I’m entered into a business plan competition at my university and I could use a little inspiration to get my brain juices flowing. If the business plan works out I might even implement it in real life.
Basically each submission has a $100,000 budget and the main criteria that will be judged are need and scalability. The "need" is described as solving a major problem that affects millions of people, and the first thing that came to mind was helping guys get girls. Even at college, which may be the easiest place on earth to get with girls, I hear so many guys complain about "not getting any" and struggling with women. Solving this problem would be very lucrative - but here is where I need some help.
How can I make this scalable? My friends have suggested making the business model based on a "pick-up school" which brings guys out into bars and teaches them how to talk and eventually seduce girls. There are actually a decent number of these schools already but the problem is that this isn’t scalable. It would take years and years to build these schools all around the country, which is why I need to focus on something that is internet or mobile related.
With a $100,000 budget it wouldn’t be too out of reach to pay for a programmer and a decent functioning site or app. How would you solve the problem I chose yet make it scalable?
Why not just get a 1978 Coupe DeVille, wear a flashy hat, walk around with a cane and "rent" girls to guys and take a cut?
Amazing what is being posted on this site these days.
Good luck. Just don't try to compete with my Spanish fly business. If you try, there will be trouble.
Note also - this was in a movie in the 80s. Maybe you can contact the author and get him to sell you the rights...
Problem: "I hear so many guys complain about "not getting any" and struggling with women."
Solution: Instead of "pick-up school" have a "become gay" school.
I can see it now...
Lesson 1: "Hey is it hot in here? Oh, no, it's just you!"
Lesson 2: How to tape a Polish sausage to your leg and still pull your pants on.
Lesson 3: "I'm not really this tall, I'm just sitting on my wallet."
I hear sex tourism can be lucrative. Why not just arrange cruises for people to countries where prostitution is legal?
Alternatively you can open a new "Bunny Ranch" in Nevada.
Good luck with your business. Hope it works out. Be sure to keep us updated on your success.
Not sure if this is appropriate for this forum, but the way to scale a school is to offer online teaching. Think videos with structured classes, practice tests, etc. That's definitely scalable. You could use the (virtual) $100,000 to pay for content.
Everyone is crazy abou the Khan Academy nowdays, so just call your project the "Khan Academy of Dating", and you should be set.
How about an online academy type of thing with live classes. Basically people join your classes and you stream them live, people can interact and ask questions via voice, webcam and text chat. video lessons are fine and all, but there are some people out there that need to ask questions to put things into perspective.
Basically these classes would operate on a time based schedule. If someone is late and misses out, it's their fault for not arriving to the online class on time. You would then offer the class lessons to members for download and streaming on the site.
Be careful in terms of liability. You can't guarantee you're going to get all guys in the program laid, make it known that it's not guaranteed but with patience and attention then your chances will be a lot higher. Otherwise you're opening yourself up to lawsuits.
You could enlist some people and pay them a few dollars to "teach" a class for you. I may not have explained much in terms of scalability, but an online school would be your best bet. Opening up an actual school would end up costing you more than $100,000 after rent, utilities, resources and instructors.
Good luck bro, I even though of a name and slogan for you. "Slampiece Academy: Helping Bro's Get Slampieces "
It sounds to me like the idea needs one or several gurus if it is a class/academy-type idea. It would need some really strong personalities behind it to make it work. Kind of like the main character in the movie "Hitch". He had a charismatic personality and that helped him both get clients and attract women.
Rather than focusing on you teaching or just a few people teaching others, you could focus on having everyone that is successful do the teaching. So maybe the model is a blog like http://mixergy.com/ where a host regularly video interviews guys who are successful who share their secrets. In addition to the online video, you could also offer podcasts of the interviews. You could compile a list of the "secrets" as part of your blog entries and eventually publish a branded book on the topic. Finally, you could try to generate a forum where guys can talk about dating (although this could quickly degenerate into something unseemly).
I would spend some of the money on trying to create brand idea/identity, something that this target market can really identify with, in addition to the costs of doing any web development and video production.
At any rate, just my two cents, I would try to help guys try to find women they really like, as opposed to just want to sleep with. They live longer if they find and settle down with one.
Video avatars to let them practice their newly learnt cheesy pickup lines on your super-duper AI program with selectable avatars? No embarrassment!!
The obvious way to scale is franchising. You would need to build the brand/product in one place, but after that you rent the business name and materials out to people who deliver on your behalf.
And I wouldn't stick to college students, not enough money. There are plenty of rich working folks with zero Charisma...
Another great idea:
Russian brides Of course, you can substitute any nationality in place of Russians.