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A Quiz
What Kind of Business Would They Start?
Go ahead, it's your turn to guess. Simply match the correct entrepreneur with the response he or she gave. The answers are below.
The entrepreneurs
1. Nicholas A. Buoniconti, former all-pro linebacker for the Miami Dolphins
2. Mo Siegel, founder of tea maker Celestial Seasonings Inc.
3. Richard Thalheimer, founder of retailer the Sharper Image
4. Ruth Owades, founder of flower distributor Calyx & Corolla
5. Arthur Imperatore, founder of trucker A-P-A Transport Corp.
The responses
A. "I would start a company that would help large corporations learn to think like small businesses."
B. "I would create an upscale gourmet-sandwich-type franchiseable concept," including such sandwiches as Brie with tomatoes and chicken breast glazed with honey-mustard sauce.
C. "I am arid of ideas, bereft of ideas. Can I swear a little?"
D. "Women's health care, focused specifically on menopausal and perimenopausal women, is the most prime area in which to start a business. I would develop products for women who are going to have problems such as osteoporosis and cardiovascular problems."
E. "I would do something in the world of arts and entertainment. I just like making people happy."
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Answers: 1-D, 2-E, 3-B, 4-A, 5-C
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Do the Right Thing
Sheri Poe, sneaker maker: Battered women's shelters
James W. Rouse, developer: Low-income housing
Sheryl Leach, inventor of Barney, the purple dinosaur: Medical treatment for children in developing countries
Maybe they aren't just capitalist tools after all.
Sheri Poe, president of sneaker maker Ryka Inc., says that if she had to start a business, she "would get involved on a full-time basis with addressing a different kind of need. The issue of violence against women is not being addressed in a way that is in line with the level of need. There are three times as many animal shelters as there are battered women's shelters in this country."
Speaking of shelter, James W. Rouse, the developer behind such inner-city festival marketplaces as New York City's South Street Seaport and Underground Atlanta, says he sees an opportunity in "assisting nonprofit entities across the country in funding low-income-housing development."
And Sheryl Leach, creator of Barney, says she would start a business that traveled to developing countries to remedy such problems as clubfoot, cleft palates, or eye and ear defects in children. "These traveling physicians would be packaged in such a way that people would grab onto them," she says. "Monied people all over the world care about children. If you tapped into that current, you could receive tremendous support."
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. . . Or Don't
Jackie Mason, comedian: Vaporware
"I would launch a business where I could hire politicians, who are accustomed to making speeches and collecting money," says Jackie Mason, star of Politically Incorrect. "We'll just announce a business and talk about it, and people will send us their money. We'll tell them, 'A new car is coming; when, we don't know.' Then when it doesn't show up, we'll tell them, 'We decided not to make cars, we decided only to talk about cars.' When you come to get your money back, we'll tell you, 'You can't disturb us. This is how we do business.' Politicians do this all the time. They raise money, then they decide not to run, then they keep the money. It's the most disgusting thing I ever saw. There's no reason, in this country, to work for a living."
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And Now for Something Completely Different
Pierre Lamond, venture capitalist: Information-superhighway gambit
Bill Davidow, venture capitalist: Information-superhighway gambit
Ann Winblad, venture capitalist: Information-superhighway gambit
Remember how, during the 1980s, venture capitalists used to all stampede into the same industry, like disk drives and artificial intelligence? We're here to tell you that the herd-on-the-street phenomenon is now definitely deceased. Kaput. History.
No, they are never going to move en masse from one industry to another. That's because they are all going to settle -- forever, from the way they talk -- on the median strip of the information superhighway. Pierre Lamond, general partner at Sequoia Capital, sees a fortune to be made by starting a company that develops software that can compress video signals so they can be transmitted through a copper wire to every couch potato's inner sanctum.
Bill Davidow, the general partner at Mohr, Davidow Ventures, would go into business as an "information packager" for those product-starved 500 channels of the TV future.
Ann Winblad of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, "would be the Fox network of interactive communications."
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Geez, Rush, Can't You Just Make One Up?
Kit Carson, a spokesman for Rush Limbaugh, told us that Limbaugh simply did not have any ideas for new businesses.
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The Next Big Thing: . . . Er, Nothing?
Mel Ziegler, serial entrepreneur: . . . Er, nothing?
