My most successful business yet - Internet modem rental
In my penultimate year at the University of Lagos (2011), I had a Starcomms modem which I used for browsing the internet through my laptop. It had decent upload and download speeds but the ultimate sell was that there was no data cap. You could download as much as you wanted to.
However, I had a little challenge. I had to pay a subscription of N6000 naira every month. This was quite a huge chunk of money for me back then and not something I could easily take out of my N20000 naira monthly allowance. To finance the modem, I had to dip my hands into my savings account, which actually contained money that should not be accessed for trivial purposes. I wasn't happy with this fact and I sought to find a way to solve my dilemma. I did not want to forfeit the internet access which the modem provided. Neither did I want to part which that chunk of money when I was only going to be using the modem for a fraction of the twelve-hour period during which it was active daily.
Enter sharing economy. To solve my problem, I simply had to ensure that the modem was getting maximum utility. And since I only needed at most, 3 out of the 12 hours of internet access it provided every day, I had to find someone else who needed it and was willing to pay to use it for the other 9 hours.
However, I had a little challenge. I had to pay a subscription of N6000 naira every month. This was quite a huge chunk of money for me back then and not something I could easily take out of my N20000 naira monthly allowance. To finance the modem, I had to dip my hands into my savings account, which actually contained money that should not be accessed for trivial purposes. I wasn't happy with this fact and I sought to find a way to solve my dilemma. I did not want to forfeit the internet access which the modem provided. Neither did I want to part which that chunk of money when I was only going to be using the modem for a fraction of the twelve-hour period during which it was active daily.
Enter sharing economy. To solve my problem, I simply had to ensure that the modem was getting maximum utility. And since I only needed at most, 3 out of the 12 hours of internet access it provided every day, I had to find someone else who needed it and was willing to pay to use it for the other 9 hours.
