What's the best small startup business idea you've seen in your city?
 

I work in a startup incubator these days, we have over 50 small companies right now, the largest I think has just under 20 employees.

Curious if you've seen any good startup ideas in your city? What's the best one?

A fellow and his wife leases aquariums and birdcages to businesses. They come in every two weeks and keep them clean. I just ordered one for my lobby on a 2 year contract. The guy that owns the company is in his early 30's been at it now for 4 years and came to our plant for a meeting, flying his own helicopter. He said he has 25 employees now.

huh. :) How much does it cost?

Funny because just last night I noticed there's an "aquarium" channel on my TV.. I thought maybe there's a business in creating super HD content of aquariums and licensing it to companies.. 60" TV + license gets you a 60" HD aquarium with tropical fish and no upkeep, goes on a wall, etc.

Might really be a nice touch to offices with little life inside them. I went to one of the biggest companies in the world a few months ago and their offices were like a deadzone.

I also liked the idea of training a dog to sniff out drugs. Get contracted by people and businesses to search their buildings. Parents who think their teenagers are on drugs, wives who think their husbands do coke, and businesses who have locker areas that they want to keep clean.

But I figured it was more of a mom and pop business, hard to scale

thats actually not a bad idea. when i was in medical sales i saw an aquarium in every second practice waiting room and i am sure many docs would have preferred if someone else took care of them

i guess the costs depend on size? number of fish?

A guy I know is buying and selling infant gear. People in good neighborhoods sell expenive cribs, high chairs, very expensive toys etc on Craigslist and other places for next to nothing. Often it's things they got as gifts so they don't appreciate the cost of the items. Other people in less expensive neighborhoods are willing to pay 80% of new cost for items that are lightly used. So an $800 crib can be bought for $50.00 from people who want you to disassemble and remove it, then flipped for $500 or $600 a few days later to new parents. He is in the process of finding a 'showroom' and is making good money with virtually zero investment.

Or for those that forgot where they put their stash, lol.

For the hell of it I clicked my local craigslist baby/kids listing.

First one was, "BABY GIRL CLOTHES, CARSEAT,HIGH CHAIR,BASSINET! - $15 "

You're right, it appears people would rather sell things for nothing than throw them out.


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He says the best money is in large items because suburban housewives don't want to put 5 minutes into taking apart a crib with six screws in it. They just want someone to come and get it out of their house. Even if it's an item that retails for $800.00 :2 cents:

I have been doing the same thing with kids stuff. We are in the process of finding a retail space. I am thinking this is something that would go over well in the lower income parts of the city. I am banking on most sales coming from eBay and Craigslist, so the storefront is just an added bonus.

I flipped a few of the Power Wheels trucks this past week.

My neighbor sells military gear - backpacks and the such. He buys them in bulk from China, and every week he gets a huge shipment of stuff - a huge crate. Every week it's something different, one time it's back packs, next week it's canteens, next week it's boots... He stores them in his garage and puts them up for sale on his website and on ebay. He wakes up every morning, fills a dozen orders, carries them out to mail box before noon, and then takes the rest of the day off. Sweet.

That sounds like a good idea really....

I was in startup incubator as well for 3 months,but dont think anything impressed me there for what i would say how it's great bussiness idea.There is graphic companies,programming/web design/hosting companies,industry automation hardware,banking software,attorney specialized for it,agency for stealing money from EU,and last,microsoft innovation center.Still,some of them bank pretty good money and have decent number of employees,i think one which doing banking software have around 50 employees.

this boutique rents out its on space in the form of shelves and racks...you can rent a shelf for a fixed price or one rack where you can hang clothes and leave them to be sold by the shop workers...its very popular with small traders and the boutique is in a busy street it only sells clothes and accessories...

its a good business idea because the boutique never loses money the shelves are paid for up front, they invested 0 money in goods, it is of no great impact to them if some items do not sell, and its attractive to lots of people who would make money on the side but don't have the funds or time for a full shop in a busy street...

A key to any successful business is asking people on an internet message board to throw out random ideas that you probably know nothing about.

the only recession-proof small business -> driving a hearse

My friends family business makes a killing on contracts from office parks, hotels and airports chasing geese away with specially trained dogs.

It's insane the amount of training and prep it takes to get a dog ready to do that. The dogs also double as house pets.

All they do all day is ride around doing this.

A little coffee shop up the street from my place opened up that's speciality is making these little things called cakettes. I assumed they would go out of biz very fast but they have actually opened up 2 more locations and always have people there.

Typically coffee shops are not that great of an idea as you have to sell a lot of coffee to make any money, however with their little cake things they sell they are into catering and all sort of things.

I'm pretty sure if the owner has any business sense that they will likely expand rather well, perhaps the next starbucks, lol.

A lot of Mobile App building companies.

He has 6 different aquariums to choose from. The largest is a 300 gallon. We ordered a 210 gallon and it's $180 a month. They have a nice selection of cabinets to choose from. His brochure said he had 3500 customers. Medical clinics are his big focus.

That business is cool but it sounds like a HUGE pain in the ass

To the guys flipping shit on CL, baby stuff eh? Whatever works :)

Not much startup life in my area, but I have just had the first round of interviews to become a programmer for a new startup making waves in San Francisco.

Yes, but how do you train dogs to sniff out drugs, without having the drugs to train them with?

Airports and places like that - Fair enough. They already have drugs coming through, that can be used as 'practice'... But they are government agencies - With certain 'relaxations' and 'privileges' that others dont have...

"yes officer - This is a kilo of cocaine, but I'm not selling it... I'm using it to train my dogs"

There are a couple of horse boarding places locally.

These places are perfect money makers. The people that run them already own the land. they build a pole barn with multiple stalls then rent the stalls out. One of them runs as a group operation. The owners of the horse are responsible for everything. They buy their own feed and hay and they must clean the stalls and feed the horses. The way it works is simple. When it is your day you clean every stall and feed/water every horse. The number of days per month you have to do this is dependent on how many horses you have at this location.

The other is a full care place. You pay them a monthly fee and they board, feed, water and clean the stalls. They will even wash/brush/care for the horse.

Both places are full and have a waiting list of people who want to board their horses there.

'Cuz we all know only 'experts' start successful businesses. :error

many other things :2 cents:

There is another in my city that comes to mind.

It is a small shop that sells nothing but clothes and other items that feature the logos/names of the local school teams. If your kid is in on, for example, a little league team, this is where you go to get their uniform. They also sell letterman jackets and other local school related stuff. It is a small shop that is family run and does well.

I will sell whatever I can sell that makes a profit. As someone already mentioned, people are always having kids and most of the time, they hold on to stuff until it's too late or too much hassle to sell themselves.

The 3 Power Wheels trucks I've scored in the past 10 days cost me $175. I scrubbed them down, took some nice photos and put them back on the same Craigslist category I got them from. The first one sold for $200 in less than 3 hours after I posted it.

I'm going in an hour to pick up another crib, stroller and kids bike. They're asking $100. I'll offer $50 and probably get it for $75. Clean it up and put it back on CL.

I used to buy storage units and sell the stuff in them. There was a woman that went to the auctions looking for units with baby stuff and would offer to buy any that you found. She had three stores that sold nothing but second hand baby clothes and items. Babies grow so fast a lot of parents don't want to spend a lot of money on something their kid is going to outgrow in a month so they love second hand stuff that is of good quality.

We've thought of actually taking things from people on consignment, once the storefront is opened. Anything that would help fill the store and put more money in our pockets.

His deal will work great, until a kid dies from a crib he sold them and he gets sued.

This woman does do consignment on some items. If it is a really cheap thing she didn't, but I had a couple of nice changing tables and one of those nursing rocking chairs that I consigned with her. It worked really well.

I was sitting in the car with my GF talking at the gym (a large chain gym). There was a box in the parking lot to donate clothes. A box van pulled up to empty it as we were sitting there and she commented that she knew a guy that was very well off doing that.

I was a little confused and asked "doing what". As she starts to talk, the guys open up the van and start tossing clothes and bags of clothes in and a 20' van is full almost to the roof by 9:30am. I always assumed they were non profit donations.. church's, Goodwill etc.

These particular boxes from the same guy were all over the place. There is one in front of a business i own. The boxes say nothing on them other than buzz words "recycle", "donate" etc. I had always assumed they were charities.

In the case of these specific ones, the guy who was doing it was Pakistani. He sends all the clothes to some small town in Pakistan, they are cleaned, sorted, tagged etc and then shipped all over the region and the world to be sold.

Now, when i see these boxes I always look at them. There are tons of people doing the same thing. The boxes have a lot of great buzz words plastered all over them but have nothing to do with charity.

Like these:
http://www.sustainablelafayette.org/...alifornia.jpeg

im a weekend beekeeper :1orglaugh sometimes i do bee removals

That will never happen. Consumers agree to buy the items in as-is condition. If anything with the item causes an injury, they sue the manufacturer for design flaws. Tort suits for negligence go after the deep pockets, not the guy reselling used items as-is via Craigslist and a second-hand store. :2 cents:

Forget the business that sounds as if it would be great just to have in your house. The only reason I dont get some kind of big aquarium setup is because of the cleaning involved.

It kind of reminds me of a guy I ran into when I was about 18 or 19 years old. I'm not sure if they even still have these, but there used to be non-profit and fundraising groups that would go to businesses and set up little candy boxes and take "donations." they had candy bars, chips, cookies and assorted snacks. They "recommended" that you donate $1 per item and they had a little slot in the box for you to put your money in. They would leave these at businesses that would display them and then come back periodically and check on it to collect money, refill it etc.

I was working at Radio Shack and a guy brought one in and asked if he could put it in the store. I told him I didn't know, I needed to talk to the manager. He left the box with me. I put it in the back room. The next day when the manager was in I asked him if he wanted to display it. We looked over it and saw that it had nothing on it that was affiliated with any kid of charity or non-profit fundraising. It had some buzzwords on it, but it was just a guy putting out boxes of his own and getting paid.

The manager decided not to display it and then being the dick he was he took everything out of it and took it home and put like $2 as his "donation."

Even with a loss like that I bet the guy made pretty good money if he had a lot of boxes out.

When I was in high school it was a closed campus so you couldn't leave for lunch and there was no soda to drink so I used buy soda at the store and sell them for three times what I paid. I sold at least a case a day and made about $10 profit a day. After a few months the school shut me down because I got too popular and was showing up at school everyday with 3-4 cases of soda :) The bastards then started selling themselves. I actually went to the principle and told him that I deserved a commission for giving them the idea and he kicked me out of his office!

We have a huge store here that does that but rents out entire booths... .

Babies grow fast? Try kids grow fast... My kid was growing so fast that we would buy her something and a month later it was too small or short for her. She's 12 now, and nearly as tall as me - and I'm 5'11".

yeah, I guess you could say from birth until 16-18 or beyond, depending on the kid, they grow fast.

My brother has 2 daughters. One is 16 and one is 11. I swear every time I see them they are taller and look older.

I had a friend in college that used to dive in a lake at the golf course to retrieve golf balls and then resell them to the golfers at a discount, they would actually buy their balls back.

Are they similar to cupcakes? I ask because the cupcake business was/is doing very well. I always thought of it as a fad though like Krispy Kremes. But if you can get a few good years out of it why the hell not?

They are like little cupcake balls that are various flavors and dipped in different types of frosting and decorated. There are already Dunkin Doughnuts & Honeydews all over the place up here, so these fit right in as an alternative and but they serve better coffee and so on.

Those sound good.

a friend of mine is a chef. She went to work for a small place that sold coffee during the morning and afternoon and is a wine bar at night. One afternoon she was talking to the owners and suggested they make some small appetizers for people to munch on while they enjoy their wine. The place has a small kitchen in it that had never been used so they let her do her thing and agreed that she could have a portion of the profits from what they sell.

She made some basic pasta dishes and a few kinds of salads along with some basic appetizers and it took off. Now every Friday and Saturday night they do a dinner where she comes up with a very basic menu and they serve the meal in four courses with a different wine for each course. The place is small and can only seat about 20 people, but right now they are booked two months out for those dinners and their margin on those dinners is crazy.

It is pretty wild how one little thing, like those cakes or a few food items can change a business around.

Setting up donation boxes for power wheels and aquariums right now

There are some very significant studies commissioned by companies like Target that show pregnant women and women who have recently given birth are especially susceptible to advertising and are more much willing to spend money than they would be at any other point in their lives. It's such important data that companies now spend many millions of dollars to successfully predict which of their customer is recently pregnant or mostly likely to become pregnant.

This is one of the most fascinating articles ever written... and reading it has already made me plenty of money. It's longer than the kind of thing usually posted on GFY but it is worth reading every word of it more than once to get ideas on ways you can incorporate human psychology into your own business models: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/ma...anted=all&_r=0

Enjoy :2 cents:

Yeah, Forbes saw the NYT story and cribbed their own 'article' from it for people who only want to know 5% of the whole story ;)