I'm a serial wantrepreneur. I build things that no one wants. That's my problem and I know it. I respect the candid feedback HN'ers offer. So if I were your son, or best friend, where would you steer me?
PHP, MySQL dev is my main job. I have a lot of experience coming into small businesses and refining their processes to increase efficiency and increase (double in one case) revenue.
I'd recommend you to learn new skills. Even though there's lots of PHP/MySQL jobs, newer tech might pay better (like Node.js and NoSQL databases, maybe AngularJS on the frontend side).
If you're talking about increasing revenue from a CRO perspective, then becoming a CRO consultant could be a solution. patio11 publicly claimed to be making $30k a week before he quit.
Approaching it with the attitude of "how do I add 100k" is the first mistake. You need to find a genuine problem that you can solve. The rest will work itself out.
Agreed, and I haven't found a need/problem that is solvable for around $100k a year. I've asked this question in several evolutions in several places and come-up flat. Other than "we need more customers" I haven't found idea extraction to be effective for me. Maybe I need to refine my listening skills.
It sounds like you and I suffer from a similar problem. I've done many "idea extraction" calls inspired by Dane Maxwell and I always somehow end up with a few vague ideas that would mostly be competition to what already is used in the industry.
Not that this couldn't work of course, it just seems to me that those calls should result in knowledge about unsolved problems.
Maybe we should form a support group of sorts :-)
Approaching it with the attitude of "how do I add 100k" is the first mistake. You need to find a genuine problem that you can solve. The rest will work itself out.
Don't build something so that you can make $100k. Build something that you want to make and that you will enjoy the process of doing. If you are involved fully in each moment of making whatever it is and not focused on the end result then you will probably be happy, fulfilled and also profitable.
In theory if you found 1000 people who would pay you a little over $8/month for a service, you would have about $100k. The hard part is finding out what that service would be, and how to build it while keeping costs low. Alternatively, you could create a product and sell it, like an ebook, or WordPress theme, but these have a limited shelf life.
A service without any costs to operate, I take it? I'd say you'd need to find 1000 people willing to pay around 30/month (minimum) to end up with 100k (and that would probably be more realistic than coming up with a service 3k people would pay 10/month for, I'm guessing).
I know every HN reader will hate this, but my advice, try to add $100M to your 2016 income.
Why so?
If you aim for $100M, after 3-4 years it is possible that you land somewhere between $5M-10M.
However, if you aim for $100k, you will land at around $0. If you aim for $1M, you will land at $50k. If you aim for $10M, you will land at $1M.
You need to aim for the stars if you want to land on the moon, because everybody and everything will try to prevent you from doing it. Aim for the stars.
I like your thought process. I guess the $100k mark was just to get ideas flowing. I would like to aim for $100M, but I can't think of a product or service people demand that would achieve that revenue (at least not within my skillset)
Wow thank you, when I get all inspirational and big thinking, I'm used to getting shot down by HN, so it makes me happy that it resonates with you.
How to aim for $100M? Try something crazy, something that other people will look at you suspiciously and whisper he's crazy is he?
Why? Because where is crazyness, there is magic and you will be the only one there, because somehow humans don't like to do crazy things, they like to stay within the norm, not create too much noise.
To become really successful, you need to be 1 out of a million. Some might it's very hard to become 1 out of a million. However, it's very easy if you're trying to do something crazy and that's all you need.
As for what to do, try to find a big problem that can be solved with a nice and sweet app that can be built within 2 months. It doesn't have to be hard to build, it can just be a little app, but you need to try to look for magic.
An example would be Snapchat, super weird, crazy, tiny app, magic.
I think you're playing yourself down here. You can build websites, so you have the perfect skill set to solve (almost) any problems.
Just get out there and find out what problems people have. Ask a bunch of people which websites/apps drive them crazy.
With a bit of luck they will mention ones that they use regularly or pay money for. Once you find a niche product idea, come up with a way you can test your hypothesis, Lean Startup style.
> I think you're playing yourself down here. You can build websites, so you have the perfect skill set to solve (almost) any problems.
The unsolved problem space that is solved by building a website is shrinking year over year. It would seem obvious that you need a larger skill set to solve problems no one has attempted yet.
No, for each new startup, there are two more startups that can be built on top of it. The funny thing is that rhere are not fewer ideas down the road, idea generation is exponential.
Go to Meetups in your local area & listen to the things that people complain about & create a list. You'll find out that people usually complain about the same things.
You will laugh, but that's why we have Bitcoin now.
Someone took on all banks and all currencies ($100T/year industry). In 5 years, everybody will think that Bitcoin is normal, but it was just 1 big thinker that it took.
Move to Bay Area if you have not already. Get a job with a funded startup led my someone who has done it before. Should be 12-50 employees. Must offer options. Work hard.
Moving to the BA is a win for anything tech because cash flows freely, but the cost of living is murder. If possible, buy some land somewhere cheaper like Oregon and work remotely as much as possible.
Options after about 10 employees are worthless paper. The real cash is being an early founder and owning meaningful equity.
Go to startup and tech meetups and Let people know you're looking for clients doing x. If anyone follows up, tell them your minimum project size of $y upfront.
1. Find an area with a lot of questions and not many answers. Create a content site. Attract 834,000 visitors per month. Advertising should net you $100K per year (this is an approximation and can vary a LOT).
2. Find a problem large enough for which a solution can be built with PHP and mySQL (since you mentioned that's your main skill set). Build a solution which costs around $25/month. You need only 334 customers to reach your goal.
How do you identify problems? Do some market research (using Google Trends, Amazon Top Sellers, niche forums, etc).
Think of an economic niche that no one else has thought of before. Capitalise upon it silently. Don't tell strangers on the internet how to make $100,000 a year with it.
Very bad advice. Pioneers get slaughtered. Also, some niches are unfilled for a reason. Let someone else figure that out (eg waste lots of time and money going nowhere) and instead copy what works (SaaS apps that have recurrent monthly charges, ad-supported mobile games).
So, I think about the only way you are going to make that $100k is if you are going into business for yourself. In that light, you need to solve a problem. Here are a bunch of problems that I would pay money for(hopefully others too):
1. I need a cheap gpu powered pc, something like 300 cuda cores but with the ability to expand to 3072. I'm will to pay $1k for this plus the price of shipping.(Don't care if the parts are old)
2. I need to dress better. A service to pick out the clothes that I wear and should buy. Willing to pay $120 per year for this.
3. A book about how to make great conversation. The book needs to have tons of examples. Willing to pay $10 for this.
4. A book about 1000 ways to make people laugh. Willing to pay $10 for this.
5. A programmable human size android. That cost under $1k.
6. Designs to said programmable android. Willing to pay $100 for that. Should be able to hook it up to a 3d printer.
Let's say, conservatively, that doing the research to know how to build this, having never built a pc before, takes 20 hours. I bill at 100-160 an hour, so let's take the low end and cut it in half, and say my opportunity cost is $50/hour.
The cost of building one of these is (20 * 50) + 700 = 1700. If someone can build one for me at $1000 I'm money ahead.
It's easy to forget that knowledge acquisition isnt free when you already poses the knowledge.
If you're not following hardware, that google result isn't going to help much (other than maybe giving you an idea of basic cost of such a system). There's lots of ready-made vendors, generally they're all crap (for a certain value of crap).
There's a big difference between building a one-off rig, and buying one, working with it for a year or so -- getting your code right -- and the knowing you can get 20 more (updated and/or cheaper) -- that won't have driver issues, heating issues or flaky psus. Sure, a contract can help, but whatever you get "back" in cases of failures are always going to be much less than whatever value you wanted in the first place (eg: the hardware ended up being free, but you weren't able to sequence the genome because of glitches).
In short, don't underestimate the cost to acquire the required domain knowledge to do such a task well.
One can always hope that the new Mac Pro will be successful enough that there'll be a decent Cuda story there -- but I'm not holding my breath. And after seeing what Apple did vs Final Cut pro and OS X server (esp: hardware) -- I'd be wary of trusting them with any production platform.
I've read from http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc that low-cost computers are cheaper from ready-made vendors. Not sure if you can buy a cheap ready-made PC with 300 cuda cores, though.
>>I don't understand the motivation will be for someone to use a such service instead of building it by himself ...
Personally, I have no interest in learning how to build computers. I'm not into hardware[1] and have no problem paying a premium for someone else to just put stuff together, make sure it works then send it to me.
BTW, wasn't this Alienware's business model?
1. There is one exception though; the videogame console hacking scene.
Arguably this is all hardware vendors business model (Dell, HP, Sun (now Oracle) ...). But yes, I guess Alienware, pre-dell had that business model, and you might say Penguin Computing does something similar. I'm sure there are others.
They set you up with a stylist, all the service aspects are free, then they send you a trunk of clothes to try. Pay for whatever you keep, send the rest back with free shipping.
2. +1. I went shopping today and didn't find anything that I truly liked.
3. +1. The deeper I dive into the technology world, the farther I feel from my friends who won't work in this sector and it's becoming harder than ever to find something to talk about that isn't programming-related. Being an empty conversationalist is a surefire way to lose friends fast.
4. Goes with number 3, so I'd pay for this too.
The other ideas sound cool but I haven't ventured into hardware hacking yet ;)
On average one new currency becomes wildly popular every year or so. The returns for investing in a new currency early that later succeeds are around 100,000%. The returns for investing in a new currency that fails are -100%. However, there are maybe only three or four credible new currencies launched each year. So I think the rewards for investing in, say, Dogecoin, vastly outweigh the risks, even though the risks are extremely high.
I agree with you on Dogecoin but I'm interested on where you're drawing this conclusion: "On average one new currency becomes wildly popular every year or so." I'd say BitCoin became popular last year - what new currency became wildly popular in the preceding few years? Maybe I'm just not that knowledgable about the currency space but it seems like a new thing to me.
With putting your wife on salary, are you stuck paying towards unemployment insurance since you've technically got an employee? Some places have started to crack-down on that, even when it doesn't truly have relevance.
Why would it make any sense that you are allowed to set a salary based on anything except 1.? And, if I understood your top level post correctly, why would it make sense for you to be able to classify caring for your children as working for the business?
Allowing people to choose arrangements that minimize their taxes, is the opposite of how tax law is supposed to work. Taxes should be based on economic reality, not what you choose to write down on paper.
It seems you are conflating what is beneficial for you, with what should be legal.
Just curious, but what type of programming do you do for your investment bank? I've been programming for 30 years now, have done c/c++, Java, reverse engineering, have security clearance, etc but seem to have maxed-out at 130k. I don't know that I've ever seen a job like yours advertised, much less one that pays so well. Can you share what type of programming you do, and how you got into it?
The $100 Startup book addresses this kind of questions quite well. It's essentially a list of study cases of people that built side businesses (some of them becoming their main sources of income or even small very profitable companies) using their skills and interests. Might not give you silver bullet answer, but it's certainly inspirational and it does point out to certain patterns of how to do that... http://www.amazon.com/100-Startup-Reinvent-Living-Create/dp/...
Eat oatmeal and live in a van. That'll cut expenses and give you more runway to keep failing fast (the character building kind).
Also, sell your apps (make shopping carts, ads, website) before you build product. That'll save you tons of blood, sweat, tears, time and cash of building shit no one wants.
Finally, what people like is funny. It can takes time for things to hit so let them simmer. Don't give up or close down an app right away.
If you are not a superstar, making outlier money is not in the cards for you. Focus on becoming a superstar before focusing on the money. This might require an apprenticeship, either at a big company or a successful startup. Not even most YC companies are successful, so choose carefully.
Having read through all the answers here, I really think that HN is possibly not the best place to ask such a question.
Solve a problem
Seems to be the largest response. Solving problems is hard. If you want to earn $100k this year, don't solve a problem, don't do a startup[1].
Startups deal with problems, are capital intensive, risky, and high reward. If you want to potentially make a lot more than $100k in the next few years then, sure, go find a problem.
If you simply want to make $100k this year, then my choice would be to start a simple service business. No need to build anything new or solve a complex problem. The majority of SME businesses fit this mould really, everything from software agencies to recruitment companies.
Pick an area you have some knowledge in, start on your own, and execute to the best of your abilities. The main challenges are usually managing cash flow and the day to day realities of running a small business. But if you end up with 4-5 employees and stable cash flow, you now have your own earning power plus around 20% of the people below you typically.
That or review your CV, and plan the most aggressive route towards a position in a financial / high yield company, adding $100k to your salary as an employee could be feasible depending on your background.
Either way, the people who just stumble upon money are outliers. So the really short answer is just work harder and accept more risk in you decisions.
I agree that it is very difficult to find the required momentum. Some things which may help, based on my experience:
1. Divide the whole problem into subsets. Identify others who are having the same problem subsets, and partner with them to resolve them. This way, nobody has to divulge their whole business model/idea and yet can collaborate.
At the smallest level, this can be as simple as posting a technical problem on StackOverflow and participating in the discussion that follows. At a higher level, this can be something like identifying a common person to write content for multiple businesses.
2. Keeping intermediate easily reachable goals. This helps to ensure you have momentum, however small it may be. Reaching those goals also peps up your spirits, especially when you are working alone.
On the left you have a salaried job. On the right a shoot for the moon VC startup. In between you have the entire range from trying to build products for 'passive income' on the side, to going alone starting a small cash-positive business, or freelancing. Your level of risk is entirely up to you, and the reward will usually be fairly linear, within your own earning capacity and skill set (money is fairly efficient in that sense!).
Working more hours or quitting your job fits into that scale along with all the other factors. If your appetite for risk is on the lower end such you won't quit, then you will have a harder time competing with people who've positioned themselves with more risk.
There will always be the outliers who just break the model though.
Thank you for the response. I agree, more or less. In this case, of course, I made the assumption that OP didn't want to quit his job. His skill sets are fairly common, based on what he posted. Considering that, I thought he will have a better chance of building something on the side, since getting high enough consulting rates for PHP work is hard, especially when you are trying to do it part-time. (As you said, there are outliers for this also. I assumed OP falls close to the mean/median when I wrote that.)
You make an assumption that the PHP/mySQL role consumes all of his time. That isn't necessarily true, he may be in a position where he's just tweaking scripts occasionally.
1. It is not easy to add 100,000$ in a year; it is relatively easier to have a long-term strategy to reach that goal over 3-5 years. It's not a sprint, it's a marathon. I say this because if you try and fail after the first year, you should keep doing it until you succeed. To be clear: it's easier if your goals become: +20k in 2014, +50k in 2015, +100k in 2016.
2. It really depends on where you live, how much access to capital you have, and what your skills are.
2.1: where you live influences how much you can earn as a freelancer (of course, you can always freelance online, no barriers), how much you pay in taxes, how much business you can find around you. If we assume that you can work online as a software developer and similar, than this doesn't apply. Taxation does, though.
2.2: If you have access to capital, you can try to start a company, and make it profitable; then, sell it. Hard, but if you succeed, you probably can add 100k or more to your income.
2.3: if you can easily "sell" your skills, consider freelancing or consulting, even though 100k more in a year means a TON of extra work.
3. You might want to build something that you can sell; if that's successful, the sales can eventually surpass 100k. Examples? An ebook (scales better than a physical book), a software.
Problems I'd like to see solved:
1. I'd like to keep my photos and videos backed up, remotely, automatically; and have a much smaller (disk size) version of them on my computer; this way I can always consult my photo archive, but if I need the original photo, I can still get it from my online backup, from within the app/software.
2. I, too (like chegra), would pay to have someone help me buy clothes and dress better, but trust me this is a very hard problem to solve.
3. If I have a free weekend, I'd like a service that, based on my location, budget, and preferences, can suggest me 2-3 things to do with all details (fly to X and do Y, or drive to W and do Z, or drive to X, hike to Y, eat at Z, etc).
The question was "how do I add to ..." rather than "how do I earn (in total) ..."
... so in that case, are you ready to work 80 hour weeks? If you're thinking of adding a side-business on top of your day job than you really need to treat the side business as the second full-time job to hit the $100k mark, which is possible if you completely jettison all leisure and recreational activity from your schedule. Good luck.
A serial "wantrepreneur". The first Google search result for that term will solve your problem. Find a "very good problem" and solve it in the best possible way. Solution should be a simple one rather than an intelligent one, so that people shouldn't feel the weight of the problem but the easiness of the solution. We all possess the ability to solve problems in a peculiar way, just choose the right problem.
108 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 97.7 ms ] threadHow much do you make now?
It might be a mistake if his goal were "solving a genuine problem." It's decidedly not a mistake if his goal is to increase his income by $100,000.
Why so?
If you aim for $100M, after 3-4 years it is possible that you land somewhere between $5M-10M.
However, if you aim for $100k, you will land at around $0. If you aim for $1M, you will land at $50k. If you aim for $10M, you will land at $1M.
You need to aim for the stars if you want to land on the moon, because everybody and everything will try to prevent you from doing it. Aim for the stars.
How to aim for $100M? Try something crazy, something that other people will look at you suspiciously and whisper he's crazy is he?
Why? Because where is crazyness, there is magic and you will be the only one there, because somehow humans don't like to do crazy things, they like to stay within the norm, not create too much noise.
To become really successful, you need to be 1 out of a million. Some might it's very hard to become 1 out of a million. However, it's very easy if you're trying to do something crazy and that's all you need.
As for what to do, try to find a big problem that can be solved with a nice and sweet app that can be built within 2 months. It doesn't have to be hard to build, it can just be a little app, but you need to try to look for magic.
An example would be Snapchat, super weird, crazy, tiny app, magic.
Hope that helped.
Just get out there and find out what problems people have. Ask a bunch of people which websites/apps drive them crazy.
With a bit of luck they will mention ones that they use regularly or pay money for. Once you find a niche product idea, come up with a way you can test your hypothesis, Lean Startup style.
The unsolved problem space that is solved by building a website is shrinking year over year. It would seem obvious that you need a larger skill set to solve problems no one has attempted yet.
Someone took on all banks and all currencies ($100T/year industry). In 5 years, everybody will think that Bitcoin is normal, but it was just 1 big thinker that it took.
But that's how human history works.
Options after about 10 employees are worthless paper. The real cash is being an early founder and owning meaningful equity.
1. Find an area with a lot of questions and not many answers. Create a content site. Attract 834,000 visitors per month. Advertising should net you $100K per year (this is an approximation and can vary a LOT).
2. Find a problem large enough for which a solution can be built with PHP and mySQL (since you mentioned that's your main skill set). Build a solution which costs around $25/month. You need only 334 customers to reach your goal.
How do you identify problems? Do some market research (using Google Trends, Amazon Top Sellers, niche forums, etc).
Good luck.
1. I need a cheap gpu powered pc, something like 300 cuda cores but with the ability to expand to 3072. I'm will to pay $1k for this plus the price of shipping.(Don't care if the parts are old)
2. I need to dress better. A service to pick out the clothes that I wear and should buy. Willing to pay $120 per year for this.
3. A book about how to make great conversation. The book needs to have tons of examples. Willing to pay $10 for this.
4. A book about 1000 ways to make people laugh. Willing to pay $10 for this.
5. A programmable human size android. That cost under $1k.
6. Designs to said programmable android. Willing to pay $100 for that. Should be able to hook it up to a 3d printer.
I don't understand the motivation will be for someone to use a such service instead of building it by himself ...
I don't know/care that it's a gtx 650. Just a device that fits my needs. Apple abstracts/demphasises certain details to great effect.
The cost of building one of these is (20 * 50) + 700 = 1700. If someone can build one for me at $1000 I'm money ahead.
It's easy to forget that knowledge acquisition isnt free when you already poses the knowledge.
There's a big difference between building a one-off rig, and buying one, working with it for a year or so -- getting your code right -- and the knowing you can get 20 more (updated and/or cheaper) -- that won't have driver issues, heating issues or flaky psus. Sure, a contract can help, but whatever you get "back" in cases of failures are always going to be much less than whatever value you wanted in the first place (eg: the hardware ended up being free, but you weren't able to sequence the genome because of glitches).
In short, don't underestimate the cost to acquire the required domain knowledge to do such a task well.
One can always hope that the new Mac Pro will be successful enough that there'll be a decent Cuda story there -- but I'm not holding my breath. And after seeing what Apple did vs Final Cut pro and OS X server (esp: hardware) -- I'd be wary of trusting them with any production platform.
Personally, I have no interest in learning how to build computers. I'm not into hardware[1] and have no problem paying a premium for someone else to just put stuff together, make sure it works then send it to me.
BTW, wasn't this Alienware's business model?
1. There is one exception though; the videogame console hacking scene.
There's an app for that: http://refresh.io. Better than a book since it customizes its data to the people you meet.
They set you up with a stylist, all the service aspects are free, then they send you a trunk of clothes to try. Pay for whatever you keep, send the rest back with free shipping.
The other ideas sound cool but I haven't ventured into hardware hacking yet ;)
If you succeed, write a book explaining how.
See which of the two foci suits your skills the best. Definitely don't start out with a free product.
Allowing people to choose arrangements that minimize their taxes, is the opposite of how tax law is supposed to work. Taxes should be based on economic reality, not what you choose to write down on paper.
It seems you are conflating what is beneficial for you, with what should be legal.
could you expand on the reasons why you think it makes sense for it to be legal?
Also, sell your apps (make shopping carts, ads, website) before you build product. That'll save you tons of blood, sweat, tears, time and cash of building shit no one wants.
Finally, what people like is funny. It can takes time for things to hit so let them simmer. Don't give up or close down an app right away.
I put the list on GitHub and updated it with new concepts I found interesting every now and then: https://gist.github.com/ndarville/4295324.
There should be something there to pique your interest.
Startups deal with problems, are capital intensive, risky, and high reward. If you want to potentially make a lot more than $100k in the next few years then, sure, go find a problem.
If you simply want to make $100k this year, then my choice would be to start a simple service business. No need to build anything new or solve a complex problem. The majority of SME businesses fit this mould really, everything from software agencies to recruitment companies.
Pick an area you have some knowledge in, start on your own, and execute to the best of your abilities. The main challenges are usually managing cash flow and the day to day realities of running a small business. But if you end up with 4-5 employees and stable cash flow, you now have your own earning power plus around 20% of the people below you typically.
That or review your CV, and plan the most aggressive route towards a position in a financial / high yield company, adding $100k to your salary as an employee could be feasible depending on your background.
Either way, the people who just stumble upon money are outliers. So the really short answer is just work harder and accept more risk in you decisions.
[1]http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html
Edit: Those who downvoted, please provide the reason also. Happy to have a discussion. I wrote the above based on my personal experiences.
I agree that it is very difficult to find the required momentum. Some things which may help, based on my experience:
1. Divide the whole problem into subsets. Identify others who are having the same problem subsets, and partner with them to resolve them. This way, nobody has to divulge their whole business model/idea and yet can collaborate.
At the smallest level, this can be as simple as posting a technical problem on StackOverflow and participating in the discussion that follows. At a higher level, this can be something like identifying a common person to write content for multiple businesses.
2. Keeping intermediate easily reachable goals. This helps to ensure you have momentum, however small it may be. Reaching those goals also peps up your spirits, especially when you are working alone.
[Lowest payout] Totally guaranteed money - [Highest payout] Risky very unlikely money
On the left you have a salaried job. On the right a shoot for the moon VC startup. In between you have the entire range from trying to build products for 'passive income' on the side, to going alone starting a small cash-positive business, or freelancing. Your level of risk is entirely up to you, and the reward will usually be fairly linear, within your own earning capacity and skill set (money is fairly efficient in that sense!).
Working more hours or quitting your job fits into that scale along with all the other factors. If your appetite for risk is on the lower end such you won't quit, then you will have a harder time competing with people who've positioned themselves with more risk.
There will always be the outliers who just break the model though.
1. It is not easy to add 100,000$ in a year; it is relatively easier to have a long-term strategy to reach that goal over 3-5 years. It's not a sprint, it's a marathon. I say this because if you try and fail after the first year, you should keep doing it until you succeed. To be clear: it's easier if your goals become: +20k in 2014, +50k in 2015, +100k in 2016.
2. It really depends on where you live, how much access to capital you have, and what your skills are. 2.1: where you live influences how much you can earn as a freelancer (of course, you can always freelance online, no barriers), how much you pay in taxes, how much business you can find around you. If we assume that you can work online as a software developer and similar, than this doesn't apply. Taxation does, though. 2.2: If you have access to capital, you can try to start a company, and make it profitable; then, sell it. Hard, but if you succeed, you probably can add 100k or more to your income. 2.3: if you can easily "sell" your skills, consider freelancing or consulting, even though 100k more in a year means a TON of extra work.
3. You might want to build something that you can sell; if that's successful, the sales can eventually surpass 100k. Examples? An ebook (scales better than a physical book), a software.
Problems I'd like to see solved:
1. I'd like to keep my photos and videos backed up, remotely, automatically; and have a much smaller (disk size) version of them on my computer; this way I can always consult my photo archive, but if I need the original photo, I can still get it from my online backup, from within the app/software.
2. I, too (like chegra), would pay to have someone help me buy clothes and dress better, but trust me this is a very hard problem to solve.
3. If I have a free weekend, I'd like a service that, based on my location, budget, and preferences, can suggest me 2-3 things to do with all details (fly to X and do Y, or drive to W and do Z, or drive to X, hike to Y, eat at Z, etc).
Hope it helps.
... so in that case, are you ready to work 80 hour weeks? If you're thinking of adding a side-business on top of your day job than you really need to treat the side business as the second full-time job to hit the $100k mark, which is possible if you completely jettison all leisure and recreational activity from your schedule. Good luck.