A few days ago, I called a friend of me. We were talking about the signal of entrepreneur opportunities for the gray market.
One of the most famous examples may be digital music. In the early 2000s, college students were busy sharing "illegal" music downloads. The record company was busy prosecuting college students and forced Napster to go bankrupt. Steve Jobs regarded this as an opportunity to create iTunes and successfully obtained all major record companies to sign a contract with a consent of $ 1, which turned the underground market into a billion dollar business. iTunes begged Pandora, it begged Spotify. Now we are here.
The gray market is booming when consumer demand exceeds the law. Many people rent bedrooms according to local laws; Airbnb appeared and turned it into a $ 4 billion business. Many private car companies have violated compression taxi regulations; Uber is here to standardize it to $ 12 billion.
There is always a gray market in the securities business, especially the employees of technology companies who hold private stock options and want to sell some stocks. New startup companies such as Equityzen are trying to bring the sun into this opportunity.
Throughout the Latin America, there is a large and non -formal market, which will provide you with errands. Three people from Colombia founded Laupi to formally form this market. They raised $ 1 billion from SoftBank, and are now one of the fastest -growing companies in Latin America.
In the work with the Miller Social Entrepreneurs Center , we graduated from several successful micro -credit startups to replace the predatory loan shark in developing countries with normal financial services.
Therefore, when you look for entrepreneurial opportunities, consider the gray market. Rich people are usually the indicators of consumer demand ahead of regulatory agencies and existing enterprises. They have gold inside.
This article has been merged into my new book " Launch Path" and is now available on Amazon .