Ask HN: Has anyone here dabbled in non-tech entrepreneurship?

9 points by deafcheese 15 years ago | 10 comments

Has anyone here dabbled in non-tech entrepreneurship? Can you share your experiences? In the end, what made you choose/not choose tech entrepreneurship?

triviatise 15 years ago |

I run a couple of CEO roundtables so have worked with around 25 people that run non tech companies. What are you looking for more specifically?

One more interesting one is a guy who had a company in china make free samples of 10 types of products. He put them all on amazon forsale and one of them took off so he made more of that one. His net profit is around 300K/year after just one year.

Another one uses prison labor to manufacture electronic components. The recidivism rate among the inmates who go through the program is much lower than the average. Other industries include:

pet products, doggie day care, health insurance, HR consulting, hair salon, convenience store, restaurants etc. Most of them were never in tech, but some were and just wanted something more traditional. For example, the hair salon netted about 50K/year. One wouldnt make a living but 5 or 6 would.

vitovito 15 years ago |

I launched a seasonal product to ship necessities to college-bound freshmen called Dorm Duffle. You can see the flyer for it here: http://hirevito.com/oldportfolio/dormduffle/

Flyers were sent "to the parents of" over 15,000 incoming freshmen students for several universities in the southwest. We had one order.

Not one percent. Just one.

Market research might have told us that we might have been able to launch such a thing in NYC, but perhaps that in the southwest, people like shopping for their kids.

I don't see my entrepreneurship activities as tech or non-tech. They're all curiosity and problem-solving.

webbruce 15 years ago |

I first ran an apparel business that sold streetwear and skateboarding clothing to shops in Illinois called Kerosin (http://kerosinclothing.com ) and then we bought screen printing equipment to mass produce printed apparel and we printed for the University of Illinois departments, frats, clubs, etc. It was called Wooden Cotton http://woodencotton.net and we had a physical location aka rent and all that other good stuff. Just sold that business and now we're onto software to manage screen printers http://printavo.com

will_lam 15 years ago |

Yes, I ran an eBay business, selling signed comic books back in 2003 through 2004 during the retro comics craze (G.I. Joe, Transformers, Street Fighter).

I was doing something I deeply enjoyed and forged a new friendships, partnerships, and learned about price arbitrage and the timing of the comic book markets.

I didn't realize at the time, but I had incredibly low startup costs and did it for about a year. Paid for my hobby of comic books at the time and made a hefty $10,000 profit.

I didn't really "choose" tech entrepreneurship, I just fell into it after applying for Extreme University and got in (think Y-Combinator in Toronto, Canada)

iworkforthem 15 years ago |

I run a namecard printing business on the side, primarily dropship. I partnered a printing house in another country, I get orders/partners locally. And email my orders overseas for fulfillment.

I'm working on a photo scanning business now, similar to the first, customers mail the photos to my address in US, UK. It get dispatch to my team in another country. They scan it to DVD and mail it back to my customer.

katieben 15 years ago |

I teach Zumba (dance exercise), freelance. I love it! I've "monetized my exercise".

It's not something I'd want to scale, I prefer web dev for the majority of my time - but now I get paid to exercise, instead of paying someone else. And I've gotten to meet a LOT of new people - people I can market my startup to, and bounce feedback off of.

guids 15 years ago |

I built and owned a nightclub, if you have anything specific--business related only-- feel free to ask away

riskish 15 years ago | |

how much did you make profit?

guids 15 years ago | | |

I am an optimist, so I may have a skewed view; I put X amount of my own money into the project, which I sold after 2 years, I sold my end for X, so I made my initial investment back. During the time I actually operated the place I worked 60-100 hours a week I made roughly 50k/ year, which is obviously a loss because I could have worked a "normal" job, and made the same for much less hours, but imo I came out ahead because I learned more than a lot of people who pay 6 figures for their college degrees.

JoshKalkbrenner 15 years ago | | |

with or without the drug sales ;)