If you're a college student who wants to pay off all your loans... here's an idea for you:

It takes ~$5k to start and will make ~$30k a year of profit

It won't get you rich, it'll pay for college.

(..and will teach them more about business than they’ll learn in school)

The idea isn’t sexy. But it works:

**Plastic Moving Bin Rentals**

Everyone knows moving sucks. The worst part is being stuck with 400 cardboard boxes at the end of your move.

Instead - @benmlevy told me about Gorilla Bins. They dropoff plastic moving bins, & pickem up later.
Let’s break it down. Our goal is to pay for college (~$30k profit per year).

To do that, I think we’ll need $50k in revenue.

The avg move (a 2 bedroom apartment) is $180

To hit our goal, we need do ~5.5 moves per week
COSTS?

How many bins do we need to buy up front?

5.5 moves a week x 50 bins = you need 275 bins. Let’s round up to 300 to be safe.

Ok let’s hop over to @uline to see how much these bins cost
Bingo. Bins cost about $15 a piece.

$15 x 300 bins = $4,500 initial startup costs.

Time to beg your parents or a rich aunt to lend you money to get the biz rolling (...or just take $5k of student loan money and invest it here…)
These bins are tiny plastic cash cows.

You buy the bin for $15. Each move, you're renting it out for ~$3.50 per bin

~4 moves and it’s paid off.

Over a 2 year lifespan, the bin will get rented out ~100 times, for ~$350 in revenue

That’s a 23x return on investment, per bin!
OK so what's the fastest way to start this?

People waste a ton of time on naming, branding, incorporating. We’re going to do ALL that stuff in an hour, for like < $300.
First let’s grab a name. Everyone’s moving to Miami nowadays (thx to @MiamiMayor) so let’s pretend we’re there.

We want a simple name. Like the moving company Two Guys & A Truck.

Bin Bueno?
The Miami Bin Company?
….wait..
Miami Bin Boyz !

Name is available for $1/mo!
We don’t need a designer. Let’s grab a quick logo from namecheap’s free logo maker

Just type in the name and what it does..and it spits out some logos.

OK it gave us 3 options… I like #2 with the wave logo the best.
We’ll use UpCounsel to incorporate.

I hate overpaying lawyers for basic stuff.

If I'm getting sued. I'll pay top prices.
But for basic legal paperwork? Upcounsel baby.

$300 bucks for something like this.

Such a great business 👏 👏 @XavierHelgesen @SievaKozinsky
OK. We have a name, logo, and corporation.

We bought 300 bins, and branded them with stickers from @stickermule .

Now we just need customers (aka the hard part)
What’s our ad budget?

Well we’re shooting for $50k in revenue
$4,500 for bins
$500 for misc startup costs
~$8k in labor (pickup & dropoff bins) per year

If college costs $30k a year, that leaves you about $7k for a marketing budget.
The easiest way to get customers will be Google Ads, Yelp Ads, and offline stuff like flyers or partnering with moving co's

In most cities, there’s nobody advertising for the keywords “moving bin rental + [cityname]”

eg. miami, the company advertising doesn't even serve Miami!
And if you’re feeling ambitious:

1) Take this concept and franchise it to students in other college towns

2) add on a moving truck service to increase profits

3) or sell self storage leads to guys like @sweatystartup
Boom!

For less than < $5k of startup costs, you’ve built a business that will profit >$30k a year.

You’ve paid for college, and probably will learn way more doing this than anything you’ll learn in the classroom.
If you like this kinda thing. Follow me @shaanvp and get my newsletter 💌https://t.co/hyXkTjKWSo.

I break down ideas & businesses like this every week!

More from Shaan Puri

More from Finance

The Dutch regulator and DNB as financial supervisor are a tough cookie to deal with. In essence they hyperregulate EU-rules into goldplated Dutch rules which go beyond what is prescribed in Europe.

All NL-customers at British banks may thus be kicked out on brexit.

Thread

/1

If we start with the capital requirements directive, it says attracting deposits is forbidden. In article 9.

https://t.co/RYl7SXligC


Now the translation of that rule into Dutch law is slightly expanded to not only prohibit attracting deposits, but to also prohibit, having those deposits under custody ('ter beschikking hebben').

That's not in EU law, but it is in our Dutch law.

https://t.co/PsbWfNY3PA


So if you wonder how this would work out for UK banks and Payment institutions servicing Dutch customers. Have a read at the technical explanation of DNB, the financial supervisor and their summarising table.

https://t.co/LL0fAnYkRJ

Passive servicing of Dutch is not allowed!


Any bank or PSP in the UK that continues to serve Dutch customers (as in retail customers, professional players are excepted) can thus be subject to fines and policing under Dutch law.

Meaning we not only have Accidental American issues in payments, but also Accidental Dutchies

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And here they are...

THE WINNERS OF THE 24 HOUR STARTUP CHALLENGE

Remember, this money is just fun. If you launched a product (or even attempted a launch) - you did something worth MUCH more than $1,000.

#24hrstartup

The winners 👇

#10

Lattes For Change - Skip a latte and save a life.

https://t.co/M75RAirZzs

@frantzfries built a platform where you can see how skipping your morning latte could do for the world.

A great product for a great cause.

Congrats Chris on winning $250!


#9

Instaland - Create amazing landing pages for your followers.

https://t.co/5KkveJTAsy

A team project! @bpmct and @BaileyPumfleet built a tool for social media influencers to create simple "swipe up" landing pages for followers.

Really impressive for 24 hours. Congrats!


#8

SayHenlo - Chat without distractions

https://t.co/og0B7gmkW6

Built by @DaltonEdwards, it's a platform for combatting conversation overload. This product was also coded exclusively from an iPad 😲

Dalton is a beast. I'm so excited he placed in the top 10.


#7

CoderStory - Learn to code from developers across the globe!

https://t.co/86Ay6nF4AY

Built by @jesswallaceuk, the project is focused on highlighting the experience of developers and people learning to code.

I wish this existed when I learned to code! Congrats on $250!!