8 ms·

I am constantly thinking about the question: What is the future tech entrepreneur's lemonade stand? It would have to be something typical and low-skill so a yo

I am constantly thinking about the question: What is the future tech entrepreneur's lemonade stand? It would have to be something typical and low-skill so a young entrepreneur can build it and learn the hard lessons about running a business, but it needs some special defense to avoid being out-innovated by an Amazon or Google. The Facebook example as a toy is perfect - the platform was able to thrive by being hyper-localized, and offering its own personality and levity. It seems to me like the founders of the future are coding games today.

jacquesm 9y ago
> What is the future tech entrepreneur's lemonade stand? Likely Wordpress or Wix... as unfortunate as that is the more interesting question is what form the lemonade will take.
- freehunter 9y ago
  Many businesses were launched from Wordpress, and I know more than a few bespoke technology products where the MVP was Wordpress with a few plugins. I don't think you're too far off-base here.
zerostar07 9y ago
has a lemonade stand ever evolved into serious business? I am of the impression they get abandoned
- nikanj 9y ago
  No, but the lemonade stand _operator_ has evolved into a serious entrepreneur. OP was trying to identify business ideas that take very little when it comes to skill and capital.
- aeorgnoieang 9y ago
  Actual lemonade stands (run by children)? They're usually shutdown by the police, at least in the U.S. [Tho my sources severely skew my sample so as to entirely neglect counterexamples.] Metaphorical lemonade stands are almost always abandoned too. But that seems obviously fine anyways.
  - ksenzee 9y ago
    I think "usually" is an exaggeration. I've seen plenty of lemonade stands and I've never seen one shut down by police. I've seen news stories about it happening, but the fact that it makes national headlines says something about how rare it is: https://www.cnn.com/2015/06/11/politics/lemonade-stand-shut-down-texas/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2015/06/11/politics/lemonade-stand-shut-...
    - aeorgnoieang 9y ago
      Yes, I think you're very likely correct.
  - morgante 9y ago
    > Actual lemonade stands (run by children)? They're usually shutdown by the police, at least in the U.S. I can't tell if you're joking or just completely distorted by media coverage. I ran lemonade stands throughout my childhood and consistently see them run by children today.
    - aeorgnoieang 9y ago
      It was both mostly joking and because of distorted media coverage. I can't remember seeing one tho anytime recently.
lotyrin 9y ago
I think the simple realtime competitive "io games" that cloud computing, nodeJS, SVG / Canvas have allowed to explode in recent history are probably one playground for fledgling entrepreneurs.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
Look for things that don't scale. At all. A lemonade stand makes sense because it captures people who want lemonade now, but not enough to get in a car and drive to the closest store. In practice, no single shop can scale itself to address this time/location limitation[0]. Similarly, an "e-Lemonade stand" has to be something that just can't scale beyond local level. Anything that a single entity could do for customers from around the country, or around the world, is out of the picture. So such "lemonade stand" would have to be something either with strong time/location constraints, or something unique to a very specific subgroup of people, that just can't be trivially copied to a different subgroup. -- [0] - Except people putting out vending machines; this is real life, there are exceptions to every heuristic.
- solatic 9y ago
  Isn't this generally building a no-art mobile game? Something like 2048 which doesn't require hiring an artist. Actual amount of money to be made, if any, is too small for larger shops to make it worth their engineering time.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Yeah, that seems to work too.

jacquesm 9y ago

> What is the future tech entrepreneur's lemonade stand? Likely Wordpress or Wix... as unfortunate as that is the more interesting question is what form the lemonade will take.

freehunter 9y ago
Many businesses were launched from Wordpress, and I know more than a few bespoke technology products where the MVP was Wordpress with a few plugins. I don't think you're too far off-base here.

zerostar07 9y ago

has a lemonade stand ever evolved into serious business? I am of the impression they get abandoned

nikanj 9y ago
No, but the lemonade stand _operator_ has evolved into a serious entrepreneur. OP was trying to identify business ideas that take very little when it comes to skill and capital.
aeorgnoieang 9y ago
Actual lemonade stands (run by children)? They're usually shutdown by the police, at least in the U.S. [Tho my sources severely skew my sample so as to entirely neglect counterexamples.] Metaphorical lemonade stands are almost always abandoned too. But that seems obviously fine anyways.
- ksenzee 9y ago
  I think "usually" is an exaggeration. I've seen plenty of lemonade stands and I've never seen one shut down by police. I've seen news stories about it happening, but the fact that it makes national headlines says something about how rare it is: https://www.cnn.com/2015/06/11/politics/lemonade-stand-shut-down-texas/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2015/06/11/politics/lemonade-stand-shut-...
  - aeorgnoieang 9y ago
    Yes, I think you're very likely correct.
- morgante 9y ago
  > Actual lemonade stands (run by children)? They're usually shutdown by the police, at least in the U.S. I can't tell if you're joking or just completely distorted by media coverage. I ran lemonade stands throughout my childhood and consistently see them run by children today.
  - aeorgnoieang 9y ago
    It was both mostly joking and because of distorted media coverage. I can't remember seeing one tho anytime recently.

lotyrin 9y ago

I think the simple realtime competitive "io games" that cloud computing, nodeJS, SVG / Canvas have allowed to explode in recent history are probably one playground for fledgling entrepreneurs.

TeMPOraL 9y ago

Look for things that don't scale. At all. A lemonade stand makes sense because it captures people who want lemonade now, but not enough to get in a car and drive to the closest store. In practice, no single shop can scale itself to address this time/location limitation[0]. Similarly, an "e-Lemonade stand" has to be something that just can't scale beyond local level. Anything that a single entity could do for customers from around the country, or around the world, is out of the picture. So such "lemonade stand" would have to be something either with strong time/location constraints, or something unique to a very specific subgroup of people, that just can't be trivially copied to a different subgroup. -- [0] - Except people putting out vending machines; this is real life, there are exceptions to every heuristic.

solatic 9y ago
Isn't this generally building a no-art mobile game? Something like 2048 which doesn't require hiring an artist. Actual amount of money to be made, if any, is too small for larger shops to make it worth their engineering time.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Yeah, that seems to work too.