/biz/ - Business & Finance

[Anonymous No.426200]

Any other /biz/ owners here?

I'm going from over a year planning stage, to launching by, if the stars align, the end up next month.

Until today, I never once thought I was going to fail, but for some reason the thoughts have been plaguing me today.

I dunno why.

Just curious if other's out there felt the same at some point

[Anonymous No.426217]

I thought about opening a t-shirt business with prints that rich kids from my univeristy (and rich kids from local high schools) can directly relate to (not a hipster, retarded t-shirt business), specially because buying clothes here in Brazil isn't a good experience. Way too expensive, few options, low quality.

I thought about opening a pizza shop that sells "meat lovers" pizzas, because there aren't any of those here in Brazil.

I gave up on these ideas because having a business in an anti-capitalist country is hell, also because the cash return wouldn't be as nic as working in banking/finance, which is what I would like to do.

[Anonymous No.426222]

>>426200
You are going to fail.
Yes, everyone feels that way at some point except sociopaths and narcissists.

>>426217
Move to a capitalist country then, that'll fix all your problems amirite?

[Anonymous No.426227]

>>426222

I'm not moving to another country to open a pizza shop or a t-shirt business.

I might move to Canada or Australia though, after I graduate, get a MBA and pass the CFA.

[Anonymous No.426230]

>>426227
It doesn't seem you noticed, so I'm telling you that my post was sarcastic and it's silly to think moving to a "capitalist" country is going to make everything magically better.

[Anonymous No.426245]

>>426230

I didn't notice, sorry for that.

It wouldn't be magic but moving to another country might make things better.

Anyway, getting back to the topic of the thread: OP, tell us about your business plan. What is your business about?

[Anonymous No.426255]

>>426245
You guys have probably seen me around, I'm going into pet food manufacturing.

Right now it's just me and a whole bunch of equipment needed to make the pouches I use.

Think Starkist Tuna, but pet food.

I'm trying to position myself in the mid-starting premium market for now.

It's all human grade ingredients I use.

I've had a product launch before, but it went awful.

I hired a consultant who works in the petfood industry to kind of help guide me in the right direction.

[Anonymous No.426264]

>>426255

Yeah, should have hired the petfood consultant before ever launching a product. I imagine the knowledge about this market and how to succeed in it isn't publicly avaiable, like... there aren't books about petfood industry or petfood industry education.

Do you have good looking packages? It matters a lot for every premium good market.

[Anonymous No.426269]

>>426264
>Hired before

Yeah it was definitely worth it, and you're right about literature being hard to come by.

I've ran into "proprietary" information more than once while calling around just to see if I could squeeze some info out of their call centers.

Some of the info I have found is pretty awful, like the fact that 5 million pets put to sleep go into "meat by-products".

The packages are going to look somewhat similar to this

https://www.youngagainpetfood.com/10browse.asp?category=cats&ProductCode=92000

But the pouches will be matte white.

When it comes to the pouches I'm using, custom print min orders are at minimum 10-20k units. So I'm going to be using printed labels for now.

[Anonymous No.426279]

>>426269

Is "hired before" wrong? English is not my main language, you'll have to excuse me haha.

Calling call centers to try and squeeze information out of corporations... you're quite determined.

Anyway, 5 million PETS go into "meat by-products"? Really? How did you ever learn this? haha oh god, that's awful. What even is meat by-products anyway?

[Anonymous No.426284]

>>426269

How many people in your business?

[Anonymous No.426290]

>>426279
>Is "hired before" wrong?

I don't know what you mean?

>Calling call centers to try and squeeze information out of corporations... you're quite determined.

Haha thanks, I've got that before, hopefully that will pay off

>Anyway, 5 million PETS go into "meat by-products"? Really? How did you ever learn this? haha oh god, that's awful. What even is meat by-products anyway?

It's crazy what can legally be defined as "by product". Check out this article:

http://www.dogfoodadvisor.com/choosing-dog-food/animal-by-products/

I used to have it one my site, but it was determined to be too graphic and it might give people a bad impression.

>>426284
Just me, and theoretically my girlfriend, but for the most part just me.

I want to bring some people on as soon as possible for managing social media/sales.

[Anonymous No.426314]

>>426290

>I don't know what you mean?

You green texted "hired before" earlier, so I thought that writing "hired before" has some grammar mistake.

>Just me and theoretically my girlfriend, but for the most part just me.

Hahahahahhaha I just know what that's like. You get people close to you to do something with you and they end up doing almost nothing. Just stand and watch. It's horrible. But at least it's your girlfriend.

[Anonymous No.426316]

>>426290

Will check that article by the way.

You think a pet food brand needs social media? Not trying to be arrogant here, just don't know what that would be like.

[Anonymous No.426322]

>>426314
>You green texted "hired before" earlier, so I thought that writing "hired before" has some grammar mistake.

I was just greentexting the part I was replying to so it didn't look like a big wall of text.

>You get people close to you to do something with you and they end up doing almost nothing. Just stand and watch. It's horrible. But at least it's your girlfriend.

A guy on another board was telling me that you can get people to do things, but they'll never be invested like you are in making it happen.

I don't want to be overly controlling, but the few things I've had done by other people haven't been the best quality.

>>426316
The social media presence is more important than ever, the next generation of consumers (younger kids and teens) have been raised almost exclusively on social media.

I think there's going to come a time soon when even the TV goes the way of the radio.

But my social media stuff is basically my animals playing themselves, and talking to other animals.

It can't hurt to have networks of other pet lovers

[Anonymous No.426326]

>>426316
http://www.packworld.com/package-component/films/non-foil-18-oz-retort-pouch-provides-microwaveability-sidebar

Here's a better example of what it will look like.

Probably the same size, and the estimated MSRP right now is about 1.99USD for a two serving pouch.

So it's not super cheap, but it's also not super premium".

It's like a good middle shelf whiskey, like Johnny walker Red, or Makers Mark

[Anonymous No.426342]

>>426322

>I was just greentexting the part I was replying to so it didn't look like a big wall of text.

Oh. Got it now.

>A guy on another board was telling me that you can get people to do things, but they'll never be invested like you are in making it happen.

I don't want to be overly controlling, but the few things I've had done by other people haven't been the best quality.

You're both right. Other people don't have the same vision you have... it's sad. And if you demand too much from them, they get angry, they feel they're being overworked, they bitch about it, all sort of things can happen. If they're a close friend this can ruin a friendship, which kind of happened to me. Don't let this kind of thing ruin your relationship.

> But my social media stuff is basically my animals playing themselves, and talking to other animals. It can't hurt to have networks of other pet lovers

Hahaha, you're right.

[Anonymous No.426351]

>>426342
>'re both right. Other people don't have the same vision you have... it's sad

It's understandable though, when I did an internship a few years back, I never had much motivation to really do great, or above and beyond work.

More often then not, I would get what I needed done, and then research things that interested me.

I actually made a few thousand on bitcoin around the time it started to explode because of my free time at that internship.

> If they're a close friend this can ruin a friendship, which kind of happened to me. Don't let this kind of thing ruin your relationship.

Every business seminar, or business class I've attended has said that business will more often then not, ruin relationships, even within family.

[Anonymous No.426361]

>>426322

>I think there's going to come a time soon when even the TV goes the way of the radio.

What about news and sports, bro? Can't get that on Netflix.

>Here's a better example of what it will look like.

Looks nice, can succeed at attracting consumers. I don't live in the US so i don't actually have a good notion about price and serving size haha.

Anyway, I think your product might be really great, at least from what you're saying. People don't want to buy super cheap pet food because they care about their pets, but people don't want to put it a lot of people into food that will be eaten by a dog or cat.

[Anonymous No.426363]

>>426200
hell yeah I fail 7/8 out times. But that means I have 2 successful businesses because I kept trying over and over again.

[Anonymous No.426373]

>>426351

>It's understandable though,

Then I guess not giving a fuck about work pays off, right? hah. But you're right too, it's not easy to be motivated to do more than what is requested. Doing other things always seem so much better.

I lost money with bitcoin. So pathetic. I might be the only person who ever lost money with bitcoins.

I put in $100 on bitcoin just to try out, but I would need the money back in less than 2 weeks. I believed bitcoin was gonna go higher, and it fell like 20%... pathetic. The time came and i had to sell bitcoins. Lost around $30.

Not a big deal, but still managed to lose money with bitcoin. I deserve a prize for that.

[Anonymous No.426377]

>>426361
>What about news and sports, bro? Can't get that on Netflix.

Maybe that's a market ripe for some sort streaming service to netflix.

I know there's options out there, but nothing as accessible as netflix.

>Anyway, I think your product might be really great, at least from what you're saying. People don't want to buy super cheap pet food because they care about their pets, but people don't want to put it a lot of people into food that will be eaten by a dog or cat.

My first product actually was pretty well received by non-US posters, here's a pic, tell me what you think.

I'll probably still offer this on my site, but it wasn't received well at all over here.

The advantages of this packaged though is the way it's stored, ALL bacteria is eliminated, it's recyclable, and can be reused for your own purposes.

[Anonymous No.426379]

>>426373
>I put in $100 on bitcoin just to try out, but I would need the money back in less than 2 weeks. I believed bitcoin was gonna go higher, and it fell like 20%... pathetic. The time came and i had to sell bitcoins. Lost around $30.

It was definitely something you had to be willing to lose on, I had several times I almost bailed and sold, but I was like, well let's just hang on and see where it goes.

Which lead to me learning about trading strategies and things like that.

>Then I guess not giving a fuck about work pays off, right?

I wouldn't say that, I should have given the job my 100%, but I've always been really unmotivated until it came to me starting this business.

Hard work is good work, but it felt to me like it wasn't "smart" work.

>>426363
I plan to keep trying over and over till I die, if I have to.

[Anonymous No.426387]

>>426200
X-Filmmaker here, my business failed. When I first started I made the mistake of not charging enough and I did this for awhile to beat my competitors rates but I started struggling, finally some great opportunities came along but by then I was fed up with film, I started doing sloppy jobs, I could have made some serious money but I didn't enjoy it anymore, I also got someone fired for me doing a shitty job for his company, so I shut it down.

Not too long after my failure though I did some brainstorming and came up with a great idea which I wont share but I'm doing really good now and it's only getting better. My experience in failure helped me learn allot of things and let me see what others were doing in the business world which inspired me.

>tl;dr My business fucked up but I learned from it and now i'm making fat stacks doing something else.

Once you hit rock bottom you can only go up, and trust me I've hit ROCK BOTTOM.

[Anonymous No.426391]

>>426377

I liked the fact that it comes in a glass jar, actually i liked everything, the cat paw symbol, the recycled thing, except the comic sans haha. Comic Sans will never be taken seriously. It's a discriminated font.

The food looks too liquid I guess?

[Anonymous No.426393]

>>426379

>I wouldn't say that

I was just joking.

>Hard work is good work.

That's the spirit of sucess.

[Vanitha Naidu No.426401]

Business is about how much risk you are willing to take. Therefore work out what possibly could be some risk you might encountered and some respond you might be ale to manifest. Also business is about people, your customer, supplier and employees/ Work out up front how you are going to deal with each group. If you keep this three group happy, you are on your way....the best of luck...

[Anonymous No.426404]

>>426387
>>tl;dr My business fucked up but I learned from it and now i'm making fat stacks doing something else.

I've heard that piece a lot, that failure is really the secret to success because of all the things you learn.

I hope your new business does well, I understand not wanting to share it, I was apprehensive about doing threads related to mine, but 4chan has always been close to me.

>>426391
That little bit of liquid on the top is just after it settled for awhile, it comes out looking like this (pic related)

It's weird you like it too, almost all US natives hate it, but it's had great reception from non Natives.

Maybe I have a non US soul? hahah

>>426401
Thanks man, I think I do alright with people, I used to be very people pleasing oriented, but as I've grown more confident, it's allowed me to please a wide range of people, and still be able to direct when need be

[Anonymous No.426421]

>>426404

Oh, got it. Anyway, the product on the shelves would always be settled so when consumers saw your product they would always see that liquid on top. Perhaps you could have avoided that by using less water to make the product, i don't know.

Your product really appealed to people that like natural/fresh/organic because of the glass jar and recycled wrapping. I guess that americans just don't give a fuck about that?

I's like "ohhhhhhh fuck those natural, fresh things! that's for fucking hipsters. Here in murrka we do things the good old way: industrial processing and food chemicals that fuck you up".

[Anonymous No.426425]

>>426421
They are used to the processed plastic look, but I've heard "It looks like throwup" 9 out of 10 times.

I'd like to keep the jars as an option on the site, and maybe bring it around with me along with the pouches to see if some stores would rather stock that option

[Anonymous No.426446]

My partner and I are partnered with Amazon (Amazon Web Service) to consult businesses in our area to migrate physical data centers to cloud. It's still an incredibly valuable niche in our city (one of the biggest/most cosmopolitan of the South), so we're making good money. We'll have to move on and develop proprietary apps when the market becomes saturated though. I would recommend this area for people looking for business ideas though.

[Anonymous No.426447]

>>426425

Did the cats like the food?

By the way i think i just got over excited about my impersonation of an american and it sounded retarded, sorry about that.

[Anonymous No.426450]

>>426446
I imagine migrating to da cloud is lucrative in a lot of areas with larger businesses.

Where I held internship still had a huge data center on site that took up as much office space as our IT department of 100+ people did.

The cooling + electricity must be sane.

As a sidenote, I once used AWS for mining Quark Coin. Quark used CPU to mine, so it was pretty sweet.

I think I moved on to Azure because AWS will charge you once your hours are up without letting you know they're up.

>>426447
It's been well received by all 7 of my cats, and all other family pets I've sent samples to.

I gave samples out to all my professors in my department, and they all said the cats loved it

[Anonymous No.426454]

>>426322
>A guy on another board was telling me that you can get people to do things, but they'll never be invested like you are in making it happen.

Heh, that was me on /an/. And I literally just got this captcha like five minutes ago. reCAPTCHA must be some sort of psychic.

>>426446
Yeah, definitely. Converting old infrastructure to something more modern and efficient is very lucrative. I've thought about doing something like that in my free time once my schedule opens up a bit.

[Anonymous No.426456]

>>426454
We seem to frequent the same boards, I tried messaging your throwaway skype a few nights ago, but it turned out to be a guy I added a long time ago

[Anonymous No.426470]

>>426450

>cooling + electricity

Funny you say that. One of our biggest hurdles is getting our pitch past the CIO. These people have been justifying the existence of their inefficient data centers to the CEO for years now. They don't want the top execs knowing how much they can save by canning their entire IT dept which can now be done by a remote server.

>>426454

You have to pass the AWS cert, but after that whatever work you get is up to how involved you are in your community and how willing you are to get out there. I highly recommend it though, and I've only had moderate success. It's a huge area of growth for the future. It's like the accounting of IT, it's not sexy, but someone has to do it and most people have no clue about so will write you a huge check and leave you to it.

[Anonymous No.426473]

>>426470
I imagine the CIO argument is speed and keeping everything in house?

I did app development, so I really don't know a whole lot about networks, but I just remember going in there and it being cold as balls.

And running my own box at home that adds $50+ to my electricity bill, I assume those rows upon rows has to be expensive.

The cloud is just like any new tech, we're in the early adoption phase...at least I think.

I don't really have an informed enough opinion, so those are just my observations on the little that I do know

[Anonymous No.426476]

>>426470
>They don't want the top execs knowing how much they can save by canning their entire IT dept which can now be done by a remote server.
Hahaha, I'm honestly very amused when I see a huge inefficient department get cleared out, or a company trimmed down in general for higher efficiency in speed and cost.

My buddy's VP at his company and is extremely tech savvy, so he just cleared the entire IT department the fuck out quite some time ago.

And yeah, I know it's not the most thrilling of the development or infrastructure area, but I actually really enjoy revision for efficiency. It's just a maybe on whether or not I do it though.

[Anonymous No.426490]

>>426200
you're going to have to change your feeling of fear to excitement. either way you are experiencing the same pressures, it's just how you interpret them.

it's ok if you fail. i failed at 4 businesses before I found one that stuck.

[Anonymous No.426491]

>>426473

No they don't care about costs. Them and their buddies' salaries are all 200k+. They go for the security angle. Cloud tech is new enough that they can spin some security narrative. Of course when you explain how the servers store info(they're so cheap info gets stored across many different servers making it very safe), it breaks down very quickly. You then explain that any asshole can enter a data center and unplug servers or upload viruses to servers (this happens btw). They also don't want to have to justify wasteful spending and they don't want to have to fire a lot of people. We've personally seen IT guys squirming lol.

Small and medium businesses are a good area for this though. We did web sites for small clients to make money while setting all this up btw.

[Anonymous No.426496]

>>426490
I'm still really excited, I still get this full body "high" when I think of the possibilites, today just was a day those thoughts of failure started to creep in.

It may be lack of sleep, I dunno.

>>426491
I can see from both ways, for the company and you guys, it's overall better, but they have to switch over from years of the same operation mode, and have to fire people on top of changing the way they do things.

Most people are resistant to change, even if it's beneficial.