Ask HN: What's a Good Business for a College Student to Run?

[movingtohawaii]

I'm going into my second year of college, and I'm looking for any suggestions on what would be a good business to run at school. I'm not necessarily talking about startups with revolutionary technology (I already have something to that effect that I've been slowly working on), but something that can hopefully help pay for school. Something where if I work 5x as hard, although perhaps not 5x as long, I can increase my profits by a similar factor. Any advice or ideas are appreciated!

[tiffani]

If you can hustle up a few beefy guys, start a moving service. A friend of mine started school in EE, but left school with the moving company supporting him full-time. He started it around his second year as well.

Edit: We went to school in DC, so having several universities around definitely did help him.

[Goodbizidea]

Are there things that you donkt like to do? Like laundry or cleaning. Make a simple business doing the things that other students don't like doing. That is the whole premise of business, solving problems or doing things that other people don't want to do or can't do on their own. People will pay for services they don't want to do. So what are some of the things you don't like doing at college?

[iliketosleep]

something cool which can be developed FAST. brainstorm with some buddies for specific ideas. you wanna be able to take something to market ASAP so you can get feedback and learn. but be aware that for better or for worse, the payoff will be disproportionate to the amount of work. a lot of people work really hard and make nothing. whereas others can work work equally has hard and make millions.... for steady predictable income... job.

[movingtohawaii]

I'm not really looking for a new technology or idea, more of a tried-and-true business model that fits well on a college campus/in a college town. My school has around 14,000 students and I'm sure there must be some service I can provide them that they would pay for, but I can't think of what exactly.

[chrisclark1729]

Helping people move.