Creating And Selling Companies

There is a huge problem in product creation:
a lot of products come with expiration dates.

And we are not talking about fruit here,
but some of the biggest product ideas that exist today.

Apps for phones, Themes for websites, even Electron Desktop programs,
need constant support.

This may seem obvious and until you compare these support needs,
with a finer category of products, let us call them Static Products.

My favorite example of a product is a seemingly trivial series of backgrounds,
imagine something made of of blurry circles that borrows from colors of steel.

Imagine offering that re-sized, cropped, and masked (to allow for transparency) for all the common resolutions,
from Apple Icons, 1024x768 Desktop Size, to 1080p, 4K, and 8K.

This is something you put in a zip file,
upload to Creative Market and never have to maintain, debug, upgrade, patch, secure, or refactor.

This is a product that never expires,
that never becomes incompatible or old.

The effort that goes into maintenance of applications and less static products is so massive,
that at the end of the day, it may seem like making a little bit less money would be, better.

Companies obviously want to maximize profits,
they will jump at the most complex that sells a the highest prices.

But the truth is that both simple products and complex can make big money,
but the simple products will only ever present simple problems, and that is a magnificent power.

I propose that rather than you making complex products,
you automatically generate simple ones with custom software that you never put on the market.

And then once everything blooms, and you have a hundred products that look OK,
you then turn around and sell your company.

And the first thing you are going to tell you potential buyers,
is that your company sells simple products, that require no maintenance.

A person who wants to purchase a company,
does not want to support all the copies of the product, they just want to sell sell sell.

This custom program that greatly helps with static and non-complex product generation,
isn't ever sold to a customer that will open a dispute or cause a charge back.

It is an internal company program,
guts of which can be insecure, because it just creates products and never touches the internet.

No potential buyer of your company will be worried about it,
they will be extremely curious, but it will also be well in their powers to pay someone to add or tweak, or fix a feature.

It will be seen as a factory asset, a good thing,
even if it is somewhat quirky.

I don't want to be too technical here, but if this program ever does have unusual requirements,
just put it in a virtual machine where its run environment never changes.

You can then expose a port to connect to over the network,
and you have a web user interface,

This means the program is setup once, and never needs to be re-installed,
it just runs on that machine, is any dependency does change, the virtual machine can be reverted back to an earlier state.

App publishers can't do this, they are forced to upgrade frameworks, rebuild applications,
release new builds, and continuously monitor for bugs.

Now let us expand on this Desktop Background idea and move into A4 backgrounds for brochures,
blanket designs for actual blankets, and even high resolution car wraps.

And let us upgrade the graphics generator to involve humans,
while it is great to have your product generated purely by a machine.

Once you see that you are making a bit of money,
why not use some of that money to employ an internet artist to make a unique design for you.

How about a Horse, it will look great on a Blanket, Car Wrap, Desktop Background,
and even a T-Shirt.

I believe that good companies are built with zero down - no upfront costs,
this idea has been a fine and fair teacher to me.

But I am certain that a lot of people will dislike the idea of Automatic Generative Graphics,
custom magical programs and virtual machines.

It may actually be better that way,
all we need to create a product is a unique image and there are many marketplaces where one can request a quote from.

It is probably best to contact local artists,
and even better to learn to use GIMP and create your own Abstract Graphics.

In my mind, at first,
it is very important that you learn how to use GIMP, as this will help you invent even more products.

Background Images are my favorite example,
as I have made over $100 dollars selling just simple backgrounds alone.

An honest hundred bucks is a big deal,
because you then have a real company that you can sell.

Please take a look at #BuildSell30 a community of business builders,
that spend 30 days creating tiny companies and then hope to sell them on MicroAcquire.

You should treat this as an exercise to invent more powerful ideas,
build ever larger companies, and learn more and more about outstanding Open Source programs.

While you need to learn to rapidly launch websites,
it is not all that good to host your own website at first.

I encourage you to build up a simple portfolio of products,
and maybe custom graphics and publish it on Dribble, DeviantArt, or similar.

When you have 15 - 30 items, apply for a seller account on Creative Market,
once you reach your first $100 turn right around and search for a buyer.

Make sure to create separate email accounts and passwords,
so that you can easily hand the little company away.

If you can't sell it, even on e-bay,
then expand your online presence with a digital goods store based on existing open source software.

The Creative Market setup is a safer idea than self hosting,
but some buyers may prefer a self hosted solution, where they can do their own advertising without Creative Market taking a percent of sales.

In closing I will list a few more ideas,
as I only used Desktop Backgrounds as a tidy example.

Rather than asking someone else to make an image for you, or even making it yourself,
get a camera, and go searching for horses you can shoot... Um, with the camera.

Here you are tasked with becoming a photographer,
taking pictures of Cities, Graffiti, Mountains, and Urban Mornings.

This is by far the best way to establish a fantastic portfolio,
you might as well setup an UnSplash account where you give images away for free and sell some as clip-art while at it on a commercial website.

A slightly more invoked source of Graphics, is Krita,
here you are tasked with becoming a digital painter.

I encourage you to take a Hair Painting tutorial in Krita to see how something seemingly impossible, takes but a few minutes to learn,
so as long as you follow the simple procedure and create a little dark to light palette.

A variation on Desktop Backgrounds and Beyond is Texture Sales,
this product is aimed at Designers that are yet to create custom graphics, take a look at Creative Market Graphic Textures for a nice Example.

Textures are also useful for 3D modeling, there are a few more files that you may need to provide,
but this can be automated.

To learn about Texturing 3D models take a few Texturing Tutorials,
and learn how to use Blender, it is very natural, and extremely rewarding.

Especially if you get into 3D printing, which I highly recommend,
as it will constantly encourage you to learn more and more about 3D modeling.

The worlds of 3D modeling and 2D painting are a step towards animation,
and that means moving pictures.

People make good money from internet videos,
and they are often in need of video clip-art such as slow motion or time lapse and maybe even tilt shift videos.

Video products are similar to graphics, here you will film falling snow, Urban Sunsets,
busy intersections, and sell that as clip-art, that others may include in their title screes or in the background of their credits, or even ads.

My favorite spin-off product in this area,
is leaving a camera overnight to record full 24 hours of sounds and commotions of summer days in Parks and Forests.

You can offer that as Stress Relief or a Sleep Aid product,
especially great for winter.

Creating Couch to 5K or 10K workout programs,
is yet another idea worth exploring, here you would be building a video fitness company.

On the other side of video is of course audio,
and here you have, lmms, another program you can study - here - to create custom music for your inventions.

Simple drum songs go a long way to aid in workouts,
and as with everything else you can get local musicians to build up a fetching library of song, that will make your company shine.

These are simple products,
but their Business Power lies in never requiring maintenance and thus creating a fetching company idea.

Try to view your companies as an internet bussines person
willing to spend a few thousand dollars to Micro Acquire a promising company.

They will not be interested in purchasing software that needs constant tweaking and security work,
but a dozens of high resolution works of art that cover a range of purposes, from phone icons to backgrounds, wall posters, and blankets.

...Or time lapse videos of snow piling up, or slow motion birds, or ocean,
represent quite a headache free library.

Once you sell a company,
you just make another, start with a simple logo and a short dot-com name.

There is just great power in simplicity, and we must learn to say no to complexity,
the static products will simply not weigh your buyers down with maintenance, bugs, security considerations, and even usage tutorials.

With each product you create, and with each company you sell,
you will gain more and more confidence in your abilities, and business experience - eventually you'll make a cool little company that you won't want to sell.