Little Engines that Could

I’ve always admired the entrepreneurial spirit – perhaps because it’s always eluded me. As a youngster, I had three start-up lemonade stands go bankrupt. Perhaps it’s because I opened them in early March, but I digress.

But recently, I encountered two examples of said entrepreneurship, one up close and personal, the other shared with some 120 million  others watching Super Bowl 50.

Last week, I took a short detour on my way home from a client appointment and treated myself to an oversized green tea at the local Starbucks. Even though it was mid-afternoon, the unit was bustling and true to form, all the comfortable lounge chairs were long occupied.

And as most of you know, once someone settles into a comfy chair at Starbucks and subsequently opens their laptop, it’s more akin to Kampgrounds of America in terms of waiting time. I’ve always contended that Starbucks and other coffee-related venues could double their revenues if they only billed by the hour.

So it was best to move on and look elsewhere.

That meant a seat at the counter. While there I noticed a number of decidedly younger customers performing work-related tasks, and in fact many of them turned out to be accounting and financial-related.

So drawing on my background  as a journalist I struck up a conversation with one and discovered she did outsourced CFO work for a number of clients and by virtue of all the available cloud-based applications, she worked virtually.

I read somewhere that nearly 15 percent of all start-up accounting firms are virtual. An online platform certainly sidesteps a lot of headaches and expenses in terms of overhead and no doubt that filters directly to the bottom line.

It struck me that I was witnessing the future of small business, a revelation that many others probably realized at least a decade before.

Then on Sunday, among the 40 or so commercials that annually blanket the Super Bowl, one spot showcased a product called Death Wish Coffee Co. a small upstate New York brand that I learned edged out 15,000 or so other entries in a small business competition sponsored by financial software publisher Intuit Inc.

Death Wish earned a 30-second spot during the big game – valued at roughly $5 million. The powerful highly caffeinated product whose label is a skull and crossbones and employs a staff of 12, is apparently sold in a few scattered stores and online at a volume of roughly 1,000 pounds per day.

I’m hardly going out on a limb with a prediction that its volume and brand recognition would more than likely increase starting this week.

The above two vignettes have inspired me to consider a variety of potential startups and maybe enter Intuit’s contest next year.

I wonder if I’m too old to resurrect my lemonade business.