A Free Business Idea
July 17th, 2007Recently, I have been reading Liar’s Poker, a title that refers to a game much like the one played in Pirates of the Caribbean 2. Except there are two major differences. [The game Liar's poker is described here]
The First: They are playing with numbers on dollar bills, and not the dice version.
The Second: they are playing for millions of dollars, not for years spent on a sailing ship. Both are played by swash buckling pirates.
The premise of the book is the entertaining, yet cut throat nature of business at Soloman Brothers, one of the largest investment banks that traded in bonds. The book trails the writer and his rise through the company ranks, and it is quite interesting.
However, this is not the point of this post. Although it does have a connection..
I am writing this today to share one of my latest business ideas.
While standing around today, I heard two men discussing the state of their electricity bills.
One said, “Oh, yeah. I installed solar thingies on my roof. They generate electricity for my family’s needs, and I thought it would be a great idea.”
That’s the first part. He continued on and added that up until recently, he could only sell his generated electricity to PG&E for a fixed price. A couple months ago, someone sued PG&E to obtain the right to sell to other power companies..for a higher price.
I don’t know about you, but this is where I thought about The Law of Supply and Demand.
Here comes the connection to Liar’s Poker.
In the 80’s, investment banks packaged up home mortgages and bought the risk off of the people who loaned the money.
Here is how you could make money: Package up the rights to the generated electricity, and sell it to whoever is willing to buy it.
If demand for electricity goes up, the investor could sell the rights to the electricity to a Power Company. This investor who bought the rights to the electricity at a lower price, would then make money on the difference.
Genius. That’s all for me.
What do you think about this idea? Would you get in on it? If you have any other business ideas, feel free to post them in comments, and they might be featured in later articles.