The Best Industries For Starting a Business Right Now
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He spins very intriguing tales of recent graduates creating companies in extremely tiny niches (single or double digits of possible worldwide customers) that, while not very exciting, solve problems that companies will gladly pay "big bucks" for. These are business problems where companies are desperately throwing many times more money at less efficient solutions or know they are leaving huge amounts of money on the table by not having a better solution.
He has a few talks where he talks about some success stories that he happens to know about because he's advised them as former students. Nobody knows how many "under the radar" companies like this there are, but I would bet it's far easier to make a fortune from a company that fits this profile than a Google acquisition.
While the political winds are blowing in your favour it might be plain sailing, but any business that does not have a fundamental basis in return on investment without subsidy is highly risky. With the endless talk of reining in government spending in countries all around the world, any industry relying on government subsidies to keep it afloat has a large risk factor of cuts to those subsidies resulting from a switch in government.
Exceptions to this are probably in personalised, high end sales and consulting to wealthy businesses and individuals who want the technology for the wow factor. Because a self-sustaining office or house will continue to be something that people desire when cost is no longer a factor. This trend will change slowly and be well-signalled by the next 'shiny new thing' that these people want.
Politicians are the worst kind of business partner. Keen to take the credit and revenues, and then run like the wind when it's no longer a vote winner and leave you with the leftovers.
That said, to your warning regarding politicians and "government run " industries, I couldn't agree more.
Certainly, where I live, all electricity is generated by coal powered generation. The state government is a net winner on this because they receive royalties for the coal dug up. There's certainly no subsidy. The only upward pressure on the price of electricity is, again, political. There's enough coal in the ground to provide cheap power for centuries, the only thing that is going to change that is laws made by politicians to either restrict the building of new power stations, or to lump the power stations with extra costs. Again, both of these changes would be politically led, rather than anything occuring naturally in the marketplace. As a perfect competitor for alternative energy, political changes in towards coal powered electricity would be just as devastating as political changes away from alternative energy. I'm not commenting on the 'correctness' of either change, just saying that both are equally as likely, thus making the sector the last thing I would get involved in.
http://www.anythingresearch.com/Top-Industries/Market-Fragme...
It's a mashup of fastest growing industries with highly fragmented ones
One area where it does work, which you might find surprising, is bars - particularly Irish bars (or pubs, as we like to call them). Over in the UK and Ireland, the vast majority of pubs are owned by retail groups rather than being individual businesses. If you google 'Irish pub franchise' not only will you find an opportunity to open up your own 'authentic' Irish pub, you'll find a large number of companies offering similar franchises. In my San Francisco neighborhood, there are two actual Irish pubs (which have both good and bad aspects; more fun but much worse hangovers), and two fake ones.
They look superficially similar: lots of dark wood, lots of old Irish signs and historical photographs hanging on the walls, plenty of Irish booze and loud-ish music several nights a week (real pubs have a jukebox or karaoke; fake ones buy a piano and hire performers). I sometimes go to the nearest fake one because they have decent food. While waiting for the restroom one evening I was passing the time by looking at the many 'historical' photos on the wall, only to notice that on close inspection you can see jpeg artifacts on all of them! My folks in Ireland tell me there's a thriving light industry in making authentic-looking but completely fake old agricultural/domestic tools, like grass scythes and mangles (for washing clothes), all destined for export to the US where they are used to decorate 'traditional' Irish pubs.
Edit: on rereading, this sounds as if I spend all my free time at the other pubs, but in fact I'm getting too old for that :)
OTOH us developer types do know how to learn :) so maybe my fears are misplaced.
I never gave serious thought about a ferry, but I have sometimes wondered about it (when stuck in traffic :) ).
There is a potential ferry route over here (Bay of Montevideo) from the wealthier residential neighbourhoods to downtown that should be faster than the land route during peak hours, as it avoids congestion.
However, I don't know if the potential customers would tolerate sea-sickness or bad weather, or if the time savings would be enough, or even if it could be made profitable when competing against subsidized public transportation... (quite a few unknown variables).
Even if it were possible for a guy in a basement to buy a ferry, I'm not sure that I'd want to ride it =P.
That said, it is interesting to remember how blinkered we can be by thinking only in terms of tech-friendly businesses.
As an aside, I have it from a principal in a private equity fund that he's seeing a big up-tick in the number of businesses for sale.
There's also the current cupcake-shop boom going on, but I don't see that as a good long-term opportunity.
In European countries, even the smallest two-horse town supports a local bakery, and most small french towns will have several. It's part of the lifestyle to buy bread fresh each day and eating processed factory produced bread is just not done. Anyone who has eaten a fresh baguette from a french bakery will know what I'm talking about.
You could say the same about coffee in the USA today - who will pass up a freshly brewed cup over some processed instant coffee, even though the price is 20 times higher for that latte? The cupcake craze might be the first leg in a takeup of small bakeries offering freshly baked goods which become woven into people's daily lives.
This doesn't sound right. Installing wind turbines is in the domain of huge energy corporations, as far as I know.
The large corps. contract a lot of the work out to smaller companies - An old highschool friend of mine works along Hwy.58 (Techachapi/Mojave) corridor in CA working exclusively on wind turbine maintenance. Rather lucrative work.