What Business Would You Start?

"But I also know there is also a place for intuition. You can't get paralyzed by analysis. I love analysis, but you need to know when to stop it and say, 'Yeah, there's something here' and roll with it. You've just got to do that. For me the trigger is always the day I incorporate, go down to the State of Texas or Delaware or whatever and do the papers. And I haven't done that with this idea. I still have 69 other ideas. I haven't crossed any of them off the list."

FREE BOOMERS' BUCKS

Name: Paula E. Chauncey
Age: 44
Location: Boston
Background: Banker turned financial adviser; founder of ?re LLC, a financial-advisory firm serving individuals and business owners; partner of 8 Wings Enterprises LLC, a company that works with and invests in businesses led by women

"The 77 million baby boomers born between 1946 and 1964 have driven consumer purchasing patterns in the United States since birth, and they will continue to do so till death do them part. And that's where some very interesting business opportunities lie, if you want to get crassly commercial about it.

"As the first boomers turn the corner at 50, the gestalt is becoming: 'What's the second part of my life about? What do I really want to do with my life, and how do I figure out financially how to make that possible?'

"I began to cross paths with business owners who'd been in business 10 years, 15 years, and wanted to go off and do something else. But guess what? Their capital was locked up in the business. So now they're wondering: 'How the hell do I liberate myself and my capital from this business that I spent the first half of my life building? And what comes next? What do I really want to do?' As I've gone about exploring this issue, people keep springing up and saying, 'Yes, I'm hungry for it, tell me more.'

"So my business was born, a business in which I work with individuals to identify and deploy their capital resources, broadly defined -- financial, economic, intellectual, creative, and other -- on behalf of achieving their dreams. I work with my clients around the financial-planning and investment-management aspects to finance what it is they'd like to be doing with their lives.

"The boomers are going to redefine what it means to be 50, 60, and 70-plus. And a vital part of that entails helping people get comfortable with the idea that money is a tool; money is a lever; financial knowledge and expertise is a lever to their dreams; it's a lever to the unique vision that they hold for their lives."

MINE THE INTERNET

Name: Paul Saffo
Age: 47
Location: Menlo Park, Calif.
Background: Technology forecaster and director of the Institute for the Future, a nonprofit research firm specializing in long-term forecasting, alternative-futures scenarios, and the impact of new technologies and products on society and business

"First of all, the dot-com bubble burst, but the Internet is definitely not over. Consumers are using the Internet as much as ever. The bottom line on the bubble is that everybody got the magnitude of the revolution right, but they got the time wrong. They thought this was all going to happen in compressed time. One of my mottoes as a forecaster: 'Never mistake a clear view for a short distance.'

"The fastest-moving part of the Internet is wireless. I don't know anyone who's saying 'I don't need broadband.' The only complaint I hear is 'I can't get broadband.' Or 'It's too expensive.' So here comes wireless, which at a minimal level is going to make that affordable and accessible. But more important, here's why wireless matters: the Internet was a revolution, but it was a revolution that came only to our desktops. And even before the Internet arrived, business was something that was happening less and less at our desks and more and more everywhere else. Well, what wireless does is it delivers connectivity to where we actually live and work and play. And that has huge implications in terms of new ways of doing business, all kinds of new services. So the fundamental question to ask is, OK, In a world where people are carrying the Internet in their pockets, what can I deliver to them that they want? How do you connect people to information based on where they are? That's a big space.

"One big secret is that most new technologies take about 20 years before they take off. And so my general blanket advice is, If you want to find something that's going to take off tomorrow, look for something that's been failing for about 20 years. And wireless data has been failing in one way or another for several decades.

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