r/Business_Ideas

50 M here, not an investor nor a VC, but a consultant, with a range of interests, and looking for motivated established professional cofounders and startups to explore new projects together.

Anyone local in downtown Toronto doing anything interesting and open to collaborating?

Looking for any new opportunities in their business.

If you're curious too, then send me a DM and let's trade a couple of messages.

I keep reading on Reddit of these young people/wage earners having dreams of finding work, switching jobs, or moving and feeling stuck.

So my idea is to have a "warranty" program to help people accomplish this.

So basically you pay in $80 to an agency system and if you find a job out of town and show papers/verify with HR the agency gives you $1400 to help you move, pay a short term rental, storage unit, flights, and food money to float you until your first paycheck. It could be higher amounts also.

The people that switch jobs constantly would not be eligible.

There is a county in California that literally was helping people that are trapped on excessive public benefits bus tickets and flights to leave town.

This system would appeal to people feeling trapped and stuck and wanting a different career path.

People that would be paying in probably never move away or quit. The same way many warranties are never needed. It's just the security of knowing someone would help you leave your job and get settled elsewhere.

It could also help people that feel stuck to leave their partners.

I am not doing this one so you can keep the money.

I also had some other warranty ideas:

Having twins or bad landlord insurance---->

Which idea of three is your favorite?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Business_Ideas/s/ZOzMDpar45

Came across a case online recently - a corporate financing situation that defied basic lien protocols:

A company provided substantial funding to a business associate for a new venture. The arrangement was straightforward between the parties, but something was missing: proper lien documentation.

Six months later, when the venture struggled, the lender wanted their funds back. But here's the problem: The funding had been provided without creating any security interest or lien on the venture's assets.

Corporate complications emerged: • Board meetings became tense over risk exposure • Other lenders refused to provide additional funding • Legal proceedings were initiated to recover the funds • The venture's assets couldn't be claimed without proper lien documentation

What went wrong? The funding was provided based on trust and relationship, not proper security procedures.

No lien agreement was created No security interest was registered No collateral documentation was prepared No legal review was conducted

The executive later reflected: "We thought our relationship was enough security. We learned that in corporate lending, relationships don't create liens - proper documentation does."

This pattern I see frequently - lending without proper lien processes creates recovery problems, not business problems.

Question: "How does your organization ensure proper lien documentation in related party lending?".

I am planning to build a notebook like Remarkable but it is tunes to students.

So they read and write in the same notebook. It has an AI assistant integrated into the notebook and as they read and wrote its helps them with multiple things.

This is just a first thought but there can be 100s of use cases for this. For example AI explaining as you are writing or reading something.

Or AI tracks what you write and then based on that trains you on specific things you are doing wrong.

Again just a thought and a deep thought can be give to this.

Do you think this could be the next way of studying for the students??

Was reviewing a project file last week - a company had paid a former employee who wasn't working for them.

Here's what happened: The employee was laid off a few months ago due to poor performance. She wasn't coming to office, wouldn't focus on work, and was basically checked out.

During final settlement, HR processed her full and final payment. But one crucial document was missed - the employee's bank account verification wasn't updated after she changed banks.

The old bank account details were still in the system from when she joined 5 years ago. The payment went to an account she hadn't used in years.

Three months later, the company discovered the error when the employee came back asking about her "pending salary."

But here's the problem: The money was gone. The account was closed, and the employee had moved.

HR had to spend weeks tracking down the employee and recovering the money. Even then, legal action was needed to get it back.

This happened because of one small process gap - not updating employee banking details during final settlement."

Question:"What process gaps have cost your organization money?"

Everyone out there is throwing around the term "AI agent" right now and most explanations are either pure hype or pure jargon. Here is a simplified explaination  from someone who actually builds these stuffs :)

In simple words, A chatbot gives you an answer and an agent does the thing.

ChatGPT style AI is like a really smart consultant. You ask something, it gives an answer and then it sits there waiting for your next question. It still depends on you for every step.

An agent is more like an employee. You give it a goal instead of a question and it figures out how to do it , does the work,  checks to make sure everything is okay and keeps going until the job is all done

Here is a simple test…. a chatbot can tell you how to follow up with a lead. An agent can actually send the follow up, writes down the response and books the meeting on your calendar.

Now here's what's actually going on behind the scenes, because once you understand how things work…you stop falling for the hype.

An agent is really just a language model with a few extra things added to it.

Number one is tools. This is what makes a difference. On its own an LLM can only produce text but tools give it ability to do things. A tool is basically permission to take a real action like sending an email, reading your calendar, updating a row in your CRM, searching the web, running a payment. When people say an agent did something…what actually happened is the model decided which tool to use, filled in the details, and then the tool executed it. If you do not have tools you do not have an agent.. It's just a chatbot with confidence.

Number two…. memory. A raw model forgets everything the second the conversation ends. Agents have two kinds of memory strapped on. Short term memory is the running context of the current task…. what it's done so far, what worked and what failed. Long term memory is stored outside the model, usually a database it can write to and search later. That's how an agent remembers that a specific customer already complained twice, or that you prefer meetings after 2pm. Without memory every task starts from zero and the agent is useless for anything ongoing.

Three…. the loop. This is the part almost no one explains. An agent runs on a cycle…. it plans what to do, acts on that plan, checks what happens and adjusts its next step. It breaks your goal into smaller steps, tries the first step, looks at the result, and decides what to do next based on what actually happened. If a step fails it retries or takes another route instead of just stopping. This cycle is what makes the difference between an intelligence system that just talks and the one that actually works . A chatbot runs the loop only once but an agent runs it until the job is done.

That's all to it. A model, some tools, a memory and a cycle that keeps running. Everything else is just marketing.

Where this actually matters for a normal business…. lead follow up is the biggest one. Most businesses take hours or days to respond to an inquiry. Whereas an agent responds in just minutes, every single time, even at  2am on a Sunday. When you take long to follow up it can be a big hidden loss of money for your business. Apart from that…. the same 20 support questions that make up 80% of your tickets, and the boring admin like invoicing, reminders, and chasing unpaid bills.

Lemme explain the math. If an employee spends 10 hours a week on copy paste work at 25 bucks  an hour that's 13k bucks a year spent on tasks that follow the same steps every single time. That's what agents are made for. And there's a second effect that people miss. Customers don't just pay for the result…. they pay for how fast and how easy it is to get. Anything that cuts time and effort out of your delivery makes what you sell MORE valuable and cuts your costs at the same time. Most investments don't do both.

The honest truth…. agents are not magic. If your goals are not clear you get vague results. The loop can go sideways, so you still want a human reviewing anything important, especially early on.  The businesses that are actually winning with this aren't automating everything. They pick ONE repetitive rule based task, get an agent doing it reliably, then move to the next one.

If you're wondering where to start…. write down every task your team does more than 10 times a week that follows roughly the same steps. That list is your plan for automation.

I have a full time job (which I dislike) and for years been looking for a sidehustle to bring in a grand or so a month or a business idea to run outside of work hours with a view to switching at some point. My problem is ideas. I have money and skills but struggle with ideas, and those i do have which i think are good, I usually put on a list and if I do start looking at them i either give up or switch to the next one dropping the previous. I think part of it is due to not being convinced that the idea is good enough, but often found someone else has done it later and done ok. Anyone else have this issue and if so how did you overcome it.

Some examples are... I started screenprinting my own art, setup my own woocommerce shop to sell so no cost apart from hosting and materials. Sold a few but gave up as marketing online was difficult and my art didnt fit with local markets and fairs. Also used to flip art prints but getting stock on drops became difficult. pivoting to printing tees. Have an idea for a brand with limited edition drops.

I used to collect records, primarily house music and as part of digging through records i learnt prices of other genres. I would buy collections of records, cherry pick a few which i would resell for a good profit and then reslist the collection and usually get my money back or better on those. I couldn't make this a business as getting the stock was time intensive and difficult to find so gave up.

I have a background in IT support in financial markets so can create a website easily. I used to drop catch domain names and would trade domains. It used to be the case you could put up a one page site using a keyword domain and it would rank on page one of google for that keyword. Put some adsense and affiliate links on it and could make some money. Google killed that. Finding things to sell was a problem.

I have a good idea for a short children's book which is 90% written but needs illustration so sat doing nothing. Have a movie idea with half written script but moved on as i felt no chance doing anything with it.

Im now thinking about buying equipment in order to make a physical product to sell. Looked at lasers, 3d printers, cnc, drone, among other things.

Also looking at creating a supplement for humans or dogs, beauty products etc..

I really think I need a business partner but finding one who you can trust is difficult. I need someone who i can bounce ideas off and vice versa, but you dont want to tell strangers your ideas and they dont want to tell you theirs. What's worse is ideally that partner needs to be someone local ish you can meet face to face. I have posted on here about having money to invest etc and just inundated with spam etc.

Anyone overcome these issues?

Hi all. Sitting down today to get organized before applying for a business license. I'm going to start a pet-sitting business from my house here in LA.

I’ve looked into the pros and cons of different types of businesses, and I’m thinking of registering as an LLC or a sole proprietorship. My question is, aside from taxes, is one better than the other? I’m planning on a small service area and being the only person, for now. Even if I do expand in the future I’m looking to keep it small.

Thanks in advance.

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You just received your EIN for your shiny new LLC. However, your original business idea doesn't seem so viable due to current market trends. What do you do to generate cash flow until favorable winds shift? Or do you just look for funding regardless ?.

\-Wyoming LLC taxed as S corp. Living in NYC

\-800 credit score.

\-Experienced sales person (Real estate, timeshare, hotel room blocks(corporate), corporate travel contracts, etc.

The original idea was to build an app but certain parts of the plan have changed. I'm looking into multiple ventures right now, I would like to hear from others that have been in this situation

In this age of AI, what foundational skills do you think are missing in elementary and middle schools? Looking to start something B2B in the school sector but not sure where to start. Certainly don’t want to be another AI or robotics program. Looking for something foundational and where there is a gap. Appreciate any inputs or pointers.

First of all, I'm 35... from childhood what I remember is, I wanted always build something better, then what I got as a gift from parents. I always destroyed this toy to molekulare layer (metaphor for components layer) and tried modify it somehow.

Just this thing is, I never stopped to try to build something better, then what products I daily use.

I always did it in my head, while my brother was good in chess, chess was not visual for me, so the process in my head to develope better product was enough with visuals in my head.

In 2019 while covid time, I understood that all my ideas are just a fantasy of an immature child.

I was a mechanical engineering student (late student: no money, and no study). Like a hamster loop. Just to study, not enough money.

And I decided to start a startup, I invested my last money to hire an fullstack guy.

And I understood, that you will never be able to transfer your idea 1:1 how is in your head to someone.

So had to go to Creation Monastery: a long way, to master of all skills, thats needed to be able to build everything what ever you want to build.

So I head to learn, how to build something, from all perspectives. First UI/UX, because I was a user, and the User interface and user experience where nearest entry point for me.

I understood that good UI has 2 meanings: 1 from a business perspective, second from a user perspective.

And your goal ist to find a golden middle between them.

So i was about for 3 years UI/UXler.

Thet I started to learn coding, but if you are Ui/uxler you understand of all terminology of frontend development. So you have to just learn how to build the code side.

It was pretty easy, I always thought that: you can be programmer, just if you are some Olympide winner of whole galaxy. (But I can say it just after I did this way back, when I was learning it was pretty hard))

And from day one while every one was learning how to write code for fronted, I was learning how to build frontend, and how to build backend, how to deploy, what is realtime, what are databases, why sql and why noSql...

After 6 moths of studying code I've got a offer to be a intern. After that i started write frontend.

And I decided to finish my mechanical engineering study like plan B should always be there.

While studying I've got a job as a fullstack developer, to build complex dashboard for one huge company. This was my first time where I could prove myself.

After 1 year I've got the full-time job at this company.

I'm automating the manual processes in the company, like weekly kpis, instead of 40 min copy pasting, just with one click you get report.

Or digital twin of your factory, to see all the processes what are working now. And control from one place.

For 3 years I mastered my fullstack skills.

Last 2 years I did over 100 pet projects, in after work time. And last 2 years real product's, but from users perspective. And never looked from a business perspective. What I understood 2 months ago, while launching a cursor for engineering. Like agentic workspace where you can to work with agents, but everything accept code) like phyton code but just for science.

Nobody wants to have it, because nobody understands it, because I cannot explain with simple words, so I don't know how to sell...

And I started now, to learn how to sell.

First thing what I understood is, find one problem, and this problem will have one user. So you don't have to run after all users.

And it's cheaper and esear to get one user.

Second, do not sell a product, sell the ROI of this product.

What business get from your product, if they use them.

So decided to sell automation... but the problem is under automation everyone understands AI automation like zapier, n8n or something like that. And not old-school automation.

So i have to find the solution for this problem (working on)

And here are my ideas:

The idea of Ikea is so genius, and they are not around whole world. I would love to copy them to other countries(needs money as fuck, and also trust of investor, you should be at least maker with one exit behind).. i can build whole factory processes to get any furniture. But now money for factory:x.

Restaurants, But bring the Spain vibe inside. And delicious food.

Drones for large scale transportation.

If you didn't understood, then sorry, I was always bad in writing. And English is not my strength.

I got a quote from an attorney here in Dallas for $1,500, but the Texas Secretary of State's website says it's $300.

Am I missing something? Is the attorney doing a bunch of other stuff, or are they just filling out a form and charging me $1,200 to do it plus the filing fee?

Hello,
I’m a 19-year-old student who recently graduated from high school and will be starting college this September.
I’ve been thinking about creating affordable robotics kits and courses for children. I want to offer “build your own” projects, such as small cars, robotic arms, and other fun electronics projects. My idea is to create three levels: Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced, so that kids of all ages and skill levels can learn and challenge themselves.
My goal is to make these kits and classes as affordable as possible. In the beginning, I’m not focused on making a profit. When I was younger, I never had the opportunity to learn robotics on my own and was lucky to receive help from others. I’ve also realized that many robotics classes are very expensive, and I want to make this kind of education accessible to more children.
I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you think this is a good idea? Are there any challenges I should be aware of?
Thank you very much!

I've been looking at the "snail mail club" trend — creators sending monthly physical mail for 8−15/month.

Examples: TheFlowerLetters, LettersFromAfar,MossHeartMailClub, LetterJoy

The niches are
-- love letters from various eras
-- architecture, countries, etc
-- whimisical letters, encouragenements, stickers
-- history content

Some scale to 5,000+ subscribers ,which costs $8−15/*month or $*50k/month MRR at that price point.

The issue: almost all of them lean heavily feminine / artsy / crafty — stickers, washi tape, floral illustrations. I'm wondering if there's room for something more gender-neutral and grounded.

A bit about me: Single, male, finance background. Went through a 6-month depression. I used to run an investment newsletter and a company.

Ideas I'm workshopping (all close to my heart):

1. Story of the Month — profile on someone past or alive who overcame adversity
2. Personal Encouragement from Me
3. Postcard of an F&B spot in my home country + a nudge to "bring someone you've lost touch with"
4. Curated Spotify playlist — upbeat, mood-setting

Would love thoughts, especially from anyone who's tried a mail club or subscribes to one. What would make you sign up for something like this? What's missing or how can I become better?ve some suggestions or advice for me?

So I've seen a lot of people on Reddit asking how to get web design clients, so I figured I'd make a post about what's been working for me.

If you don't run a web agency, this probably isn't for you.

One of the biggest lessons I've learned in my 4 years running a web agency is that the best businesses to target are the ones that already have a website.

There are 3 simple reasons for that.

First, the number of businesses with outdated websites is way higher than most people think. I'm talking about websites with outdated designs, poor mobile optimization, slow loading speeds, weak SEO, and confusing layouts.

Second, the fact that they already have a website proves one important thing. They understand the value of having one. You don't have to convince them that a website is important because they've already invested in it before.

Third, selling becomes much easier because they're already familiar with paying for a website. In many cases they're still paying monthly for hosting or maintenance, so paying to improve it isn't a completely new idea to them.

Now that we know who to target, how do we actually reach them?

Personally, I recommend email outreach.

The problem is that manually reviewing websites and writing personalized emails for every business takes forever.

Instead, I'd automate the whole process.

I use a tool called Swokei. You upload a list of businesses with websites, it automatically analyzes each one, then turns issues with design, layout, speed, mobile optimization, and SEO into personalized outreach emails.

Not generic reports that business owners don't care about.

Actual emails explaining what's wrong with their website, why it matters, and how it could be affecting their business.

That allows you to send outreach at scale while still keeping every email relevant.

In my experience, this leads to much higher reply rates because you're pointing out something specific that's potentially hurting their business. That naturally creates urgency while also giving you the chance to offer a solution.

This is the approach I've been using for a while now, and it consistently brings me an interested reply rate of around 5–9%.

I'm curious how everyone else is getting web design clients these days.

I'm building Subcidys, a platform for accounting, invoicing, GST, and business finance management for Indian MSMEs.

One thing I've realized is that founders spend far more time managing operations than actually growing the business.

If you were building or running a small business today:

What would you automate first?

I constantly hear you should not rely on a paycheck to get rich/be able to retire.

I understand what they are saying but coming up with a business idea while you are working 9-5 especially when most businesses fail is not the easiest thing in the world.

I have a decent paying job but still want to have a business on the side.

How did you all go about starting a successful business and coming up with the ideas without going broke by spending all of money on the business?

Hey everyone I like millions of other people love to golf and practice at a driving range. I wish ranges were able to simulate course conditions better than just being an open field.

My idea is to open a golf training facility that imitates and mimics on course conditions.

Some things I have thought about would be to emplace large clusters of trees for shot shaping and narrow fairways to include cutting the range into fairway/2nd cut to mimic the course. Have areas that you can hit off slopes, fairway bunkers, pine straw… etc all on the line to be able to practice different conditions that can be found around the country. As well as an extensive short game area for chipping, putting, bunkers.

I would make this a members only training facility to limit the amount of problems that come with youth and new golfers that don’t love and respect the facilities as much as the game. But making the price of entry competitive and not country club like. I would plan to get a liquor license for beer and drinks and what not but maybe not food due to profit margins on the cost of food and facilities.

For the clubhouse/ pro shop I would like to include locker rooms that include showers/ lockers/ maybe saunas or some type of low maintenance high desire recovery aid.

I want the average person to be able to feel like they belong to a club without the financial burden of club prices and demeanor.

Please ask any questions or shoot any ideas to improve my concept. And put in the comments what you as a golfer would be willing to pay a month for access to a high end training facility if it was near you.