Starting A Business: Making Ideas Into A Reality

Hi! My name is Pranav Ravikumar and I am a senior at Flint Hill School in Oakton, Virginia. I have been taking a small business start-up course for the past few weeks, and am excited to start my own business soon. So far, we have come up with a lot of ideas that could potentially be viable businesses. I believe that when starting my own business, I should look to work in a team because I think that one of the fundamentals of running a business is working with other people. 

Recently, I came up with this idea of a business based around a “labor exchange” platform. I like this "labor exchange" idea because not only is it my own idea, but I think it is a viable project for one semester. In this day and age, a lot of people are not equipped with a lot of skills and therefore end up paying professionals hundreds or even thousands of dollars to provide services. I believe that through this business platform, people can enhance their own skills by offering themselves as forms of “labor” in exchange for a service. This is will be very cost-effective for participants. Revenue will be created when people pay for the service; essentially, it’s Match.com but for people that want to work in exchange for work. This is not illegal; in other words, no illegal forms of labor will be allowed. I'll have to research this idea and see if it already exists- if not, I may have stumbled on something really cool!

Note: There are already programs that dub themselves as a "labor exchange" as seen below, however, I actually don't think too many people have envisioned what I'm thinking of. 

As seen above, there exists a "National Labor Exchange"; however, this is a jobs platform, not a services network.

My second choice would be a tutoring business because I like to teach (especially subjects such as English, Spanish and History). This would be more centered around students at Flint Hill and their academic needs. Revenue would be at a rate per hour, depending on the subject. Who knows, I could branch out to YouTube and be like CrashCourse!

Regardless, I am excited to start a business and can’t wait to see how it turns out!