Free business models

These are a few ideas about businesses or services that may fill a niche but do not seem to be available from anywhere. Feel free to implement them or point me to existing suppliers!

Raw dedicated hosting

Dedicated servers can be rented from many ISPs. While there usually is full control of the administrative account, the machines come with an OS and the ISP's support has to handle reboot or OS (re)installation. An ISP could provide a completely DIY solution where customers rent a machine without an OS installed and do have remote access to the console -- some motherboards can boot on a serial port, or failing that some KVM boxes can provide remote access. Then the client changes the BIOS to network boot an installer of their favourite OS. If they trash the machine they can reinstall themselves. To handle hardware failure, real or imagined, the client could be allowed to install on another machine of the same type (perhaps allowing a short overlap). A refund scheme for unused time would deal with customers who fail their DIY install. This scheme would both provide flexibility for clients and reduce support allowing for competitive costs.

Short cables

Cables for domestic electronic equipment always seem to come in stupid lengths like 2 or 3 metres. To link a VCR which is below a TV, or stacked hifi separates, or a digital camera to a laptop or computer on a desk, a cable <0.5m would be more convenient. Someone could specialise in short cables as regular retailers do not seem to supply them.

GSM roaming within Europe with uniform pricing

Most GSM operators in Europe charge punitive charges for roaming "abroad". It should not be difficult for a virtual operator, like those that exist nationally, to negociate deals with some actual national operators, so that roaming between London and Brussels has the same price effect as 'roaming' between London and Edinburgh. (Partially done by United Mobile, although the pricesare sometimes not good and coverage may be a bit patchy.)

Eurozone transfers from the UK

Within the eurozone, bank transfers are required by law to cost the same as a national transfer, that is often free. British banks also have to apply this rule, but can apply it by charging what they charge for their electronic bank transfers on their own euro accounts, that is typically GBP20, which is punitive on small transfers. Someone with both a Eurozone euro account, and a UK credit card merchant account, could charge much less and still make a profit. Payment or banking services are (rightly) regulated, and this may be the hardest thing to get right.

Psychometric speed dating

At a typical speed dating event, the only criteria used are being single and within some age bracket. Bundling people according to even the crudest form of psychometric testing, however approximate, should result in better matched people.

Done

This section lists ideas from the previous section, that have now been implemented! I don't think anyone got their idea from this page -- most of these suggestions are fairly obvious.

ISA/OEIC trail commission repayments

In the UK, mutual funds pay commission to the intermediaries that sell them to individual investors. These are of two main types: (1) initial commission, e.g. 5% of buying price, and (2) trail commission, e.g. 0.5% of the investment value every year. For (1), there are numerous execution-only discount brokers who take no or repay the whole of the initial commission. They get their money from (2). Unfortunately, for investements that are kept for a long time or large, this can lead to undeserved rewards for their service which is just a one off forwarding of a form. An investor can change the broker who gets the trail commission at any time with the fund provider. The missing business would pay back the trail commission to clients, and take a fixed fee for the service. The whole thing can probably be run entirely online. This could be a service from a discount broker, or a service that only does trail commission paybacks to which investors would switch after having used a discount broker (which is not sustainable if everybody does this, but then it would force discount brokers to charge real cost rather than hide behind trail commissions). Implementation: Intelligent Money who charge GBP 35/year, and Club Finance, who keep 25% of the trail commission with no minimum (slight trick: they both sit on your money earning interest between yearly payments, fair enough but they could be a bit more transparent about it).

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