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Wednesday, June 01, 2011

The Kickstarter for Kids Education

[UPDATE: JAN 2013]

Since I posted my idea I saw this very interesting commercial from Dodge trying to sell cars through something like a wedding registry (How to Change Buying Cars Forever). I thought that it was pretty innovative. If a car can be sold using this method, ANYTHING CAN. I like UrGift.in even more.

[Originally Posted: Jun 2011]

NEED: 

Parents keep getting too many toys for their children. So many toys that the children end up not playing with them because they are overwhelmed with choices. Friends and Family keep giving parents toys for their children because that is the best gift option (i.e. the chance of choosing a gift being that a toy that the children wont like is almost null). A solution that some parents have opted for is to keep some toys unwrapped so they can be re-gifted later.

Another incredible need that parents suffer from is the raising price of education. Parents have started to invest more and more on education funds to be able to afford higher education for their children when they grow up.

DESCRIPTION: 

Create a website for parents that can work like a wedding registry. Instead of being for a wedding this website would be for the child´s future education. Each parent can personalize what he/she wants to include in the wishlist but it would be divided in low ticket items (i.e. books for freshmen year) so any Family member or Friend can give whatever amount of money they want to. The money will go towards an account managed by an asset manager that would promise some type of return. The website can be tied to a mobile app that can make it more social so, for example, when grandma wants to give her grandson something, the app will remind her that there is a better option for her grandson: His future education. I am sure I can build on this idea by adding some gamification to the equation plus some incentives from the asset manager, etc., but I am sure you get the idea. It can even work like Kickstarter where there are very low ticket options (e.g. $1) so you can tap into the gift card industry and steal some share from that market too)

ATTRACTIVENESS: 

The business model is pretty simple. We will charge a fee to the asset manager for bringing money to the table. The Gifting Industry is difficult to size as people purchase stuff without necessarily telling you what would be the use for it. Some sources value the gift industry in the US as a whole at over $300 billion. I am sure even if we take a very small piece of this pie and multiply it by a 1% fee to the asset manager you still make several million dollars.