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

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

#121

Post by Tichy »

Kadin wrote: post #106
Tichy wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"And I don't seem to recall anything in the "constraints" about not being allowed to beg or borrow anything, nor any rules about not being allowed to use stuff you already own." What if "stuff you already own" includes a bank account with 2 million bucks in it? I also thought the solution was a bit dishonest, but then the whole thing should not be taken that serious from the start. The reservations solution seems eve…

In what way is offering to check someone's tire pressure and then inflate it for a nominal fee, or a donation, "dishonest"? The first scenario is one a lot of Jiffy Lube-type garages and auto parts stores like Pep Boys do all the time (although typically with more than just tire pressure, e.g. transmission fluid). The latter -- asking for donations and letting people pay what they want -- is something the Boy Scouts…

Because the equipment presumably cost more than 5$.

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

#123

Post by nswanberg »

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

Agreed. The Jeff Hawkins talks are great.

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

#124

Post by dasht »

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…

I agree with comments below that the winners used illegal and immoral models but.... And the instructor, I hope, was in violation of her contract by allowing the ad presentation but.... That's not what really disappoints me.

What really disappoints me is that she missed a great teaching moment. She handed out $5s to a bunch of teams. Where is her return?

She missed showing how to use leverage. She had every right to say "no" to an ad presentation and so she should have looked at the margin by which the "winning" team won (say $300, whatever it was) and charged that team a buck less ($299) for the right to substitute the ad for the presentation they were supposed to make.

-t

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

#125

Post by mechanical_fish »

Tichy wrote: post #91
mechanical_fish wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I can see, their customers were happy, they made money, and it was all above-board, let alone legal. Clearly, something must be wrong! I have to say, I'm even more amused by people's outrage at these winning tactics than by the tactics themselves. I begin to understand why it's necessary to have an entire class in entrepreneurship. Perhaps it is largely about training people not to be pinned, like hapless c…

"their customers were happy" The people who got a reservation, maybe, but what about the people who didn't get one? Maybe a good business idea would be to sell kidneys that one steals from traveling students. I am sure the customers would be happy, too.

I'm assuming, based on the teacher's description (which involved "those little buzzers" and the concept of "trading one buzzer for another"), that these "reservations" they were selling were in fact "places in line". [1] If you built a business around selling reservations at a reservation-only restaurant, where the typical reservation was made days in advance and they were handed out in fixed quantity, I would have more... reservations about the business, as you do. [2]

But places in line? Everybody "gets one". The question is: Where is it, and how much would you pay to trade with the person ahead of you?

If I walked up to someone holding a buzzy coaster at a local restaurant and offered them $20 to trade coasters with me, would you be morally offended? Would they necessarily be unhappy?

Yes, I agree that if every place in line is for sale the whole thing gets tremendously painful for the people who arrive late and don't want to engage in a commodities-trading session before dinner. But what if only one in every 20 places is for sale?

If someone doesn't arrive -- no problem, everyone else moves up.

And, really, the kidney thing is unfair on several levels. For one thing, it's a cheap shot. If you want to take a moral stand on the sanctity of restaurant reservations, do so with pride! Don't feel the need to pretend that your debate opponents are also against motherhood, apple pie, and life itself.

For another, it's a different problem. The laws against paying for donor organs are in place because the market for donor organs is worlds different from the market for restaurant seats: You can't open up new sources of donor organs the way you open up a new restaurant [3], and the difference between the best chef and the second-best chef is smaller (in quantity and in kind) than the difference between one kidney and zero kidneys. Nobody dies if they don't get a seat at their favorite restaurant and have to eat at -- gasp! -- the International House of Pancakes down the street.

---

[1] We don't really have another name for this, do we? I've been burned by this hole in our lexicon before. Me: "Do you take reservations?" Restaurant: "Yes." Me: "Can I make a reservation?" Restaurant: "No, we don't take them over the phone. We give them out as you arrive."

[2] I can't believe I just wrote that, either.

[3] Well, not unless you're Sweeney Todd. In which case you can do both at once!

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

#126

Post by Tichy »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #125
Tichy wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"their customers were happy" The people who got a reservation, maybe, but what about the people who didn't get one? Maybe a good business idea would be to sell kidneys that one steals from traveling students. I am sure the customers would be happy, too.

I'm assuming, based on the teacher's description (which involved "those little buzzers" and the concept of "trading one buzzer for another"), that these "reservations" they were selling were in fact "places in line". [1] If you built a business around selling reservations at a reservation-only restaurant, where the typical reservation was made days in advance and they were handed out in fixed quantity, I would have m…

With the kidney example I really only wanted to demonstrate that "the customers are happy" can not be the only criterion for ethical businesses.

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

#128

Post by patrickgzill »

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…

Next year the team that beats the Kobayashi Maru scenario wins... gah, I hate these kind of artificial competitions.

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

#129

Post by RiderOfGiraffes »

fnid wrote: post #66
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.

Well, since you ask, juggling balls that you can buy for less than $1 are crap. Very, very hard to juggle five with them. Good juggling balls in the UK cost upwards of ukp3 each, so that's about $10 for five, and you can't buy them in your corner store.

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

#130

Post by BunkerHill »

fnid wrote: post #63
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.

Same here and one classmate thought I was being crass. Or being a profiteer.
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