There are Still Lots of Ways to Make Money!

My friend Kent and I, being old and bored, were discussing ways to make money. His perception of the next "bubble" (it is kind of staring us in the face) is alternative energy in buildings. There is still a huge amount that can be done to reduce energy consumption in buildings and there are a multitude of alternative ways to produce energy for heating and to provide lighting, etc.

(As an important aside, I am intimately familiar with the Gartner Hype Cycle. If you are on my list for this message and somehow don't know every step on the curve, you can review it here. Needless to say, we are climbing up the peak ... that's where you want to be)

Of course, there are companies out there with alternatives and solutions to alternative energy. Big companies with big solutions. Lotsa hardware.

But, as we saw with computers and networks, one place for startups to make money is in the spaces between major products. The idea behind the value-add proposition, be it hardware, software, or a firmware-laden box, is to hitch-hike on an existing product and make it "better."

Prime examples were the original multipurpose cards for the PC (QuadRAM and others), PC Communications Software (CrossTalk, etc), and all of the add-ons made by D-Link, etc. And, oh yes, there is Cisco... the archetype of "linking A to B" The upside is big profits and immediate retirement. The downside risks are: 1. Either company A or B puts the feature into their own stuff... thereby making you superfluous (Microsoft did this to everybody) 2. Company C will come out with a better product A LOT of people made a LOT of money in the "boom" by doing this.

The recent influx of money into SLIDE, see this story, certainly proves the point. Their apps for FACEBOOK are frilly stuff. Not that much code really. But, we all sit here saying, "Why didn't I think of doing that?"

Nice opportunities are still out there. You just have to "slide" into the spaces inbetween.