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You have $100K. What business would you get into?
If you had $100K to invest in a business new or existing, what would it be? Say you didn’t need to worry about living expenses or retirement. You don’t have time pressure other than you need to make enough money to cover expenses before you run out. Other than that, the only constraints are you need to love 2/3 of your day so 1/3 of your day is spent on things you don’t enjoy but need to get done. With the 2/3 of the day you love, it needs to be something you jump out of bed and can’t wait to do
- gregsadetsky 4y agoYou might want to rename the title by adding “Ask HN:” at the beginning so that more people will see it.
- michepriest 4y agoI’m new to submitting on HN. Thanks for letting me know. It seems like they don’t allow editing
- gregsadetsky 4y agoWelcome! Yeah, I think titles may be edit’able for a short while only, and even then I’m not sure. Glad that your post picked up some comments nevertheless!
- michepriest 4y agoThank you! They’re fun to read
- dudul 4y agoI'm not sure I understand how the question goes from how would you invest $100k to how you spend your day. Are we talking investment here, or starting a business that you run?
- michepriest 4y agoI’m more curious about what people are passionate about and wanted to ask the question in a different way than what would do if you won the lottery
- Overtonwindow 4y agoI would invest in laundromats and a liquor store. Rather than try to create a new business, I would prefer to invest in an existing revenue stream of something integral to life and society.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoLove laundromats. Love speed queens. Cash money, reliable assets, and no moral issues with providing laundry services. Same with car washes, good margins there too.
- NeoTar 4y agoLaundries/laundromats are still a thing? I would have guessed they were a dying industry.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago$5B market in the US alone. Dry cleaning is on its way out, but lots of folks still without laundry facilities at home or where they rent.
- gregsadetsky 4y agoFascinating, didn’t know about dry cleaning. Found this article: https://www.npr.org/2021/03/31/982953808/coronavirus-pandemic-upends-the-dry-cleaning-industry https://www.npr.org/2021/03/31/982953808/coronavirus-pandemi...
- Overtonwindow 4y agoI thought the same thing until I had to wash a large comforter. I am very close to a major American city, is still in the suburbs. I went to my local laundromat and it was packed, with big screen TVs, free Wi-Fi, and vending machines. It was a pleasant experience!
- upsidesinclude 4y agoI wish, 100k isn't probably going to get you there. The machines usually run 50k from the people I've talked to about their starts. Liquor licensing and approvals can eat that 100k before you even have inventory
- lampshades 4y agoSpend the first 10k on finding a market and product people will buy. Spend the next 90k on building, iterating, and marketing whatever you built. I guess.
- game-of-throws 4y agoThis is an extremely personal question. The business that excites me would bore 99% of the world, and same goes for you. If you don't already have an idea what you're excited about, just put the money in VTSAX.
- criddell 4y agoIt would bore 99% of the world, but that still leaves something like 75 million people who are interested and I would wager a decent number of people here would fall in that 1%. I’ve found that even seemingly dull things can get very interesting when you get deep into them.
- michepriest 4y agoI’m more curious about what people are passionate about but wanted to ask in a different way than if you won the lottery… What business excites you?
- mkl 4y agoWhat's the goal? Making money? Having fun? Helping people? Helping the planet? If you don't need to worry about living expenses or retirement, there needs to be a good reason to spend 1/3 of your day doing things you don't enjoy (seems a slightly strange goal to be honest). This should definitely be an "Ask HN".
- michepriest 4y agoSorry, new to HN. Not sure how it works. I’ll look up how to edit and fix. Thanks for letting me know I’m curious about what people are passionate about and wanted to ask the question in a different way than the usual if you won the lottery
- nurettin 4y agoThat should be enough to start a hardware store. Maybe invest a little more to add a garage to tinker.
- sudden_dystopia 4y agoWoodworking with the occasional bit of electronics mixed in to sell on Etsy and locally. Buy a bad ass CNC router, laser engraver, and 3d printer. And a bunch of Festool power tools. And a small shop. The YouTubers make it look easy, which I know it’s not. But I already enjoy doing this for personal projects. If I had better tools and more time, I am sure I could make professional quality items and would love doing it.
- mkl 4y agoLaser cutter, not just engraver. They make so many things so easy to make with intricate shapes or tab and slot construction (not just wood, acrylic etc. too).
- bombcar 4y agoIf you're actually interested in this, start hanging around Rockler or other such stores, get to know people, and I daresay you'll find someone who has all the equipment and none of the time who would love to collaborate. Festool is amazing but ... honestly for many things there's better, unless you're particularly looking for dust containment on actual job sites (their drywall sander, and the domino joiner, are unparalleled).
- jvanderbot 4y agoI would split the cost and share the shop. You described my perfect setup.
- michepriest 4y agoI love this answer I imagine you’re not the only one Is there a woodworking space you could rent? Not sure if those even exist.
- newaccount74 4y agoEveryone I know who has woodworking tools doesn't want other people to use them because A) The tools are dangerous and they don't want people to cut off their fingers B) they don't want other people to fuck up their blades because they are expensive
- upsidesinclude 4y agoGreat question. Let me know what you find out, I'm ready
- cableshaft 4y agoAt this point I'd probably just put that money into blue chip (especially tech) stocks. They got beat up pretty bad the past year but are starting to recover (Apple stock is up 32% just since mid-June). I'd probably get a larger return in a shorter time than investing in any random startup right now, with less risk.
- weaponizedlinux 4y agoI'd start making porn.
- michaelmcmillan 4y agoReal estate: Buy, repair, rent, refinance, repeat.
- MerelyMortal 4y agoBook store or game store / card shop. It would be an investment in your enjoyment, because you will almost definitely not make money unless you're also selling food or beverages. (I don't have experience with either of those two businesses, so take it with a grain of salt.)
- jotm 4y agoBuilding PC cases and accessories. In fact, the hardest part is not even the money (which I don't have lol but I'm reasonably sure I can secure it even nowadays), but finding a work/business partner. I simply can't handle working alone anymore, not even on stuff I like.
- brightball 4y agoIf I didn’t need to worry about living expenses or retirement I could build almost anything from my notebook with just free time. I’d use the money to hire sales and marketing people.
- michepriest 4y agoBuild from your notebook as in software?
- brightball 4y agoI keep a notebook of business plans. One day, I hope to be able to afford the free time to build some of them. Mostly SaaS.
- sqwrell 4y agoSoft Serve Ice Cream
- jodrellblank 4y agoI saw a comment on HN about how airships would be better if scaled up, and we should build a 1km long Hydrogen lift airship with carbon fibre and kevlar. Building houses en-masse, in factories with efficiencies of scale, has the problem that they have to fit on a truck trailer and be driven carefully down fixed-width roads and over and under bridges. Having all the labour commute to the building site every day and move all the parts there, that seems inefficient. So make a house factory, making houses bigger and nicer than trailer homes, airlifting the houses from the factory to the site. Then the work on-site is foundation and preparation, and connecting things up. Googling the weight of a house shows "A 2,500-square-foot house with one floor weighs about 500,000 lbs. or 250 tons." which was roughly the lift capacity of the Hindenburg, and 5-10x more than a heavy lift helicopter. Probably stupid, but fun. Something to do with $300Bn even if it's a money loser, just for how cool it would be. Better than buying Twitter.
- incomingpain 4y ago>I saw a comment on HN about how airships would be better if scaled up, and we should build a 1km long Hydrogen lift airship with carbon fibre and kevlar. Airships got a bad reputation because of the Hindenburg. Besides a few airships, they basically havent been touched in 75 years. Materials science has greatly improved since then. A modern take on an airship should be super effective. The thing is... they arent as fast as an airplane but boy can they ever lift. You could move heavy goods across continents for practically no cost. Personally I think Toyota's bonehead move to get into hydrogen cars was just a mistake. They could produce hydrogen based airships with their tech and become a giant.
- jzellis 4y agoI would import box fans into the UK, because they don't have them here. Dead serious. I'm a coder, but that is the most immediately profitable and useful business I can think of that could be successful for $100K. If I have to explain why, then you probably aren't my target investor. ;-)
- gardenfelder 4y agoBuild open source tools to help humans solve the grand messes they are creating, and prevent future messes.
- xboxnolifes 4y agoI'd throw the 100k into investments and continue to work a normal software job. If I'm not yet financially independent, as the prompt suggests, I'm gonna take the low risk path forward. > Other than that, the only constraints are you need to love 2/3 of your day so 1/3 of your day is spent on things you don’t enjoy but need to get done. Assuming the 1/3 here is work, we don't get 2/3 of a day to enjoy. Sleep is 1/3, and after adding in "life stuff" like cooking, cleaning, showering, eating, commuting, etc, you're getting less than 1/3 of a day to enjoy, and it's going to be your most tired hours of the day (assuming you're working at the beginning of your day and not the end). There isn't a profitable endeavor that exists that I could say I would enjoy over doing something else that is less profitable (to the point of not being sustainable).