You’re transported back to 1994 with all your current knowledge and $50,000. Your goal is to create the world’s biggest online shopping company.
How do you go about it?
As a further thought experiment, if you travelled back to 1960 with all your current knowledge and the goal of becoming the richest person on earth, what businesses would you start?
I’m sure it would be the copyright & patent office depository
Who manage proprietary product & design blueprints/paperwork/documents as well as musician/entertainment work catalogs.
Maybe different departments but all library of Congress…
Similar to when I found out about SESAC VS BMI/ ASCAP…
You would have to start in an industry with low concentration of publishers that you can order one item at a time. I don’t think you could sell music because you are dependent on the labels. It would have to be DVDs or video games.
What’s always amazed me is how Amazon did what Sears did… a century apart… while Sears stood by and watched its own downfall. Amazon eventually destroying Sears and pretty much all big box stores.
I’d use my $50K to convince Sears to partner with me in an Amazon-style distribution system. The railroad was the key to Sears first distribution revolution, the internet for the second.
I agree. My father managed a montomery ward catalog store. Which is amazon in the 70s. I think this is simpky cyclical. Next phase will be heavily in person commerce and everyone will wonder how they bought anything online. And then this questions will be: how would you capitalize on the farmstand movement of 2020? Or rather the farmstand-mart-azon movement.
Partner with '90s icons for exclusive product launches. Imagine the Spice Girls endorsing your new line of futuristic gadgets. Zig-a-zig-ah, anyone?
I leverage my knowledge of the future to get very rich betting on stocks and sports.
Fuck working, easy money is best money.
Buy 100% of Amazon before it gets big…
All these billionaires would outcompete me from the start. I don’t have the acumen or desire to live to work like these do so it’s just be stocks and shares.
Murder Jeff Bezos. That should give you a head start — nothing violent, though — I’m talking “he slipped on a well-placed banana.”
1960 you’d either want to start an oil company to take advantage of the growing auto industry/car dependency, or you’d want to get an early start on a computer company, sell to NASA during the space race and use that publicity to advertise home computers.
In 1994, I think I’d start a business similar to shipt. That way you can sell stuff directly to peoples doors without having to invest in inventory or warehouse space.
If you just make some bs company called Amazon then Amazon would have to use a different name and you just beat Amazon. Amazon now goes by the name Silk Road and you get to lol everytime you see it.
Build a search engine. Call it something like Zoogle. Once our ad business gets rolling, start logistics service for delivering anything over the internet purchased via our ad platform. Then start a cloud base web services operation.
The 1960s would be easy because you could invest in all the right companies but the 90s hoping to out do amazon? Goodluck…they dont let people like us in. You better learn coding with that money n buy a lawyer and a server. Thats your best bet
Warn people about the cuban missle crissis and every major event for the next 40 odd years until it culminated in a big doomsday cult bash on y2k and run with the money
Invest in Bezos
I work my way into office and pass legislation that makes it illegal to operate at a loss for the purpose of putting existing small businesses out of business so that you can then gobble up their market share and increase prices.