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Everyone Has at Least One Great Idea
I was flipping through Inc. magazine last night and came across an article about Threadless. If you haven't heard about Threadless then you are in for a treat. These two entrepreneurs out of Chicago designed a whole new kind of company where they invite their customers to design their product and vote on which one should be manufactured.
What do they make?
T-shrits. The most impressive part is their company, which is only eight years old, now makes $30 million in sales with 30% profit margins. Amazingly, they only started their company with $1000 in seed money. Check out the rest of the Threadless article in Inc. Magazine here -
At the beginning of this month I was involved in a local event called Birmingham Startup . It's a bi-annual event where people with great ideas come together one weekend to learn about how to present their ideas to investors and developers. Then on the following weekend they get an opportunity to have a team of programmers, graphic artists, and project managers to make a prototype of their idea all in one weekend.
It's kind of like Extreme Home Makeover, but for new startup businesses. Being one of the event staff, I get to see some incredible ideas. The idea that was voted best this time around was a company called GalleyPro. Their idea was to help book/magazine publishers provide their content to people's cell phones, just like you can download songs to your cell phones. Reading books on your cell phone isn't that popular in the US yet, but will be as more phones become like the iPhone.
Chances are you already have an event like this in your city. Do a search for Startup Weekend and you will see that there are many of these events going on all over the US and even in other countries.
I would be willing to bet how surprised you would be with amount of help you can get to bring one of your own ideas into fruition, no matter how simple it might be. If anything it will allow you to get feedback from other people to test its viability. You might even be inspired to make your idea better.
So what are you waiting for get your idea out there, and see what happens. It may lead to an incredible life adventure you never expected!
For continued motivating inspiration, pick up a subscription to Inc. magazine. Get 12 issues of Inc. for $11.97 that's 80% off the cover price.
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