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Thread: Business Ideas 101

  1. #21
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    Many modern urban people spend hours at exercise Running, Cycling, Walking, Rowing.
    On what planet?

    Many urban people spend hours in traffic, drinking, shopping and watching TV

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    An average human who is not fit, can generate about 60watts of electricity an hour through exercise, so it seems that you need about 150w to power your TV and Mnet decoder, so it seems no TV for you.

    If you are super fit, you may generate 150watts for a couple of hours, so you can watch TV
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    I try to avoid watching TV ads by recording most of the shows I am really interested in and using the fast forward to Zap the Ads. As a retired marketing man I find the ads today horrible. But then I am not part of the mass market so who am I to comment?

    IRO adrianh's comment: With Virgin Active able to run more than 100 branches and Makro selling lots of Excercise equipment and cycles. And if you drive a bit on a Sunday morning early you will see many cyclists, many of those costing around R30k. If you watch the start of the Comrades, the Two Oceans etc. I am sure you will also agree that just as we have many urban drunken couch potatoes we also have many who try to become and remain fit. The former is not the target market, the latter is.

    IRO Justloadit's comment: So a family of 4 who are reasonably fit can generate about 800Whrs - enough to run the TV and the PVR for an evening!

    The point of the idea is to combine the addiction to Exercise Pheromones with Relaxation.

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    Interesting, ok, so how are you going to turn the idea into real money?

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    Quote Originally Posted by adrianh View Post
    Interesting, ok, so how are you going to turn the idea into real money?
    Quote Originally Posted by Ouman View Post
    Here is a business idea free of charge. I just do not have the facilities to make it
    I think there are many ways to turn the idea into money. With so many Gyms around one could sell products to them, they could use their members to power the lights with men, and save on electricity.

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    @vieome - There is a difference between a good idea and a sound business plan.

    You must must must watch all the episodes of Dragons Den on Youtube. it is a BBC2 show where entreprenuers have 5 minutes to get funding from 5 millionares. The millionares invest their own cash so they don't mess around. Start at season 1 episode 1. It is absolutely brilliant and it opens one's eyes to the ways investors think.

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    Interesting ideas vieome!

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    Quote Originally Posted by adrianh View Post
    @vieome - There is a difference between a good idea and a sound business plan.

    You must must must watch all the episodes of Dragons Den on Youtube. it is a BBC2 show where entreprenuers have 5 minutes to get funding from 5 millionares. The millionares invest their own cash so they don't mess around. Start at season 1 episode 1. It is absolutely brilliant and it opens one's eyes to the ways investors think.
    How does a sound business plan come into the making. One first has to have ideas and then slowly from there, hack away at the idea and see how one can make it work. One has to retain a sense positivity in order for the universal of energy to respond I am sure you believe in that.

    I do watch dragons den on BBC Knowledge, and the money men are not always right. How many start ups approached people like bill gates and he brushed off their ideas, that is why MS got into the search game late. I like to believe in the impossible, I often think 6 impossible things before breakfast. Dragons Den opens ones eyes to the way Greedy investors think, have a read of some of Paul Grahams work, he is an angel investor(and creator of first online shopping software) and invest in many ideas that people think will never work. So I think it is better for ones brain to see an idea and see how to make it work, then simply just brush it off.

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    I am an ideas person and I have 10,000 ideas before breakfast....I have to be able to brush off 99.999999995% of them. The fact that i don't like your idea doesn't mean that it is bad or that it is impossible, it simply means that it doesn't appeal to me or i cannot see my way clear to make money from it.

    I agree that the money men are not always right and that the overlook oppertunities. You must remember that the money men are looking after their own interests and their own money and want to invest their money at a reasonable risk to make a huge profit. What i do find good is to learn from the questions that they ask. Yes, a lot of the time the questions are meaningless but of lot of questions and insights are truly valuable.

    The best kind of money man to have is a mentor (not some rich ding dong that charges you R1000 an hour but a person who is really enthralled by what you do). The problem that entreprenuers is faced with is not money per se, it is having the appropriate funding when needed to be applied properly. Many entreprenuers think that if they got a huge cash injection that their problems will go away, it doesn't work like that. The way i see mentorship is the same way as I see a parent of a child who wants to become a champion cyclist. When the 3 year old child says that he needs R500,000 and then he would be a champion cyclist that will win The Argus then the parent needs to channel the enthusiasm. You first get him a small bike with training wheels, a suitable outfit and a crash helmet and you lead him around the driveway. You keep on with this mentoring / building / supporting process until he is able to buy his own bike and win his own race. I am lucky to have such a mentor who is willing to pick men up and fix my bike each time I ride into a fence. The most important thing to remember about investment into entreprenuers is that investors not only invest in the idea, they also invest into the individual. No matter how good the idea is, if the entreprenuer does not have the right characterists that appeals to the investor, then no money will be forthcoming. How many of those people who stand before the dragons have absolutely no idea about the realities of taking their products to market, the realities of the numbers, the patents and the issues, yet they have dreamed up a round figure of the the investment that they need.

    I am all for ideas, my personal problem is that I simply have to many that I am capable of doing (and being ADD means that I flit from idea to idea without ever taking one idea and wringing all the cash out of it) Too many ideas can be a very very bad thing that distracts one from having a very narrow focus. The only way for me to have that focus is to discard any idea that does not fit into my purposely narrow focus. I do write the really good ones and keep them for later evaluation.

  10. #30
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    I think we on the same page, and this thread is for the many ideas that people have and that need "wringing all the cash out of it." or contributions in how to make it better. It may not be that you or I will ever invest in these ideas, but being a business forum some one might find an idea they like and have the knowledge and know how to make it a success(good for SA).

    I do enjoy Dragons Den and have learnt a lot from it, but one aspect I find lacking in the dragons is that they expect every person who stands before them to be a suit wearing entrepreneur (An entrepreneur is an enterprising individual who builds capital through risk and/or initiative - Entrepreneur is a person who started a new business where there was none before) who is familair with marketing and sales. When in reality most inventor types are nerds, most great idea types are nerds introverts. It is the Dragon who is the Entrepeneur and their biggest problem on the show is that they are looking for someone like themselves to invest in.

    When watching the show I often think what would of happened if Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak came before them with the first apple.

    "how dare you come before me dressed in Jeans and a T-shirt"
    " It is useless it will never work, what is wrong with a pen for writing ?"

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