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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?

#61

Post by [deleted] »

seldo wrote: post #51
nkurz wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

See, the problem here is that she hands out two artificial constraints, and then praises the teams who ignore the constraints. 1. Used a device to measure the tire pressure and materials to build the booth and signs. Did they cost less than $5? Maybe. Did it take less than 2 hours to create the booth, the signs, and perform the services? Unlikely. 2. Well done on finding something you can acquire for free and then se…

[deleted]

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

#62

Post by vlisivka »

wgj wrote: post #48
FreeRadical wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

See 2 year old sample photo here: http://sites.google.com/site/vlisivka/zatoka

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

#63

Post by fnid »

stuartjmoore wrote: post #14

Buy a box of Cokes, sell them individually outside the movie theatre, repeat. Run when the management finds out. I used to do this with Blow-Pops in middle school. You could buy a huge bag for about $1.50, and sell each one for 25¢. Great profit margin.

I did the same with Now and Laters. Buying them in bulk and selling them individually to kids at school.

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

#64

Post by fnid »

edw519 wrote: post #18

Just a few options off the top of my head: 1. Email everyone I've done work for in the past 5 years, promising all of my time on Mondays for the next year to the highest bidder by 2:00 p.m. 2. Same as #1, but instead of the highest bid, the first $10,000. 3. Same as #2, but $1,000. I will accept all checks received in the next 2 hours. What they will get: free use of my next web service for life. 4. Tell my employer…

And again, none of these can be done in 2 hours or leverage the $5.

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

#65

Post by icey »

I'm amazed by the number of people in this thread who have gotten the challenge wrong.

They didn't only have 2 hours to conceive and execute their idea, nor did they have to limit themselves to the $5.00.

They were given an envelope that contained an unknown amount of seed money, and then they had 4 or 5 days to decide how to make money with it. They would only have 2 hours once they opened the envelope to make as much money as possible.

The challenge wasn't what people could make with $5.00, it's how the teams dealt with a set of unknowns in order to make money.

(Edit: Someone disagrees with me, but I'm not sure why. If you watch the video, it's quite clear that this is the case. I'm not just stating an opinion here.)

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

#66

Post by fnid »

RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #2

I'd buy balloons and a bag of rice, make five juggling balls and busk. The balls take about 30 minutes to make, I'd get about an hour of busking, so I'd make about $40 as a one off, maybe $100, depending where I am.

Why would you waste 25% of your time making balls you could buy for $5? Go to a 99 cent store, there are tons of balls in there for under $5.

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

#67

Post by eli »

fnid wrote: post #64
edw519 wrote: post #18

Just a few options off the top of my head: 1. Email everyone I've done work for in the past 5 years, promising all of my time on Mondays for the next year to the highest bidder by 2:00 p.m. 2. Same as #1, but instead of the highest bid, the first $10,000. 3. Same as #2, but $1,000. I will accept all checks received in the next 2 hours. What they will get: free use of my next web service for life. 4. Tell my employer…

And again, none of these can be done in 2 hours or leverage the $5.

They had 4-5 days to plan before opening the envelope and discovering $5.

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

#68

Post by fnid »

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…

This happens all the time in the material product world. You go to customers, get their orders, then have the products made. Watch some Shark Tank on Hulu. Anyone with a product and tons of inventory is scorned by the panel.

They all say, "Get the sales, then make the product." Why are you going to invest thousands of dollars stocking a product you aren't sure you can sell?

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

#70

Post by nanijoe »

ErrantX wrote: post #55

Apparently by ignoring the money and the time limit... Personally I found the latter 2 solutions pretty unimaginative in ignoring the $5. If the exercise is to maximise the $5 (a much harder task it seems) then they seem to have failed.

But to maximize the $5 was NOT the exercise...
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