in as few as pages possible - the less clicks needed the better. Not sure how well that works with the management since they are probably interested more in pageviews than anything else, but it would be a start. Second, the information in this "article" was factual, not pictorial, so why was it in a slideshow? The pictures are second to the numbers - they certainly aid in telling the story, but they aren't THE story.

Re: 20 Million-Dollar Businesses You've Never Heard Of

#39

Post by rabbitonrails »

Design of article widget makes me want to fail.

Also, not many of these are high margin businesses. Meh, you have a $2mm revenue shipping business with 10% margins and 10 employees that takes all your time to run. I would rather own a $100k/year web service.

Re: 20 Million-Dollar Businesses You've Never Heard Of

#40

Post by mgkimsal »

iisbum wrote: post #28
mgkimsal wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a broken metric when you're selling ad impressions on each page view. It's how you make money.

i understand that's how ads are sold, but it does doesn't work. the numbers are inaccurate, varying wildly depending on how you measure it (web server logs, analytics, etc), and its a horrible way for advertiser to measure ROI.

i don't think it's horrible, it's just not the only way.

"display advertising" isn't going away. just because someone doesn't click on something (or otherwise 'engage') at the moment of viewing doesn't mean that it was wasted. People remember stuff, and often won't act until they see something 8-10 times.

Just because there are other ways of measuring doesn't mean that using 'impressions' to gauge ROI is 'horrible'.

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