Unique Ts - The motivation

Making custom T shirts kinda sucks. It’s really not economical to make only one. You need to make the image, you need to cut the vinyl, then you need to transfer the vinyl onto the silk screen. Only then do you get to make the (one color) t-shirt, and it becomes much more time-consuming if you want to use several colors. Using the normal screen printing process, it could cost 40 dollars in labor alone.

Community Bonds - The pitch

Don’t let the free market hold you back, if your community needs something, take it into your own hands and make a community bond.

Community Bonds - The growth potential

I think that there could be a community bond of about a million dollars for every 100,000 people per year. By taking a 10% cut, that would be $300 million a year in revenue.

Community Bonds - The fun part

I would enjoy making a product that gets people together to work towards a common cause. This needs to be able to be easily shared and spread through email, social networks, and even fliers and other ways of communication.

Community Bonds - The monetization

There are two monetization models. The first is that Community Bonds takes a 10% cut of the bonds raised. The second model is for Community Bonds to be the bank and make the loans. This could cut out a middle man and because the risk would be low, the interest rate could also be low and profit could still be made.

Community Bonds - The idea

Members of a neighborhood or community don’t have direct control over the businesses that are nearby. Sometimes there is a pent up demand for a good or service in a neighborhood. For example, people cite “food deserts” in inner cities. But it doesn’t just happen to inner cities, the suburbs can have the same problems. The primary problem is a disconnect between the desires of the people and the supply from the market. The solution is to show those desires and force the market to react to them. The way this would happen is through a community bond.

Members of a neighborhood would come together and say they want a business that currently isn’t in their neighborhood. They would all put money forward to prove their interest. This money would serve as part of the loan to open the business in the neighborhood. Let’s go through a couple of examples.

High-end Baby Store

There is a neighborhood that wants a store to buy organic and fairtrade clothing and toys for their babies. They start a campaign on the community bonds website. Five hundred members of the community put in $200 each, which they will get back in goods if a store moves in or will be refunded if not. That money is put into the bond (a total of $100,000). Community Bonds then searches for high-end baby stores that may want to expand into the neighborhood and local entrepreneurs who would want to start their own high-end baby store. Community Bonds then works with local banks to get a low interest loan for the business that makes the best proposal.  The loan would phase in as the community members take their money out by purchasing baby things on their $200 credit. From the bank’s point of view, this is a very low risk business, people have expressed demand for the store and there are several months of sales guaranteed. The only concern that the bank could have is that the demand might dry up quickly. To ease that concern, members of the community are only allowed to get back at most $20 a month through purchases.

Local Organic Food

The problem of satisfying demand is easier the more direct it is. The further up the supply chain you need to go to satisfy the demand, the worse the free market does. For example, a community might not have access to local organic produce, not because of the climate, but because the land is used for other purposes. In this case, the community would again raise money from citizens who promise to buy produce once it’s available. Community Bonds would work to find farmers who wanted to move into the area to grow crops as well as land that would be good for the farmers. Community Bonds would then work with the banks to get the farmers’ loans for the land. There would again be a voucher system where the bonds are paid back as customers bought produce.

For larger changes, there would be national campaigns, where tens of millions could be be put into bonds.

Community Bonds - The motivation

Sometimes communities don’t have things they need or really want, such as a close grocery store or a baby store. The ‘free market’ doesn’t perfectly allocate scarce resources as it should.