sufac.com

iPad Opportunity – Children’s Books

Craig — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 14:15:56 +0000

Here’s an idea for the iPad. Children’s Books. Why not create a line of colorful children’s books that have a bit of animation and sound as an iPad app. The tablet is perfect for it and then the parents could always download new ones as their kids want them. Of course the parents will have to read them because you don’t want your kids running around with your iPad, but it could be a worthwhile opportunity.

-Craig Sharkton

Just Finished Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity

Craig — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:42:09 +0000

This book’s written by Hugh MacLeod, who now earns a dominant portion of his income by drawing cartoons on the back of business cards and putting them up on the web. Interesting story, but the book isn’t one of my favorites.

It has interesting tips and is a very easy read, but it reads like a bunch of little blog posts. And lets be serious, when you’re reading blogs you want to read a blog, when you’re reading books, they should read like books. They should tie together, have some progression and at the end you should feel like you’ve enjoyed the ride, or at least learned something.

-Craig Sharkton

Business Idea – A New Way to Find Food

Craig — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:00:12 +0000

We eat with our eyes. And people aren’t searching for a restaurant, they’re searching for a meal. So instead of a bulky restaurant review site why not start a meal site based on images.

Create an easy interface and an iPhone app that users can easily upload a

picture of a meal
the price
restaurant name (which they pick based on their location, make it easy for them and do some cool GPS work if it’s phone based)
quick review (or ignore reviews and tell people just to post good food, no one’s looking for bad food)

Then the magic starts. The main page has simple block pictures of food. People put in their location and BOOM the pics change to meals that have been eaten in their area. An easy toolbar at the top allows them to refine the search by type of food, breakfast/lunch/dinner, price, if they deliver, etc.

And here’s the real magic, copy grubcanada.com’s business model. You allow restaurants to sign up so that people can order meals right over the site (and they get a 9% commission on every sale).

But even before then you could just rely on advertising until you reach critical mass. I seriously think this one could be a giant success with some good execution. Let me know what you think of the idea.

-Craig Sharkton

Social Enterprise Idea – Saving Trees by Brokering Land

Craig — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:00:25 +0000

What if you did some research to find out what trees consume the most carbon dioxide. Then find out where they are in the world with good property rights. Then look at the cheapest place in the world that has these trees and good property rights. Create a matrix and all of a sudden you have the cheapest way to purchase earth saving trees.

Then you buy some, you’d need enough to buy a large chunk and then you feel great. You’ve saved all this land. You could just retire the land, give it away to a park and you’ve done a great thing. But what if you sold it to others??? What if you created a marketplace where people can buy 1 acre for x or 1 tree for x and allow people to resell it on the street (on condition it will be retired or donated under their name to a park).

So say you sell an acre for $1,000 and someone buys it then they could go sell the 1,000 pieces of the acre for $2/piece. They’ve made money, the person who bought the $2 worth of land feels good. And to make them feel better they get their name on the website with a map of where the land they retired is and a total they’ve retired since they started saving the world.

Could this work? I have no idea, but I’m surprised I can’t find a place that I can send money and not buy trees (because they can be cut down), but buy little pieces of land that I can retire so they can keep eating CO2 for the rest of their lives.

I have no idea about the tax consequences, but it’s just crazy enough to work. Let me know what you think and if you know of a place where you can retire land let me know.

-Craig Sharkton

Just Finished Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk

Craig — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 17:33:44 +0000

This book is great. It’s quick at ~140 pages, filled with tips to build a personal brand and has a passionate tone that screams Gary. One of the interesting anecdotes revolves around Gary using traditional advertising like billboards and direct mail for an ad campaign and getting a hundred to a few hundred responses. Then he uses twitter and with a free shout out manages to score over a thousand orders.

I’d highly recommend picking it up, just follow this link:

-Craig Sharkton

A New Pet Business Idea

Craig — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 21:05:57 +0000

Why not take the fast food example to the pet industry? Take a kiosk, fill it with fresh food for dogs and create treats and meals for pets. Put it in a pet store, or a mall and it could be a giant success.

You could offer supplements, fresh baked treats or organic turkey with carrots, etc during Thanksgiving. The meals could be made right in the kiosk or pre-packaged fresh meals to last a week for the pets. It could revolutionize how pets eat.

Personally, I am very conscious of what I spend on myself. But I’ll spend anything on my french bulldog, Tyson. People just forget about money when they buy stuff for their pets. That makes it an amazing market to tap, so try it with this innovative idea.

-Craig Sharkton

Now on Twitter

Craig — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:34:23 +0000

We’re now on twitter, I figured it’s an easy way to show everyone interesting articles without making a whole bunch of little blog posts. Just click the twitter link on the right.

-Craig Sharkton

Get Paid for Your Ideas

Craig — Mon, 11 May 2009 05:09:16 +0000

Okay so you have an idea. Where do you go? Well here’s a couple interesting places:

1. Submit Business Ideas – Basically you go and put up your idea, if they use it you have to stop creating it, but they’ll share 15% of the profits with you from your business adventure. Pretty sweet deal since ideas are a dime a dozen, but not too sure if they actually have ever brought a business to fruition.

2. Idea Bounty – They have businesses that come to them for ad campaigns and then the users send ideas/pics/videos and the best one wins. The last one for Castle Lager has an award for $4,000 so it’s worth your while if you’re creative and have some spare time.

3. Innocentive – Ridiculous, they pay $5,000 – $1,000,000 for ideas and they have a lot of projects on the go. If you’re a bio chemist with a brain fart this is the place to be. Amazing idea.

4. 99designs – 99designs hosts design contests for a couple hundred to a thousand or so. It’s less of a place to get paid for ideas as it is a place for graphic designers, but it’s cool and a great business model so I had to include it.

5. Mark Cubans Stimulus Plan – Mark Cuban started this section on his blog and it’s hilarious. Post your idea, he may choose you and if he does you have to follow his rules and he can pull funding anytime. Oh, and everyone see’s your idea. Amazing how many people have ideas out there, it’ll take you 6 hours to read through all of them there.

So remember, an idea is worth a dime, execution is worth a whole lot more. Create a biz you like, with a decent model and focus on good products and smart finance.

-Craig Sharkton

Get $3,000 For a Business Idea – And You Still Own 100%

Craig — Sat, 02 May 2009 15:19:46 +0000

mymicrofund.com is doing something very interesting, they’re basically giving away money to see if it will help someone start a business. Sounds like they are only receiving a couple submissions too so get your idea going, send them a proposal and see where it goes.

Does anyone know of any other places doing this?

-Craig Sharkton

Sticky Goalie Gloves – A Product Innovation

Craig — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 02:06:46 +0000

Why aren’t goalie gloves sticky. I’m talking about hockey. Often times you’ll see a goalie hit the ice trying to stop a puck and once their skates are off the ice they lose control of their movements. What if you put something on their forearms and on their gloves that stick to ice? That way they would have better control when they’re on their sides on the ground.

It’s only a slight change, but I think it could be a good one. And it’s simple, could license it out to someone and never have to do anything more.

-Craig Sharkton