Syzygy

I was hoping by now that one or more of us would have had a huge success in the entrepreneurial realm such that we could attract hundreds of millions of dollars like the Segway inventor did. That would've enabled us to start something really huge that would justify our myriad talents. I was thinking of something along the lines of cars that drive themselves or even commercial ventures into outer space.

But, that hasn't happened (yet).

So a second line of thought I had was to start with something incredibly mundane and optimize the business model since you can now get business method patents. As an example, consider roofing. George Kraynak almost didn't return to MIT for his senior year because he worked for a roofing company during the summer between his junior and senior years and helped that company so much that they begged him to become a partner. That was because he was able to calculate the area of a roof so their bids were more accurate. Otherwise, they'd bid too high on some jobs and not get the work or too low on others and lose their shirts.

The idea would be to go into something like roofing, optimize the business, apply for business method patents, open up branches nationwide, then use the combined purchasing power to further enhance profit margins.

We could start by forming a partnership to study the problem and creating a plan. Whoever is currently available to work it could be incentivized to start now and the rest of us could join in and start franchises in other cities as we become available. Nobody has to move if they don't want to.

I'm not saying that roofing is the choice, but it could be something like that.

Just a thought...