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Business Opportunities Weblog

Business Opportunities Weblog

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How to Make Money from the Kentucky Derby

Posted: 04 May 2012 11:30 AM PDT

The secret to making money with race horses isn’t to bet on the ponies, it’s to invest in them! It’s relatively easy to invest in racehorses, reports the Huffington Post. If they win, you’ll get a share of the purse, plus then they’ll be in demand for breeding and you’ll receive a portion of those proceeds as well.

If Saturday’s Kentucky Derby makes you dream of owning a thoroughbred for the price of a nag, you’re in luck. Several firms arrange partnerships for small-timers to buy a share of a racehorse. Investments begin in the low hundreds of dollars.

Dave Dillon, a Chicago hospitality executive, plunked down $5,000 for a 5 percent stake in a yearling through Team Valor International, a Versailles, Ky.-based stable. Dillon’s chances of profiting were remote — up to 95 percent of owners lose money, estimated Team Valor owner Barry Irwin. But Dillon’s colt, Animal Kingdom, was an exception in the grandest way imaginable. It won last year’s Kentucky Derby.

“Animal Kingdom was way past catching lightning in a bottle,” Dillon told The Huffington Post. “It was catching lightning in a bottle that’s locked in a safe.”

After spending a chunk of his winnings on memorabilia, Dillon received a check for his cut of the purse from both the derby and Animal Kingdom’s second-place finish in the Preakness — $65,000. He could receive about $300,000 when the horse begins breeding.

Here are some racing syndicates that you can invest in:

Photo by Cheryl Ann Quigley/ShutterStock.

Cash in This Business Card

Posted: 04 May 2012 10:44 AM PDT

It’s been a long running theme of this site that I think that business cards are lame. A reader just sent in the following image of a “business card” that I actually like.

I went to my insurance company the other day and saw their “business card”. I know you sometimes post interesting business cards n thought I would share.


HumanKind Water Wins Walmart Get on the Shelf Contest

Posted: 04 May 2012 10:36 AM PDT

Humankind Water

CNN:

HumanKind Water, a bottled water company that touts its social conscience, won the most votes — and the top prize — in Wal-Mart’s “American Idol”-like contest.

As grand prize winner, the Philadelphia-based company will soon have its bottled water sold at up to 3,800 Wal-Mart stores nationwide and on Walmart.com.

Gots Infographic

He Started Making Sushi At His Dining Room Table

Posted: 04 May 2012 10:21 AM PDT

Inc:

When Philip Maung began a sushi-making company on his dining room table 14 years ago, a 46,000-square-foot headquarters with ping-pong tables, spontaneous karaoke sing-a-longs and smiling employees seemed like a distant dream. Yet, over the last decade and amid a struggling economy, Maung has built his business into a vibrant food service distribution company that currently manages over 400 sushi bars in high-end grocery stores, cafes, hospitals and universities throughout the United States.

A true embodiment of the American dream (he came to the U.S. in 1989 with $13), Maung saw a business opportunity in a practically destitute sushi market on the east coast. He chose Charlotte as the company’s base because of the number of banks the city had, but quickly learned they were hesitant to give him a loan without previous successes. Pooling resources with his wife, Maung says Hissho started with many sleepless nights.

Information about starting your own Hissho Sushi restaurant can be found here.

Spatula City

Posted: 04 May 2012 09:34 AM PDT

Having just posted about a store that only sells mayonnaise, I was reminded of the “commercial” for the fictional Spatula City within the movie UHF by “Weird Al” Yankovic.

In the movie, Weird Al plays a daydreamer whose hyperactive imagination keeps him from holding a steady job. His gambling uncle wins the deed to a bankrupt UHF television station in a poker game and gives control of the station to Weird Al’s character. The film contains a number of great commercials and parody television shows of the kind you would have seen on the local UHF station.

For those of you too young to remember UHF stations, they were the over-the-air channels greater than number 13. Their range was substantially less than the channels 2-13 VHF stations and as a result they gained a reputation for being locally owned, less polished and professional

After the jump, I’ve included another humorous commercial from the movie.

Niche Biz: Store That Only Sells Mayo

Posted: 04 May 2012 09:15 AM PDT

Mayo

In Brooklyn, NY, there’s a store that only sells artisanal flavored mayonnaise. No, it’s not a joke.

Founded in 2011 by chef Sam Mason and designer Elizabeth Valleau, Empire Mayonnaise creates mayonnaise with exotic flavors and formulations. We use natural and organic local eggs and flavors whenever possible, but our primary goal is to make the best tasting and most interesting mayonnaise possible so we do source ingredients from all over the world.

We have a store at 564 Vanderbilt Ave. in Brooklyn, NY and we exhibit at various locations in the five boroughs as well as selling online.

Long Lost Postcard: Letters to the Future

Posted: 04 May 2012 08:03 AM PDT

Freudenberg Arthur Oscar 02

Earlier this month, Scott McMurry, a Vienna, Virginia man finally received a postcard from his mother. It took a little longer than normal for the letter to be delivered; she sent it in 1957 and somehow it got lost in the postal system for 55 years.

Now, instead of taking this opportunity to complain about the inefficiencies in the postal system — the postcard only had a two cent stamp affixed (you get what you pay for!) — this story instead brought to mind a incredibly emotional business opportunity.

What if you offered this service for sale? Take people’s letters to their loved ones and hold onto them for fifty years or more and then locate the recipient and deliver them long after the sender is deceased.

The only problem I can foresee is how will you find the recipient in five decades? Although the internet should make it easier to locate someone in the future, I would also recommend that you give the sender of the letter a page or something to include in their will or living trust. That way, when they pass on, there will be some record that a letter was sent to the future.

What do you think?

Today in Entrepreneurial History: May 4

Posted: 04 May 2012 06:20 AM PDT

On this date in 1904, the United States began construction of the Panama Canal.

For more on this monumental undertaking, pick up The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal. It tells the story of the men and women who fought against all odds to fulfill the 400-year-old dream of constructing an aquatic passageway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It is a story of astonishing engineering feats, tremendous medical accomplishments, political power plays, heroic successes, and tragic failures.


Social Networking From Beyond The Grave

Posted: 04 May 2012 05:30 AM PDT

The Huffington Post:

Rather than let your Facebook and Twitter profiles sit unused forever, DeadSocial, a U.K. startup that launched in beta on April 27 at The Next Web Conference 2012, will put your social networking accounts to good use even after you’re six feet under.

You can link your DeadSocial account to to your Facebook, Twitter and Google+ accounts and write messages to loved ones and friends to be sent out at given times after your death — days, months, even years after you’ve passed. A “super administrator,” or a person you’ve chosen to access DeadSocial in the event of your death, can “untick” your account to indicate you’ve died; now your pre-written messages can be sent out, according to The Next Web.

High School Student Solving The Energy Problem

Posted: 04 May 2012 05:00 AM PDT

Kare11:

What possible use could Josh have for all that old oil? Turns out Josh has been using household chemicals to turn that oil into diesel fuel.

“Here is the diesel that can actually be used straight into an engine,” he says, pointing to the amber liquid that has separated from the fats in a storage jug. Minutes later Josh pours the bio-diesel into a pickup truck belonging to the father of one of his friends.

“It has a little bit smaller of a carbon chain than regular diesel does, explains Josh.

The friend appears unconcerned that a high school sophomore has just poured homemade fuel into her dad’s Chevrolet truck.

He’s also just warming up. Josh already has an agreement to collect used cooking oil from a local Chinese restaurant. He’s now in talks with Elk River’s school bus provider about selling them his fuel. But that’s just to raise some capitol.