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PODCAST

School for Startups Minutes

jim@schoolforstartups.com (Jim Beach)

The short vignettes are taken from School for Startups Radio. We release a quick thought to motivate or educate you about a different facet of entrepreneurship every day.

business business news

All Episodes

01:31

SFS Minute 818: Missed Turn

School for Startups Minutes ·

2025/10/18

In 2000, a Garmin engineer was driving to a client meeting and got lost. This was before smartphones, and even the Garmin devices were so complicated that he ended up lost. He sat down on the side of the road and realized that maybe the device was designed wrong. He went back and redesigned it to be as simple as possible for the driver, and it turned into a billion-dollar industry.

EN

01:31

SFS Minute 817: Mis-Poured Plastic

School for Startups Minutes ·

2025/10/18

Those rubbery chemicals that he had left overnight turned into the goop that we call today Silly Putty. A factory error turned into one of the best-selling toy products of all time. The lesson is: failure in one market can lead to success in a different market that you hadn’t anticipated.

EN

01:31

SFS Minute 816: Software Glitch

School for Startups Minutes ·

2025/10/18

Well, the mistake feature, of course, was the screenshots, which were a huge hit. They enjoyed it more than the game, which led to the generation of meme-sharing platforms, a multi-billion-dollar industry. The moral: sometimes what you build is not what they want. The glitch may be the gold mine.

EN

01:31

SFS Minute 815: Wrong Recipe

School for Startups Minutes ·

2025/10/18

Well, that jug of forgotten tea that sat in the back of the refrigerator for an entire weekend turned into one of the latest health crazes out there. The fizzy fermented drink is now a three-billion-dollar-a-year product. It’s called kombucha, and it’s one of the biggest health products out there. Sometimes products just need a new label.

EN

01:31

SFS Minute 814: Coffee Spill

School for Startups Minutes ·

2025/10/18

This week, we're going to have some fun and talk about business accidents that turned into billions of dollars. We're going to start with a 1995 Starbucks story. One of the baristas was making a cold drink, and someone poured a steamer with hot milk over it by mistake, creating a big mess. One of the customers said, “Oh, I want to try that.” Guess what happened next? When the barista made a mistake and poured the hot milk over the cold drink, a new product was born. The customer loved it, and within

EN

01:31

SFS Minutes 813: The Invisible Sculpture

School for Startups Minutes ·

2025/10/12

An Italian artist named Salvatore Garau made headlines when he sold an invisible sculpture. There was nothing there—just an empty space marked by a square of tape on the floor. And a buyer paid—how much do you think?—eighteen thousand dollars for “the energy of the vacuum.”

EN

01:31

SFS Minutes 812: The Million-Dollar Homepage

School for Startups Minutes ·

2025/10/12

So, imagine a website that’s simply a grid—a thousand by a thousand—and each tiny point on the grid is barely visible. Alex Tew sold each little point for one dollar. Companies bought them in blocks of a thousand so they could create a visible logo. He sold all one million pixels and made one million dollars just by selling tiny pixels on a webpage.

EN

01:31

SFS Minutes 811: Doggles

School for Startups Minutes ·

2025/10/12

A California couple noticed that their dog was squinting in the bright sun, so they made eyeglass-style sunglasses for dogs. They called them Doggles. They sold tens of thousands of them—even to the military, which used them in desert missions. They’ve now sold in 60 countries and made over 25 million dollars. Doggles—that’s right, goggles for your dogs.

EN

01:31

SFS Minutes 810: The Potato Parcel

School for Startups Minutes ·

2025/10/12

Alex Craig launched a company that would send potatoes, yes. Real potatoes in the mail with handwritten notes on it. He even got on Shark Tank and made a deal with Kevin O'Leary, who said advertising need to be weird to work. Mailing potatoes sure qualifies for that.

EN

01:31

SFS Minutes 809: The Pet Rock

School for Startups Minutes ·

2025/10/12

This week, we're going to have a slightly lighter topic so we can have some fun and relax a little. Maybe life is stressful for you, so this might be a nice break. We're going to talk about the five silliest products ever. In 1975, adman Gary Dahl was sitting around drinking with some friends, and they were all complaining about their pets. He joked that the perfect pet would be a rock. Within a few months, he had actually launched the product, and it was out there. Each “Pet Rock” came in a box

EN

01:31

SFS Minute 808: Start a Business

School for Startups Minutes ·

2025/10/05

Eighty-six percent of millionaires and billionaires got there one way - by starting a business. Not luck, not waiting, not building over time. Starting a business is the best way to become a millionaire. Eighty-six percent of millionaires started a business.

EN

01:31

SFS Minute 807: Long Game

School for Startups Minutes ·

2025/10/05

This statistic is very sad to me. Only two percent of the wealthy got there by saving their entire lives. It works, but it just takes so long. Most millionaires want to become rich in their 20s and 30s so they can enjoy it. Only two percent get wealthy over time.

EN

01:31

SFS Minute 806: Climbing the Ladder

School for Startups Minutes ·

2025/10/05

CEO, vice president, CFO, doctors, lawyers, accountants - all great ways to get rich. It just takes a really long time, and the chances are pretty small. Less than five percent get rich this way.

EN

01:31

SFS Minute 805: Inherit

School for Startups Minutes ·

2025/10/05

What are the odds of you inheriting a bunch of money? Well, you probably already know if you're going to, but the odds are very low. Only seven percent of millionaires become rich through inheritance. It's not as much as people think.

EN

01:31

SFS Minute 804: Luck

School for Startups Minutes ·

2025/10/05

How do you get rich? How do rich people end up that way? This week, we're going to talk about it. I've come up with about ten ways you can get rich in this world, and I've divided those into five categories—one a day. Each day, I will introduce a new category and give you the odds of that way making you rich. So today, how many people get rich purely from luck? What would that be—things like winning the lottery, marrying a bunch of money, divorcing a bunch of money, becoming a huge sports star,

EN

01:31

SFS Minute 803 - Myth #5: Failure Is Fatal

School for Startups Minutes ·

2025/09/26

One of the great things about America is that if you fail in entrepreneurship, it is okay to try again. Just because you failed once doesn't mean you can't try again. Every scar is proof that you can try again. Every mistake is fertilizer for the idea that you can try again.

EN

01:31

SFS Minute 802 - Myth #4: Passion Is Required

School for Startups Minutes ·

2025/09/26

Many people say that passion is required to be an entrepreneur. I will wholeheartedly disagree. Many businesses have been built where the founder was not passionate about the product, but instead about the process, building a great business, not working for the man, working from home, or working from wherever they want, whenever they want. There are so many great reasons to start a business. You don't have to love it to do it.

EN

01:31

SFS Minute 801 - Myth #3: Entrepreneurs Are Risk-Takers

School for Startups Minutes ·

2025/09/26

The truth is, entrepreneurs hate risk. They like to take that small five thousand dollars and test their idea, not a hundred thousand dollars. They'll do anything they can to bootstrap their business and start with as little money as possible. Bootstrapping is the process of reaching down in the mud, pulling your boots out, and fighting ahead - just like when you start with under five thousand dollars and very little risk.

EN

01:31

SFS Minute 800 - Myth #2: You Need Lots of Money

School for Startups Minutes ·

2025/09/26

Actually, bootstrapping is a better way to go. If you end up with a big pile of money to start your business, you will make mistakes. You will not learn from the customer. You won't be out there doing the sales yourself. You'll be back in the office decorating. The best way to start is with under five thousand dollars to test your idea. You don't need a pile of money.

EN

01:31

SFS Minute 799 - Myth #1: You Need a Genius Idea

School for Startups Minutes ·

2025/09/26

There are so many myths of entrepreneurship this week. I want to try to dispel some of those myths so that you will be more likely to become an entrepreneur in the future. The first big myth is that you need a genius idea, that this lightning bolt from God comes down and strikes you, and all of a sudden you have a brilliant business idea. According to the London School of Economics, 93 percent of businesses are copies of existing business ideas. Tesla was not the first automobile. McDonald's was not

EN

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