I'll you five dollars and two hours

10 years ago

Yup, the $5 really meant nothing. And so when you see those "What should I do if I'm down to pocket change?" threads, forget about the money entirely because it is not the factor that matters.

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Aaron Doud

10 years ago

I'm glad to say the article points out the obvious, that $5 is nothing, and of little use to get started.
What it failed to show was the ROI for time. After all these were groups working for two hours. So the income should be divided by (2 * n; n= # in group).

Because it is the sweat equity that matters when bootstrapping. And the only way to create a business vs. a job is to keep that $/hr as high as possible.

For example the group that made $600 sounds great and the $/hr number should be high since I would assume the group was less than 10 people.

What this experiment doesn't address is the sustainability factor. Can the results be replicated long term.

Bike Tire Business: Unlikely to be sustainable at that level. It could be a business if the location was shifted and rotated daily over even multiple times a day but the beginning would always be more profitable.

Reservations: Sustainable and Expandable (at least on the surface) but only for a few hours each week. Plus the businesses may cut them out and bar them from making reservations. Long term I would question rather it would work.

So the deeper question is "If you had to bootstrap a business with no seed money what would you do?"

And each person's answer will vary based on their personal experience, income needs, and rather they are building a business or job. And that answer could vary from day to day.

So I can both give dozens of answers and no answer.

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Aaron Doud - Sales & Success

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Marvin Johnston

10 years ago

Originally Posted by Aaron Doud

I'm glad to say the article points out the obvious, that $5 is nothing, and of little use to get started.
What it failed to show was the ROI for time. After all these were groups working for two hours. So the income should be divided by (2 * n; n= # in group).

There are a lot of other considerations that could have been taken into account. But most of them do not fit the given criteria of $5.00 and what can be done.

ROI?

What is the lifetime ROI on the education that was received from this experiment?

Sustainability/Long Term?

Nothing about sustainability was mentioned since this was about what could be done in a few days.

The OP describes a situation where students are being asked to do something with no real constraints except for the $5.00. The genius in what some of the people did was realizing the $5.00 constraint was really just a distraction.

I almost always agree with your posts, but think you are missing the point on this one.

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travlinguy

10 years ago

Originally Posted by Aaron Doud

I'm glad to say the article points out the obvious, that $5 is nothing, and of little use to get started.
What it failed to show was the ROI for time. After all these were groups working for two hours. So the income should be divided by (2 * n; n= # in group).

Because it is the sweat equity that matters when bootstrapping. And the only way to create a business vs. a job is to keep that $/hr as high as possible.

For example the group that made $600 sounds great and the $/hr number should be high since I would assume the group was less than 10 people.

What this experiment doesn't address is the sustainability factor. Can the results be replicated long term.

Bike Tire Business: Unlikely to be sustainable at that level. It could be a business if the location was shifted and rotated daily over even multiple times a day but the beginning would always be more profitable.

Reservations: Sustainable and Expandable (at least on the surface) but only for a few hours each week. Plus the businesses may cut them out and bar them from making reservations. Long term I would question rather it would work.

So the deeper question is "If you had to bootstrap a business with no seed money what would you do?"

And each person's answer will vary based on their personal experience, income needs, and rather they are building a business or job. And that answer could vary from day to day.

So I can both give dozens of answers and no answer.

I don't think the exercise was about creating a sustainable business model as much as it was about creativity and ingenuity.