bhchamp

Hi everyone-

I REALLY want to start my own business! I plan to pursue a career in business and apply to undergrad business schools. I want to start a business to show colleges what I am capable of. If anyone has any ideas that would either make me stand out or just general business ideas that'd be so helpful!

I definitely want to sell some kind of product. The whole lawn-mowing, computer fixing, website-making etc. business are not for me. I want to sell some sort of merchandise. Start up money is no issue because I made a little over $5K by buying and re-selling online products.

Anyone have any good ideas or remember what other people you know did? It doesn't have to be ground-breaking or innovative, just something that can get my own business rolling. Thanks so much for the help, so appreciated!

amarkov

This isn't how starting a business works. You don't decide you want to start a business and then try to figure out what your idea is; you have a cool idea and decide to start a business around it.

pixels

If anyone had a good business idea, telling a stranger would be the last thing they'd do.

bhchamp

Ok I am aware but I am not thinking of anything innovative or "new". I am not trying to come up with a million dollar idea. For example, my friend designed sweatshirts and then sold them. I would do something like but I am not creative. Just looking for general known ideas that maybe people have seen others do.

amarkov

Again, it doesn't work that way. Starting a new business is about using the skills you do have to create a product people will pay for. If you just want to start A Business but have no vision for what it ought to be, you will fail.

soccerguy315

I don't think $5K is as much startup money as you think it is

terenc

^$5k is actually perfectly fine, given a thing called the Internet.

However, what everyone is saying is accurate. This is really not how you got about starting a business. You don't go out in search of other people's ideas.

Think about something you need and would pay for, but which you can't find, or for which it is too much of a hassle for you to find. That's one way to find ideas.

soccerguy315

$5K is not a lot of money. Not saying its not doable, just saying that you run through $5K pretty quickly while trying to live and start a business.

If the OP made $5K doing something, maybe s/he should keep doing that and grow that activity.

terenc

I will disagree and say that for an online or small local business, and for the OP's specific situation, $5k is more than enough to get you off the ground. We're not talking about a full-out brick-and-mortar store, or a restaurant, etc. It obviously depends on what the OP would do.

For an online-business, it's $9 per year for a domain, and the OP will probably not need to spend any more than $120 a year for servers/hosting. An online business would also be able to keep inventories low, and in certain circumstances would be able to keep inventories at 0. You can also easily find high-quality, free software packages for setting up an e-commerce website (through a CMS like Wordpress or Drupal, for example) that do not require any programming/coding (only technical savvy).

Furthermore, OP is living at home and doesn't have to worry about rent/food/utilities/computer/internet.

For a local business, things would depend and it is much harder to predict.

commentcomment

Stick with how you made your 5k and expand on it. Look into wholesaling to increase your quantity and margins. That is far more impressive than trying to "start a business".

deathblade127

I think you're missing the point here. You don't find an idea for the sake of starting a business, you start a business for the sake of fulfilling an already thoughtout idea.