$100 startup

Nice take on how business can look like in nowadays world. In general book draws a picture of modern entrepreneurs, who decide to skip typical corporate culture and start earning money as independent consultants or freelancers. Mostly doing things which they love or at least are interested in.

The message is about figuring out where there’s an overlap between what you like to do or just simply love, and how this hobby and passion could get sold to other people; how other people could benefit from your knowledge and experience which you’ve gained by doing something you love?

Vision of becoming independent and having to work less than an abstract 8 hours per day is very appealing.. Book helps you understand, that there indeed are people who lead comfortable lifestyles with no hassle. I think it’s worth to read the book just to see how people achieved that.

Being in Bay Area and chatting with random people let to experience stories like these mentioned in the book on a daily basis. At Stanford’s music show I’ve met a couple doing and selling music over iTunes. They claimed to lead relatively comfortable lifestyle by only doing their own music and selling it to people. I believe it was a music used in films and animations. I explicitly asked if they’re good, and they honestly said: mediocre. True is Victor Wooten and Frank Gambale would have answered the same, but…

Interestingly PayPal is mentioned as the technique of selling products/services. This is quite interesting. Obviously I see nothing wrong with being paid over PayPal, however further study on this topic would be required, to do it legally, I believe (read: taxes?)

Funny thing is that before this study, I believed businesses like that could only be treated as an additional source of income. Amounts of money mentioned in this book are pretty interesting. We’re talking about REAL money earned on a monthly basis and largely exceeding typical full-time pay.