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I just borrowed $40,000 and want to start a business. Ideas?
- Thread starter ThLunarian
- Start date
Fusilli Craig
Member
This question coming from a CPA gives me a sensible chuckle.
Return the money.
Return the money.
I don't understand why you did not determine the viability of getting access to this API before taking out $40k in loans? You absolutely needed $40k before doing that?
maybe you're business plan was actually solid if that part came through but the fact that you let that slip by until after taking out the loan looks reaaaaally bad.
maybe you're business plan was actually solid if that part came through but the fact that you let that slip by until after taking out the loan looks reaaaaally bad.
LookAtMeGo
Member
*cough*
I'm not doing so well
*cough cough*
Doctor says only $40000 can cure me.
*COUGH*
I guess I could sell everything. Then I' have like $100 - $200.
*shaking*
*cough*
I'm not doing so well
*cough cough*
Doctor says only $40000 can cure me.
*COUGH*
I guess I could sell everything. Then I' have like $100 - $200.
*shaking*
*cough*
Diprosalic
Banned
Buy 40 noble breed puppers, raise them and sell them for profit, but keep the nicest one.
Make YT videos about raising the puppers for maximum profit. Meme-worthy material will double your win.
Cats will also do the trick.
Plan B: I know this guy, Artan from Kosovo. He's sitting on a huge stock of Kalashnikovs made in former Yugoslavia. He and some relatives scavenged an abandoned Serbian barrack when the war broke out in the early 90s. He's selling them for 40 USD a piece, which means you can get 1000 AKs. Now that his village finally got Inet, he can start selling his stuff. So OP, if you like I can PM you his contact. He doesn't speak English tho, but I managed to communicate with him by sending pics and gifs.
Make YT videos about raising the puppers for maximum profit. Meme-worthy material will double your win.
Cats will also do the trick.
Plan B: I know this guy, Artan from Kosovo. He's sitting on a huge stock of Kalashnikovs made in former Yugoslavia. He and some relatives scavenged an abandoned Serbian barrack when the war broke out in the early 90s. He's selling them for 40 USD a piece, which means you can get 1000 AKs. Now that his village finally got Inet, he can start selling his stuff. So OP, if you like I can PM you his contact. He doesn't speak English tho, but I managed to communicate with him by sending pics and gifs.
Heavy's Sandvich
Member
Can you tell me which bank? Might need to make a call to the regulators.
'I'm not a rich man' but you own three properties? Wtf?
You also keep saying you had a solid idea to start with, but your entire plan was apparently hinging on some developers that just kept telling you to wait a few weeks. You literally based your entirely plan on some other people pulling through for you.
That's not a good plan.
You also keep saying you had a solid idea to start with, but your entire plan was apparently hinging on some developers that just kept telling you to wait a few weeks. You literally based your entirely plan on some other people pulling through for you.
That's not a good plan.
Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew
Banned
Buy 4000 SNES Classics. Sell them back to the bank.
ebullientprism
Member
Take a nice first class vacation somewhere. You have earned it.
Transistor
Banned
And when it lands on 0/00 green you lose it all.
LyleLanley
Banned
Good point, sounds like his plan was flawed after all.
This. The bank basically sees OP as a rube that they can seize property from if he fails while also making money off the loan interest.
True Savior
Member
I can give you some football tips for you to bet.
This actually isn't a bad idea.
^^ The general idea this poster has is solid. Search for areas with minority populations across the country in the midst of gentrification. Buy properties in those areas and maintain them. Sell them for quadruple their worth years later.
Start your own version xvideos and profit.
Buy bars on campuses across the country.
Own a laundromat
RumblingRosco
Member
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Last edited:
TheJollyCorner
Member
Alpaca farms.
Invest in alpaca farms.
Invest in alpaca farms.
thisisneogaf.gif
LeroyPantwether
Member
Start a food truck making ice cream sandwiches in Belgian waffles.
Or start a golf cart shuttle service in beach community working solely for tips .
Or buy yourself the necessary tools to start your own custom woodworking / cabinetry shop .
Or invest in a small existing startup that is doing well and just needs a little cash to expand .
Or start a golf cart shuttle service in beach community working solely for tips .
Or buy yourself the necessary tools to start your own custom woodworking / cabinetry shop .
Or invest in a small existing startup that is doing well and just needs a little cash to expand .
Alpaca Farm on one side, petting zoo on the other. And might as well put in a mini-golf course if you have the space.
Pesmerga00
Member
Maybe they could invest in a robot. One that bends things?
UserNotFound
Member
What a fucked up system where an idiot who owns property can take out more by sheer virtue of lying.
(No way did you actually tell the bank what the money was for, because if you did they wouldn't have lent it to you)
Invest into securities I guess until you get your shit together.
(No way did you actually tell the bank what the money was for, because if you did they wouldn't have lent it to you)
Invest into securities I guess until you get your shit together.
ThLunarian
Member
I can understand people criticizing me and even ridiculing me a little bit because my original post is not explained very well and was also poorly thought out to begin with, but this is just over the top mean. I haven't lied about anything to anyone. You don't know me, dude. Back off and learn some forum etiquette.
MugiwaraCole
Member
Northeastmonk
Gold Member
Capcom has a very cool restaurant in Japan where every food and drink are Capcom game themed.
A MTG restaurant would be cool.
A MTG restaurant would be cool.
spazchicken
Member
You really should have had a solid idea and plan first. A passion that you could turn into a solid plan would be even better.
Be careful not to burn through your money poking around at ideas, giving up on them and starting new ones.
But I applaud you for taking the risk to do something on your own.
Be careful not to burn through your money poking around at ideas, giving up on them and starting new ones.
But I applaud you for taking the risk to do something on your own.
The easiest game is imo monopoly. Get some loans to buy some flats, using your 40k for deposits, then rent out the flats and use the income you generate to pay off the loans and ideally have a little extra money. Once the loans are paid off everything you make afterwards is pure profit.
Alternatively you can buy properties which are falling apart and do them up and then sell them at a much better price. Just filling in cracks, painting, carpenting and fitting in better windows and stuff would increase the value of a property by a fair amount. You could also open up a ping pong/board game bar or something, you just need to find a good spot and provide good service and thirsty people will check it out
Alternatively you can buy properties which are falling apart and do them up and then sell them at a much better price. Just filling in cracks, painting, carpenting and fitting in better windows and stuff would increase the value of a property by a fair amount. You could also open up a ping pong/board game bar or something, you just need to find a good spot and provide good service and thirsty people will check it out
You can't magically "start a futures market". Wtf are you even talking about? lmao. How would you even implement the infrastructure? The legal consulting alone would cost you well above 30k. How would you track prices of magic cards in real-time? How would you buy them all up? How would you guarantee against your userbase's losses? What if all Magic the Gathering Cards become worthless? What if people file lawsuits against you because something happens that you couldn't predict? What if nobody joins your website because you over-estimated the amount of people into this?
Has to be a troll. If it's not, seriously OP, I really hope you return that money. This won't work out.
No, not at all. They approved it because they have proof that he can pay it back, i.e. in the form of his houses. If he doesn't pay the money back the bank will take his houses with magnitudes of interest. You way underestimate them. They're not at all dumb.
As much as people keep saying "the banks don't care, they can just take the houses," the reality is banks hate seizing property. It's a huge pain in the ass for them and they never actually get the assessed value because they need to fix it up and sell it as fast as possible because banks hate large illiquid physical assets with a passion.
I believe that the OP really did have a convincing business plan. Why wouldn't he if he's a CPA? I mostly just think it was a big mistake to go into a field without the relevant technical knowledge to understand the work that needs to be done. The reality is, if you have to hire people to do everything your business is going to do, you're not really adding any value. Do something you know.
I believe that the OP really did have a convincing business plan. Why wouldn't he if he's a CPA? I mostly just think it was a big mistake to go into a field without the relevant technical knowledge to understand the work that needs to be done. The reality is, if you have to hire people to do everything your business is going to do, you're not really adding any value. Do something you know.
Dynamite Shikoku
Congratulations, you really deserve it!
He jelly
After looking at your Reddit post about the idea:
1: Judging by the fact that you're trying to get the pricing APIs yourself, the web dev you consulted is screwing you with the $31,000 quote.
This is something an experienced developer with Magic experience could prototype for you in a month. Hell, I'm not a particularly experienced developer, and I'm confident I could have a working concept in two months.
You mentioned before that you can't program and don't want to learn, but at the very least find a partner who is willing to help you with the programming in exchange for equity in the company. Sinking $31k is insane.
2: You need to be able to account for price manipulation, which means the easily accessible pricing API (tcgplayer) is probably not going to cut it, and StarCityGames is notoriously difficult to scrape. They've sent me enough angry emails that I've given up on getting their pricing data.
TCGplayer low and mid prices are very easy to game on low-stock low-visibility cards. If you're offering a guaranteed copy of, say, the SDCC 2013 black-on-black promos for current TCGPlayer mid prices, it wouldn't be too difficult for someone to purchase every available copy for around $2000 and relist them (with no intention of shipping) in the area of $20 . They could continue listing and selling nonexistent copies until your pricing was impacted, then have a group of people each reserve four copies at twenty bucks each on your dime.
Now they've bought out an extremely rare card, and you're forced to go looking for copies you agreed to sell for $20 + your booking fee.
Pricing APIs also have a lot of errors. Tcgplayer doesn't update as often as it should sometimes; for nearly a week, Shahrazad was listed as being ~$100 mid despite the cheapest copy being in the area of $180.
If you can somehow scrape SCG without them repeatedly threatening to sue, you still run into the issue of out-of-stock prices not being updated. I don't see a feasible way to run this without a single-vendor pricing metric unless you're manually verifying every "investment", but that means your users will only be able to book cards that are in-stock at StarCityGames or ChannelFireball.
3: This is the most difficult issue: userbase.
I imagine you envisioned a platform where the small percentage of successful predictions would be payed for by the vast majority of terrible speculators.
The issue is getting the terrible speculators to use your service in the first place, and proving that you're not going to screw them over by keeping the booking fee.
Your Reddit post was not well received, and after pucatrade caused point hyperinflation by selling their imaginary currency for cash, I really don't blame people for being distrustful of MTG startups. I have absolutely no idea how you're going to solve this, short of making introductory transaction fees practically free.
4: If you want to abandon this idea, repay the loan, and find another MTG startup to work on instead, PM me. I have a few great ones.
1: Judging by the fact that you're trying to get the pricing APIs yourself, the web dev you consulted is screwing you with the $31,000 quote.
This is something an experienced developer with Magic experience could prototype for you in a month. Hell, I'm not a particularly experienced developer, and I'm confident I could have a working concept in two months.
You mentioned before that you can't program and don't want to learn, but at the very least find a partner who is willing to help you with the programming in exchange for equity in the company. Sinking $31k is insane.
2: You need to be able to account for price manipulation, which means the easily accessible pricing API (tcgplayer) is probably not going to cut it, and StarCityGames is notoriously difficult to scrape. They've sent me enough angry emails that I've given up on getting their pricing data.
TCGplayer low and mid prices are very easy to game on low-stock low-visibility cards. If you're offering a guaranteed copy of, say, the SDCC 2013 black-on-black promos for current TCGPlayer mid prices, it wouldn't be too difficult for someone to purchase every available copy for around $2000 and relist them (with no intention of shipping) in the area of $20 . They could continue listing and selling nonexistent copies until your pricing was impacted, then have a group of people each reserve four copies at twenty bucks each on your dime.
Now they've bought out an extremely rare card, and you're forced to go looking for copies you agreed to sell for $20 + your booking fee.
Pricing APIs also have a lot of errors. Tcgplayer doesn't update as often as it should sometimes; for nearly a week, Shahrazad was listed as being ~$100 mid despite the cheapest copy being in the area of $180.
If you can somehow scrape SCG without them repeatedly threatening to sue, you still run into the issue of out-of-stock prices not being updated. I don't see a feasible way to run this without a single-vendor pricing metric unless you're manually verifying every "investment", but that means your users will only be able to book cards that are in-stock at StarCityGames or ChannelFireball.
3: This is the most difficult issue: userbase.
I imagine you envisioned a platform where the small percentage of successful predictions would be payed for by the vast majority of terrible speculators.
The issue is getting the terrible speculators to use your service in the first place, and proving that you're not going to screw them over by keeping the booking fee.
Your Reddit post was not well received, and after pucatrade caused point hyperinflation by selling their imaginary currency for cash, I really don't blame people for being distrustful of MTG startups. I have absolutely no idea how you're going to solve this, short of making introductory transaction fees practically free.
4: If you want to abandon this idea, repay the loan, and find another MTG startup to work on instead, PM me. I have a few great ones.
I am a supergenius and I have devised the following economic strategem for you that you may be freed from your economic malaise:
Put half of the $40,000 into Beanie Babies. Put the other half into gold-foil copies of Ninjak #1.
When the bank asks for its money, you can just walk in, hand them the Beanie Babies and the Ninjaks and walk out with the keys and the deed to the bank.
Put half of the $40,000 into Beanie Babies. Put the other half into gold-foil copies of Ninjak #1.
When the bank asks for its money, you can just walk in, hand them the Beanie Babies and the Ninjaks and walk out with the keys and the deed to the bank.
Zaraki_Kenpachi
Member
I'm sorry but you have zero clue at all in regards to what you're talking about. Yes, it's a hassle for banks to seize property but that doesn't mean they won't make loans because of it. Multiple banks give are giving loans for houses, cars, etc. based mostly on the assets the person has since they wouldn't normally be able to get a loan given their circumstances. So yes, they absolutely will give loans depending on the amount of assets you have, even if it's annoying to seize property.
Pretty much, who would even be the market maker in such a scenario to enable liquidity? I pray to god this is a troll thread because he is going to lose every cent he borrowed, especially if he's paying $31k just to have a website designed. His whole plan is terrible and shows a complete lack of understanding of how markets work.
NotTheGuyYouKill
Member
So what did OP do?
Fenderputty
Banned
What a silly post. The OP should chase his dreams. He should also not incur debt and interest for a business he's not yet thought of.
LordKasual
Banned
Invest in sex dolls