The Idea Synthesizer

 In one sense my list of core products is a simple one, if you disregard the sheer amount of Magic The Gathering (MTG) cards. I will simply be selling a set of decks, and single cards. However, MTG has over 27,000 cards, and hundreds more are added each year. It will be impossible to keep every card in stock, and much like a comic book store, my stock will differ in the collectibles it holds from other similar stores. My core product listing will be: Single cards Official MTG Singles - $0.30 - $800 Custom made "proxies" - $4 Decks "Starter" decks - $20 Custom decks - $140- $10,250  Proxy decks - $200 As you can see, MTG can be a very expensive hobby. To buy all the cards individually, a tournament deck can cost from hundreds to thousands of dollars. It can cost even more if you try to get the cards for a deck the old fashion way, by opening booster packs. This makes "proxies" all the more attractive for newer players. Proxies are stand-in cards that can be...

     Upon conducting some research, I was able to identify three competitors to my business idea for selling Magic The Gathering (MTG) cards as individual cards by themselves. This is commonly referred to as "selling singles". If Magic Greeting Cards is to get off the ground, it'll have to be able to go toe to toe with these other companies selling singles. Lets take a look at the following businesses.  The Magic Cove An eBay only business that purely sells MTG cards. What you see is what you get, and there isn't much depth to this particular business. However, there eBay page has 7.2 k sales and 99.9% positive ratings. Card Kingdom The business that I used to work for opening card packs. Card Kingdom has 4 physical storefronts and their own online website. Their website offers not only card singles, but pre-made starter decks. However, all of their starter decks are currently sold out. Each sales page for a given cards has a number of recommended products, much like...

Erik's visit to class was definitely an eye opener. While Erik has multiple successes as an Entrepreneur, what struck my interest was how he used authorship as an Entrepreneur. I've talked to people who have had their work published, but only get paid pennies per copy sold. The fact that Erik was able to make $4-8 per copy was super impressive. Combining that with paid seminars about his book was another inventive way to make money of his writing. Not all authors are necessarily entrepreneurs, but Erik shows us that authors definitely can be entrepreneurs. "Little Book of Gold" really turned out to be Erik's own golden goose. What I liked a lot about Erik's entrepreneurship is that a lot of his money was made through his own skills, rather than employing a lot of people. He does own a local podcast network, but it doesn't really make money off it, and it is more of a passion project. It's a small thing to most people, but for me, I really respect peopl...

 My first impression of Startup.com is that I don't particularly like any of these people. It's a good way to dissuade me from getting into this sort of business with friends. I know that the actions of these people make sense given the situation, but why put yourself in this situation in the first place? Seeing friends turn on each other over money is a sad sight. I also think that everyone in the story is in over their head in one way or another. Tom wasn't ready to be a co-CEO, but Kaleil wasn't either. Of the two, Kaleil was the more competent, but he also had massive shortcomings. He had trouble suppressing his ego and he wasn't able to articulate solutions, only criticisms. In the end, the third founder, Chieh made the most money. Tom and Kaleil were left high and dry due to the dotcom bust. During the whole saga, one point of intrigue did catch my attention, but perhaps not in the way you might expect. I think the break-in exemplified how the GovWorks crew, a...