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If you had 5 dollars and 2 hours, how would you make as much money as possible?

entrepreneur.venturebeat.com

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Re: If you had 5 dollars and 2 hours, how would you make as much money as possible?

#41

Post by [deleted] »

idm wrote: post #29
ankeshk wrote: post #24

1. Trick 1: Forget about the $5. 2. Trick 2: Forget about providing the actual service within those 2 hours. Use the 2 hours just for doing the actual trade. 3. Then sell something before you buy it. If I was given just 2 hours, I would do quick brokerage. Hour 1: Find a group of people who wants to buy laptops* at a decent price. Get their configs down and get a commitment. Hour 2: Find a seller who will give the be…

... and you've just created an inductive proof for how the US financial system collapsed. Don't get me wrong: I think step 3 has a good chance of working. BUT if you, like your customers, assume that a commitment is equivalent to the actual asset (i.e. the laptop) then you are vulnerable to defaulting on YOUR commitment if and when you cannot deliver the asset. How might that happen? Imagine you commit to purchasing…

[deleted]

Re: If you had 5 dollars and 2 hours, how would you make as much money as possible?

#42

Post by GrandMasterBirt »

Totally worth the time. But its great, instead of thinking of what you can do with what you're given, think of what you can do with what you already have. The funding money and time you have to do anything is only there as a buffer, a push in the right direction if needed, but that money is not there to fund your work, your ideas are.

Re: If you had 5 dollars and 2 hours, how would you make as much money as possible?

#43

Post by idm »

wvenable wrote: post #40
idm wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more I think about the video, the more disappointed I become. You're right: these "genius entrepreneurs" were selling the time of their classmates. The 3-minute slot had no value if their classmates didn't tolerate the fact that their time became a commercial - one which they certainly didn't opt into. On the one hand, it's probably true that the timeslot they sold was the most valuable thing they had, for the pu…

> You're right: these "genius entrepreneurs" were selling the time of their classmates. Exactly. But you miss the fact that they already had the time of their classmates to sell. No matter what happened, the classmates would have to sit through 3 minutes from this group.

once. not twice.

Re: If you had 5 dollars and 2 hours, how would you make as much money as possible?

#44

Post by vlisivka »

FreeRadical wrote: post #28
vlisivka wrote: post #26

First team: regular work. Second team: speculation. Third team: ads. Where is direct marketing team? My solutions: Receipt one: * by bunch of cheap sport items; * walk to the park; * lease them; * hire and teach other people to do that instead of you for half of income. (Tested). Receipt two: * by a sport item (e.g. ball); * walk to the street; * encourage people to play a casual game with you, alone, or with other p…

i doubt anyone will pay you to play a ball game with you just off the street

My trainer use that method for more than 50 years: he started at 18 years in 1958. ;-)

Rules are simple: pay $1 and throw ball to basketball basket 6 times. 5-6 hits - $10-$20 worth ball, 4-3 hits - 10c worth prise, 1-2 hits - a sweet.

He started with single ball.

Re: If you had 5 dollars and 2 hours, how would you make as much money as possible?

#45

Post by rjett »

zackattack wrote: post #32
petercooper wrote: post #12

If you're not thinking of watching the video, think again. Even if you watch just the last two minutes. There's a good twist in the tail in the way the most successful team made the most money :-)

Can someone just spoil it please? I hate having to waste my time in order to glean insights. Pareto.

It's only 6 minutes, but if you want the 10 second version, the winning team sold their 3 minute presentation time in class to a company called Frog Design that wanted to recruit Stanford design students. Frog Design paid $650 for this 3 minutes.

Lessons learned in this experiment: Successful teams did not frame the problem in terms of the $5 limitation. Instead, they thought of the problem in terms of services they could easily provide where salesmanship and timeliness were valued. The most successful team forgot about the $5 limitation and the 2 hour time limit altogether.

Re: If you had 5 dollars and 2 hours, how would you make as much money as possible?

#46

Post by nkurz »

zackattack wrote: post #32
petercooper wrote: post #12

If you're not thinking of watching the video, think again. Even if you watch just the last two minutes. There's a good twist in the tail in the way the most successful team made the most money :-)

Can someone just spoil it please? I hate having to waste my time in order to glean insights. Pareto.

She teaches a class at Stanford and offers each team $5 of 'funding' in an envelope. She tells them that once they open the envelope, they have 2 hours to make as much money as they can.

She cites three teams' approaches:

1) First team opens a free stand that offers to check peoples bike tire pressure for free, then charges $1 to inflate if necessary. This team changes midstream to accepting donations instead of charging, and makes more money. Lauded for rapid iteration.

2) Second team makes lots of reservations at local restaurants, and then sells them to people waiting in line for same restaurant. Didn't use the $5 at all. Lauded for realizing that the $5 constraint was artificial, and that using it constrained their thinking.

3) Third team skipped the exercise, and sold their 3 minute class presentation time as a advertisement to a local company. Made the most money. Instead of presenting, they recruited. Lauded for realizing that the 2 hours was also artificially hampering their thinking.

Personally, I found the presentation glib and condescending, and the solutions immoral and dishonest. I'm hoping for good discussion about the issues here, but I would not recommend the video.

Re: If you had 5 dollars and 2 hours, how would you make as much money as possible?

#47

Post by marcofloriano »

mrduncan wrote: post #17

Here is a link to the original Stanford podcast where this video is from: http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2219 I really recommend the whole series also, they have had some excellent guests. http://ecorner.stanford.edu/podcasts.html Edit: Grammar

Nice links man, thanks a lot. Got some nice talks from Evan Willians at there. Recommended http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=1388

Re: If you had 5 dollars and 2 hours, how would you make as much money as possible?

#48

Post by wgj »

FreeRadical wrote: post #28
vlisivka wrote: post #26

First team: regular work. Second team: speculation. Third team: ads. Where is direct marketing team? My solutions: Receipt one: * by bunch of cheap sport items; * walk to the park; * lease them; * hire and teach other people to do that instead of you for half of income. (Tested). Receipt two: * by a sport item (e.g. ball); * walk to the street; * encourage people to play a casual game with you, alone, or with other p…

i doubt anyone will pay you to play a ball game with you just off the street

He claims it's tested. Seems improbable though. It would be worth hearing the details.

Re: If you had 5 dollars and 2 hours, how would you make as much money as possible?

#50

Post by thenduks »

nkurz wrote: post #46
zackattack wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone just spoil it please? I hate having to waste my time in order to glean insights. Pareto.

She teaches a class at Stanford and offers each team $5 of 'funding' in an envelope. She tells them that once they open the envelope, they have 2 hours to make as much money as they can. She cites three teams' approaches: 1) First team opens a free stand that offers to check peoples bike tire pressure for free, then charges $1 to inflate if necessary. This team changes midstream to accepting donations instead of char…

Thanks for the synopsis. I'm curious, though, what makes the solutions 'immoral' or dishonest? They seem perfectly legitimate to me.
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