8 Great Business Ideas You Can Steal

In: Business Ideas By: Brian Armstrong

28 May 2008

This list might be a little different than the typical great business ideas you see talked about in major publications (like Facebook, the iPhone, etc).

Those are great ideas, but I prefer to look at business ideas which are a little closer to home. Ideas that anyone with some hard work could get off the ground even if they didn’t have much money.

I like business ideas which…

Have low startup costs
Don’t require manufacturing a physical product (like the iPod, which incurs huge overheads)
Actually charge something (unlike YouTube or more generally the “hope we get bought out by Google” business model)
Scale well and don’t require your personal time for each person you help
Fit the lifestyle of “breaking free” by not trading time for money

All of these ideas are somewhat obvious in hindsight, but I bet you can steal the “how” behind every idea and adapt it into a new business. How they made something easier, cheaper, faster, etc and helped a whole bunch of people.

Here they are in no particular order…(and by the way, I either use or have used every single one of these at some point besides PlentyOfFish):

Mozy
Mozy is an online backup service. It automatically backs up the files on your computer over the internet, and offers unlimited storage space for a few dollars a month. I like this business model because its a subscription product, solves a real problem (when your hard drive crashes, it HURTS to lose everything), and scales well. You can build the system and it requires pretty much the same amount of investment whether 10 people use it or a million people do.
UniversityTutor.com
Ok granted I might be a little biased since this MY site :) But still, I like the idea because of the reasons mentioned above. It’s a better solution to a common problem than what is currently out there (the common problem being, where can I find a high quality tutor for my child at a good price who lives near me?). Super low startup costs and scalability are a plus here.
PlentyOfFish
PlentyOfFish is a free online dating site that is advertising supported. The founder and sole operator, 29-year-old Markus Frind, runs the site from his West Vancouver apartment. The site pulls in more than $5 million a year from Google advertising with only its one employee/founder. Simply staggering. More generally, I like this approach of taking an idea you already know works online (match.com, eharmony.com, etc), and make a free alternative to it that is advertising supported. I’m sure their are dozens of opportunities that fit that model which are ripe for the picking.
Basecamp
Basecamp is an online collaboration tool. It was started by just a few guys working part time and is now a multi million dollar subscription product. It worked because they went out of their way to understand good user interface design (something that, shockingly, Microsoft still sucks at). They built a loyal following of people who were happy to find software that “just worked” (a rarity) and really saved them time.
WordTracker
A tool for online marketers that lets you find out what your customers are typing into search engines to find you. The product isn’t even that good, but considering how bad the alternatives are, the bar is pretty low (Yahoo deserves a particular dishonorable mention for the colossal wasted opportunity they had with http://inventory.overture.com, a similar site that is now offline). Anyway, again it is a subscription product that scales well and solved a real need that people had.
E-Junkie
The process of accepting credit card payments on your website is traditionally nothing short of a nightmare. It involves horrible programming intricacies, laws and rules regarding encryption and storage, and having to deal with the shady credit card processing industry. It used to be hard to get a nice looking shopping cart set up quickly but E-Junkie changed that. It was surprisingly easy to get it set up on my website, and I’ve used many of the alternatives (OSCommerce, Zen Cart, buy now buttons, etc). I’m going to start sounding like a broken record, but….same reasons: subscription product, scales well, solves a real pain.
LuLu.com
This one was probably more expensive to set up than others on this list, but its a great service for authors to get their books printed. Just upload a word document or PDF and they will do drop shipping, manage inventory for you, and get your book on Amazon.com. This company is making the idea of a publisher more obsolete (although that won’t happen completely for a while). Its a godsend to first time authors.
Quest
This is a small local business in Houston, but I like the idea. It saves realtors and real estate investors all sorts of time by make a simple interface to look up and analyze investment property. Again, we see an improvement in user interface design which saves people time and makes their lives easier. This little innovation is a neat little subscription product that costs about $75/month (almost pure profit and again scaleable). At that rate you only need a little over a thousand customers and its a million dollar business.

Any time you see someone who is FRUSTRATED there is a business waiting to be born. Just go ask people around the office or your friends “What is the most annoying part of your job?” or just watch them for an afternoon and you’ll see something they are doing inefficiently. Any time you can save someone some time, money, or frustration you have a viable business idea. Now if it scales well you’re really on to something.

There’s no better time than now to take the initiative and put one of these ideas together. Hiring programers to make some software is cheaper than ever. What are you waiting for?

Brian Armstrong

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24 Responses

Adam Holland

May 28th, 2008 at 10:33 am

e-junkie is the sh*t! I got a Google Checkout account for FREE and e-junkie is only costing me $5 per month! Most cost-effective solution to anyone just getting started… they were perfect for me because they can do ‘digital downloads’, where some other companies make you ‘upgrade’ into some high priced package.

Guru.com is also great for copywriting. I recommend that too..

Adam Holland

lakshman kumar

March 8th, 2011 at 2:30 pm

hi adam

i am lakshman kumar from india. can you please help me to give a idea if its possible to you. can you suggest me a great business idea. presently there was a contest in my place those who give a great business idea they will won a car and also capital venture to do the business. i hope you help to me. thank you

David Maserda-Khan

April 23rd, 2011 at 1:52 pm

hi lakshman wot about a drive through indian- called Spice- alternative to mcdonalds

Aaron

May 28th, 2008 at 9:51 pm

Brian,

Thanks for the post, a few of those I knew of, a few were new, but it’s always interesting to look at them from a business model perspective.

You mentioned a few business models, and only discounted the “get bought by Google” model. In your opinion, when does it make sense to follow the plentyoffish model (ad supported) vs. the provide a service and charge a subscription model. I’m curious because with all the others, (your site included) subscription seems to be the model of choice. I was suprised to see plentyoffish then, since there are already subscription models out there for dating sites…

Taking that approach for example, someone could start a tutor site, make it ad supported, and potentially disrupt your site.

I’m interested to get your take on a) how you’d suggest working to prevent that from happening (or how you are trying to prevent it), and b) how to know when subscription or ad supported is the right approach, and how you decided to select it for your site.

Thanks,
Aaron

Shaun

May 29th, 2008 at 10:58 am

Great post and great list. Though there would be a lot of competition in the dating arena. I actually saw a dating site a few months ago with hundreds of thousands of people… the “theme” of the site was Objectivism. Basically, these were people who were into the philosophy of Ayn Rand, and they were hooking up. :P

Brian Armstrong

May 29th, 2008 at 6:17 pm

Hi Aaron,

Great question, I made a post with my response.

That Ayn Rand dating site sounds hilarous, haha.
Brian

Alex

December 8th, 2008 at 4:25 am

I hope this is on-topic,

Here is a website and social network that basically develops online businesses without any initial investment.

Users can join for free, network with other professionals, find new ideas, and post theirs for development.

Best regards and successes!

Alex

December 8th, 2008 at 4:26 am

Umm I see the url isn’t actually published. Just look up Buzzica on Google!

Thanks and sorry for the double comment.

Don Sabatini

April 25th, 2009 at 6:06 am

Excellent post man. Your no. 1 trick about mozy rocks, I was in search of something like this.

Brian Armstrong

May 2nd, 2009 at 1:50 am

Thanks Don!

Dayo Nurudeen

September 26th, 2009 at 10:47 pm

Thanks for the nice tips..your blog rocks!!!

Brian Armstrong

September 28th, 2009 at 1:47 am

Glad it helped Dayo!

Dayo Nurudeen

January 10th, 2011 at 5:19 pm

this lovely post helped me in the process of brainstorming feelfree.co thanks once again

josejoseph

January 21st, 2011 at 9:10 am

seem to be good

Ade

February 2nd, 2011 at 1:47 am

Just stumbled across this site.

I’ve been working on my project for a while now and I think I can make it hit all the buttons mentioned in the article. Also u have given me a few things to think about.

Thanks for taking the time to put your thoughts into words.

Medyum

March 29th, 2011 at 2:33 pm

Excellent post man. Your no. 1 trick about mozy rocks, I was in search of something like this.

Bill Bosley

May 1st, 2011 at 1:47 am

Brian,

I have what I feel is a great business idea. I’m not sure how or where to start. I would like it to be a great business idea that you CAN’T steal. Where do I go from here?

gaella

May 30th, 2011 at 4:54 am

I need to come up with a viable venture in africa. there is very few sport equipment outlets so i don’t fancy the conventional shop idea cause it’s the same old thing…. help…

avinash

September 29th, 2011 at 3:55 pm

this kind of business help in this in futher now a DAYS

Avinash Gopani

September 29th, 2011 at 3:59 pm

such life is not just a quirre making that in our dull

david karani

October 11th, 2011 at 3:35 pm

i have two great ideas that i want to share with serious investors
am a kenyan ‘

Barbara

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Breaking Free

8 Great Business Ideas You Can Steal

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