business ideas #3

You know what I feel really frustrated about?

It's when I learn that there was a great event.... yesterday or last week.
When I just missed really good opportunity. When I had the chance to hear some cool new idea, to share things with people from my crowd, when I didn't know I could have been at that relevant event and find out just too late.

They say the things you regret are the ones you did not do.

What I need is a way to find out what happened at an event that did not get too much press coverage, or for which the reports and reviews are very scattered, very diverse.

Tonight there was an event about "how to plan a world tour" if you are a student looking to go around the world on an ethical, social tour. I could not go.
But I would love to get the information!! and not just from the reviews by journalists and professional bloggers, but also visiting experts who don't usually blog, and just the average attendant.

I need a "rewind" button on the events I missed, and to be able to reply them in front of me as well. I need a mash of ideas, pictures, media, that bring to life the course of the discussion.
Just like TED.com does. Only for more events, for more people, more often.

Business ideas

This morning was very productive in many ways!
As I worked my way through a critical step of my main project in the office, some thoughts I had been following for the past weeks finally fell in place. Now I can formalize a few ideas for new business that arise, mostly, from discussions with friends and colleagues , based on topics from the "4-hour work week" best selling book by Tim Ferris.

1. price minister online shop :
as I realized last time I shopped online, there are more and more entrepreneurs opening shop on PriceMinister, eBay, and other "P2P" online trading platforms. In France, this has become increasingly easy thanks to a new administrative status introduced in 2009.
The idea, if you follow Tim Ferris' advice, is to keep yourself out of the picture: setp up the shop, but make sure that customers orders are sent directly to your contractor, which will in turn manage by itself production and delivery of the goods, BUT ALSO after-sales service. Or find a thirf party to do it. After all, if such opportunities are available nowadays, why would you want to spend hours and hours answering customer emails when a specialist can take care of it for minimal fees?

2. diversity agent
A friend sent me a link to a very interesting blog on "social spelunking" (sorry French people, it's hard to find a translation for that....)
On this post about women in technology & tech conferences, the author explains that the majority of web users are female in North America, and that the largest population on the Web is Asian.
So?
So, it means that for companies such as Mindvalley, and of course plenty others, their activity of online marketing and advertising strategies would benefit from identifying those trends as soon and as precisely as possible.
I am confident there is still today a market for this kind of activity: as traditional advertisement becomes less effective, creative companies are in need of hard facts to identify the trends they want to surf.

Alright, that's all for today folks. Reactions welcome.

A good day for business, bad day for me

Here are a couple of business/non-profit project ideas that I had in the past week,but that are already taken:
- a website for happiness : behappy.fr or something like that...
the idea would be like a blog, or a twitter, and everyday I would give a hint on how to be happy, how to engage in activities that foster the factors of happiness.
Mostly based on the How to be happy wiki, except the points that I dont agree with. it would link everyday to a different topic, like www.vie-de-reve.com, www.dreaminder.com, etc.

- a website for energy audit for companies: the aim is to provide an online tool for companies to be able to assess their energy consumption by themselves, to identify the main sources of energy consumption, and to provide some guidelines for reduction of carbon footprint.
Then on top of that, I was thinking of building a "freemium" model, i.e. Free + Premium, where one can sell consulting and expertise about energy audit, training for CSR/SD (corporate social responsaibility & sustainable development responsible in companies, etc. One name I had thought about was "Elec'onome".... and it's already taken! by the syndicate responsible for the local distribution of electricity in France.

well... more to follow, soon. I need to get ahead of the trend, now I 'm just having ideas that someone already had before!