sufac.com

I’ve been reading about Markus Frind, the founder of plentyoffish.com, and I’m impressed. He built up a lean dating website and now does nearly nothing. He has millions of members and gets billions of page views, in fact he’s near top 10 sites in the world for traffic. Best of all, he now takes $5million [...]

[Read more →]

So it’s my first time in London and I run into this great place for lunch called Pret. It’s organic, fresh food. It’s quirky and it’s a dream business. Busy lines, extremely small retail space and higher prices than the surrounding shops. They do sandwiches, wraps, soups and some amazing coffee. Add in health bars, [...]

[Read more →]

Craigslist is one of the revolutionary business models of the last decade. They provide text based classifieds and have taken millions of dollars out of newspapers pockets over the years. However, the most interesting thing is that they don’t try to maximize revenue. They only charge $25-$75 for job ads and $10 for apartment listings [...]

[Read more →]

You don’t need to come up with your own breakthrough idea to make a mint, you can just steal one. Take for example the Rabbit corkscrew. Originally, the product was called the Screwpull and retailed for $250, but after the patent expired Yet Riki Kane, founder of Metrokane, designed the Rabbit off of Screwpull technology.
She [...]

[Read more →]

Felix Dennis wrote an interesting book called How to Get Rich. He’s the guy that started Maxim magazine (among many others) and is now worth around $400-800 million. The book is interesting in the fact that it’s an anti-self help book. He basically says that getting rich is a waste of time. If he had [...]

[Read more →]

I have to say Toms Shoes is a great example of what entrepreneurs can do. Blake Mycoskie was traveling in Argentina and saw all of these children with no shoes. Their feet were torn up and he decided he needed to make a difference. He started Toms Shoes where for every pair of shoes he [...]

[Read more →]

When I think of successful small businesses I don’t think in terms of revenue, I think in terms of lifestyle. If you’re only taking home $90,000/year, but work eight months you’re in better shape then the guy brining in $250,000/year on 80 hour weeks. We only get to live each day once and if you’re [...]

[Read more →]

I’ve always liked entrepreneurs who view business as a battle. One of the original McDonald franchisees was once greeted the day before his grand opening by the owner of a neighboring burger joint. The competitor introduced himself with a friendly “there’s lots of business around here and if you ever run out of buns or [...]

[Read more →]

Warren Buffett is one of the worlds best investors, but he’s also a great role model for small business owners. He’s turned a $15 investment in 1965 into $120,600 ($150,000 if you look at the high on Dec. 11/07). But look at the first business he was in… textiles. In fact his first small business [...]

[Read more →]

I think user created content is a must for high margins in the businesses of the future. The perfect example of this is threadless.com. They’re essentially a t-shirt company that allows their users to design, vote on and buy t-shirts. Sounds like a simple business, but it’s brilliant.
Since consumers are voting on the t-shirts, you [...]

[Read more →]