61–68 of 68 posts
Rent-a-wife – a woman who cleans, cooks, does laundry, picks up dry cleaning, mail, etc but without the emotional relationship. I'd rent...
They are reasonably popular on a small scale.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"If your ideas are retarded, of course they're a dime a dozen." There is actually a town in china where the entire village makes their money painting caricatures of monkeys. Not saying it's a good career move, but at least that's the context for where the idea came from. Interesting enough, the majority of the world's oil paintings come from this one tiny village with 5,000 painters who spend all day slavishly copyin…
I wouldn't call Xiamen a "town" or a "village." My cousin lives there with his wife and two children. It has a population of over 2.5 million people, and was voted (by whom, IDK) one of the "most livable cities in China." He worked for EDS for years and wanted to be transfered to China because of how much he loved it. When they wouldn't transfer him, he FOUND a way to move there. He ended up building a factory there…
None of them is great, but the point is that every one of 'em (well, all the ones I've read) could be, if executed correctly, a perfectly viable business. Picking out a few at random:
Presentation Consulting - Teach companies how to improve their presentations
That's not a bad idea. Is somebody already doing it? Possibly, but that doesn't mean you can't do it too.
Online flower shop with one-hour delivery
Sounds tricky, and you'd need to restrict it to a couple of major and dense cities, but again there's no reason it's not a viable business. Market it correctly by encouraging men to send their ladies flowers spontaneously, and you could surely make some money.
Build Your Own Back Pack Shop
Damn you, random numbers! I don't much like this idea, but there's gotta be somebody out there (schoolkids, I guess) who would love to build customized backpacks for themselves. Great idea? No. World changing? No. Profitable if you get the product and the marketing right? Sure!
> A village in china that paints portraits of pop culture icons as various dog breeds. Look, Obama as a GreyHound! If your ideas are retarded, of course they're a dime a dozen.
> If your ideas are retarded, of course they're a dime a dozen. Conversely, people who believe ideas are a dime a dozen tend to focus on shallow ideas. The lack of deep interaction with technology (and whatever a pivot is supposed to be) forces you into businesses with a more social rather than technical role: web design, blogging, social networks, etc. I don't see much of HN's advice working well for a company devel…
I don't understand all this pooh-poohing of these ideas. None of them is great , but the point is that every one of 'em (well, all the ones I've read) could be, if executed correctly, a perfectly viable business. Picking out a few at random: Presentation Consulting - Teach companies how to improve their presentations That's not a bad idea. Is somebody already doing it? Possibly, but that doesn't mean you can't do it…
Famous, because they made Al Gores Climate Change presentation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I sure as hell didn't think limiting people to 140 characters was going to make sense.
I believe that was originally a technical limitation, and only later did it become evident that there is a business value in offering partially-literate individuals a medium that caters to, while providing plausible deniability for, their slow reading and writing speeds. Twitter has little or no technical reason to be so limited, of course, but doesn't want to alienate the tldr crowd.
I don't understand all this pooh-poohing of these ideas. None of them is great , but the point is that every one of 'em (well, all the ones I've read) could be, if executed correctly, a perfectly viable business. Picking out a few at random: Presentation Consulting - Teach companies how to improve their presentations That's not a bad idea. Is somebody already doing it? Possibly, but that doesn't mean you can't do it…
Timbuk2 have a successful business offering customised messenger bags.