How you know you’re an entrepreneur | Hacker News Reader

How you know you’re an entrepreneur

mattmaroon.com

16 pointsherdrick13 comments

Not sure I agree, although the article was written tongue in cheek. Entrepreneurship is about taking control of your own life and making stuff happen. Not trying to profit from everything you lay your eyes on.

Of course it helps to see opportunities everywhere but it's not only about money.

This example makes no sense. A cadaver is a dead corpse. The organs listed (except corneas) need to be harvested from a brain-dead person on life-support, which is only 1-2% of all deaths.

If you're an entrepreneur you'd also figure that there is a very good reason for such discrepancy in price.

Then you'd identify and account for reasons (organs go bad, quality might be this or that way, risk of getting caught, logistics,...). If you did it correctly you could figure if some of reasons for higher price can be removed or minimized. And from this we can derive our arbitrage opportunity.

For this case you'd probably figure out that guys in biz already got it covered (these guys are definitely pro's) and that there is really no opportunity.

The easiest arbitrage opportunities are always illegal...

It wasn't until I read the part underneath it, talking about what your first thought should be, that I realized that I actually was thinking about the fact that the individual organs sell for more than the complete body.

There are some car part companies that work along this scheme, they buy complete (new) cars, disassemble them and sell the parts at a discount compared to the official channel. It's a bit problematic because not all parts are equally wanted but on the whole it seems to work.

The writer doesn't take in to account that most of those organs have to be harvested within minutes of death and treated very carefully to make sure they are usable for a recipient. The observation is a funny one though, pity that in practice it doesn't work out.

Makes you wonder if you could bequeath the value of your harvest-able parts to your estate, organ donor-ship is for the most part a 'free' affair.

That's probably the entrepreneurship opportunity right there: bring in your dying relatives to try and get some cash out of them.

I guess the problem is that old people generally don't leave much usable stuff.

IIRC I think Iran has a functioning market for (some) body parts. There's an argument to be had for the creation of a regulated market, especially in kidneys. Because the black market is going to happen anyway.

> bring in your dying relatives to try and get some cash out of them.

I really hope you're joking ;)

Scary reading:

http://www.editinternational.com/read.php?id=47ddbe51262c7

I'm here to confirm : it was a joke!

You could put after-market parts BACK on the car and resell it used!

Even when I was a kid I saw scarcity or demand as business opportunities. If I had a cool new toy that noone else had I would rent it out to the kids in the yard for a buck per go as soon as play with it. As one of the first kids to have a home computer I would charge kids to play arcade games at my house rather than go to the arcade, etc.

I try to convince myself that this makes me entrepreneurial rather than just a greedy bastard...

Sorry, just greedy. And a geek. The other kids had real friends.

Gross and I think the word he is looking for is "greedy" not entrepreneur.

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