Tag: Entrepreneurs

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Where the Money Has Gone

According to the 2010 census of the 15 richest counties in America, ten are in the Washington DC area.  The money is flowing toward where favors can be bought.  Ten years ago only five of the richest fifteen were in the DC area.  This data point is further evidence that we are suffering from the mercantilism that Hernando De Soto warned about in his 1989 book The Other Path.  If you have to have permission to do things, creativity will be stymied and bureaucracy will grow.   The first objective of any bureaucracy is to feed itself, well.

The Tenth Amendment was written to keep this from happening.  It was gutted, by misapplication of the commerce clause, during the depression and the federal government has been growing exponentially ever since.  It’s time to right size the federal government.  Send education, healthcare and welfare back to the states where they belong.  Stop all federal grants of money for mandates.

The second paragraph above was just a rant.  My advise to young people: move to the DC area.  It is where the money is and I can’t see it changing very fast.  Remember you don’t make the weather.  Adapt and be happy.

The text of the tenth amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

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Where’s Waldo, The App

Here is an App idea from Howard R.  Using the regular sightings and twitter posts of celebrities create an iPhone app that tells you what direction and how far it is to the celebrities on your list from where you are right now.

Where is Kim Kardashian?

Where is President Obama?

Where is Anthony Weiner?

Where is Rush Limbaugh?

You get the idea.  The technology exists.  All you have to do is put it together and start to rake in the money.  People want to know this stuff.

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Salad Days

Here is an idea for bagged lettuce makers like Ready Pac.

Make a mix labeled:

Restaurant Mix.

It seems to me that the best salads are served at restaurants and this would give retail buyers the hope of recreating that experience.

The hook would be:

“today’s freshest and most flavorful greens”

Which would allow the producer to vary the mix depending on availability.

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Goodbye Britannica

This is a sad week for those of us who grew up loving books.  The Encyclopedia Britannica is no longer going to be printed.  News story here  It will continue as an online source and try to compete with Google and Wikipedia, and it might, but this is the end of the printed collection of information.

So moving on what will be next to go?  All of it.  The age of print is over.  The presses, libraries, bookstores and publishers as we know them are all doomed within a generation.  Just like Kodak film was doomed when digital photography was invented.  They can’t be saved.  Digital books will keep the format alive for a few generations but even that is doomed.  I know you don’t like to hear this but the printed book is as over as the livery stable in 1912.  There is nothing you can do about it.

If young people want entertainment they will watch a show on their iPads.  If they want information they will Google.  And if they want to understand a subject they will use new interactive formats that combine documentary film with feedback loops, illustrations, charts and source material.

The technology of movable type created the printed book which shaped the way we learn about the world.  But it doesn’t have to be that way.  The Medieval world was shaped by the scribe.  Access to information was limited and a society developed that favored those who could read and write.  Now because of printing almost everyone can read and write.  So what.  The future will create amazing new ways of doing what books have done for the last 500 or so years.

My advise if you are in the printing business:  Sell your presses! Now!  Let someone else go down with the ship.  However all is not lost. And here again the analogy to the beginning of the automobile era is instructive.  The end of the livery stable was also the beginning of the age of the mechanic,the auto dealer, the macadam road builder and lot more.  And so it will be in this era.  The book, like the horse, will be gone but as costs goes down the need for the new forms of entertainment and information will increase.  What a wonderful time to be in the new media.

Encyclopedia Britannica RIP you served us well.

 

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All Inclusive Opportunity

We stayed at the Royal Solaris Resort in Cancun last week and it was beautiful.  To keep track of all the guests at this all-inclusive resort they give you a color coded bracelet when you check in.  The bracelets are the same ones they used to use in hospitals and they are not well suited to the festive vacation atmosphere of the resort.

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There is a nice opportunity for someone to start making improved resort bracelets.  You could set up a factory in Mexico.  I estimate that just the resorts on the Mayan Riviera use nearly a million bracelets a year.  Don’t use vinyl or pvc use a nice molded polycarbonate that looks and feels luxurious.

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Interestingly the bracelets that they used at the Solaris are manufactured by Precision Dynamics in San Fernando, California.  They are clearly focused on the security issues not the appearance.

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Lots more photos and stories from Cancun in the days ahead.

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Better Cat Litter

This is a billion dollar idea.  It is also one of the holy grail searches.  Find a material that indoor cats will use as a bathroom, that is easy to clean up and that does not get tracked all over your house.

But if you find it you will have a product worth a billion dollars.  We bought, at twice the price of the granulated clay stuff, a litter that claimed to be “The Best Litter Ever.”  Within a week I gave most of it away.  The cats hated it and it still got tracked all over the hall.

Has anyone tried the cat toilet things?

 

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Super Parade Opportunity

Most holidays have parades.  People like parades.  They like to be in parades.  But Superbowl Sunday doesn’t have a parade even though it is close to being our countries biggest holiday.  This oversight seems like a big opportunity for a sunbelt city like San Diego, Albuquerque, El Paso or Tucson.

How would it work.  Bands, Floats and Sponsors followed by a chance for all the participants to watch the game on the Jumbotron in the local enclosed stadium.  I imagine a Rose Parade type event without the flower theme. Floats with fashion, entertainment, commercial and technology based themes.  More high tech than Macy’s balloons and definitely more TV friendly than the Rose Parade.  Each float and band would have three minutes or so in the limelight.  Half of the time the camera would be on the parade entry and half would be on their commercial.  Some examples:

  • Victoria’s Secret no brainer
  • Waffle House Tasting float
  • Ace Hardware National band
  • Whatever the hot new movie is.
  • The State of Colorado Tourism bureau.
  • Emirates Air

The main attraction for the sponsors would be a chance to have an affordable ad near the Super Bowl.  The TV Network would have a very low cost but potentially high profit product.  The bands would be delighted to march and the sponsoring city would sell 100,000 hotel room nights at very little cost after the initial roll-out.

The only question in my mind is why hasn’t someone thought of this before.

So far this year I have had three football ideas and two parade ideas and it is only February.  You can see all of the ideas here.

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Business Class Interstate Travel

It would be great if you could stop and get great food when you are driving between big cities like Los Angeles to San Francisco or Chicago to St Louis.  Right now the pickings at the half way stopping points are pretty much fast foods, the Waffle House and places like the Cracker Barrel.  It takes too long and the food is barely above tolerable.

What if there was a small chain of specialty restaurants that catered to up-scale travelers.  They are situated at the best stopping places between the major cities, they have great food, served quickly and courteously and while you are eating they gas up your car and wash the windshield.  The restrooms are delightful and the decor is elegantly local.

The trick to make it successful would be to use the new GPS and cell phone technologies now available.  A customer leaving LA would access the menu on her cellular phone and pre-order lunch.  The restaurant would track the phone via GPS so that as they pulled into the driveway the meal would be ready and the table would be set.  The food would be great.  Terrific young chefs who are struggling to find a niche in the high cost cities would clamor to be able to master their craft and build their reputations out on the highway.

This idea came up because I was reading a book titled An Appetite For America by Stephen Freid at the same time that I was driving a lot of miles on the interstate.  Even I get tired of Beef Jerky and Starbucks Coffee.  The book is about the Fred Harvey Company that for almost a century fed train travelers in the same way I am proposing feeding interstate travelers.

People driving $50,000 cars shouldn’t have to eat fast food.

 

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Sears and Kodak

The news this month has stories about the death throws of Sears and Kodak.  Both were iconic American companies and both were done in by changes to their environments.  Kodak was the silver halide film company and the digital revolution changed photography so much, so fast that they weren’t able to adjust.  Sears invented the pre-Walmart, pre-internet retail environment but was unable to adjust its management style to the information age.

Change is…

ugly

inevitable

and

inexorable

but without change we’ll have no improvement

Get ready it is going to happen in your environment also.

What about the post office?

In my opinion it should be allowed to go the way of Sears and Kodak.

But it will live on like Amtrak. stifling change and burdening taxpayers.

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I predict that one of the next big changes will be a massive shrinking of the retail bank branch system.  People are getting much more comfortable with banking on line and via the ATM.

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I also predict that the television model of free viewing in exchange for watching advertising is in for a big change since the viewers, using dvrs, are not keeping their part of the bargain and watching the ads.

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What company do you think will be the next Sears?