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American bussiness ideas that do not exist in UE

Idea threads

Konradd

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Hi everyone,

I'm from Toronto- Canada but living in Warsaw - Poland since I was 10 years old.
I started a bussiness over a year ago, but decided to finish my degree and the company died because of me not being there the whole time. The company was just to new for living without me ...
I have a degree now. I have an unusual job i a bank over here in Poland, working just a couple of hours daily, mainly form home. It gives me just enough money to get by and save some money. It's important because I'm living on my own, renting a flat, buying food and other necessaries.

Enough about me :)

The last bussiness-field I was in (Real estate) was very crouded and here in Poland people usually hate real estate guys. They think they get paid for nothing and all they care about is to make sells. Not that you can't make a lot of money out of it - you really can if you work hard and learn.

That lead me to think about bussiness ideas, that are doing well outside Poland (USA), but are unknown out here.

That's why I'm here. I want to ask you guys about small/medium/big companies that are killing it in the states with a propability that in Poland (and EU in general) they are unknown.

It could be anything: a service, a produkt. I'm really counting on your ideas and thoughts because I'm the type of person that loves brainstorming, and thinks the best when hearing a lot of ideas :)

I hope every single one of you guys reading my post will throw at least a couple of ideas.

Thanks a lot :)
Konrad.
 
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RazorCut

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Welcome Konradd.

Just a bit of friendly advice. You would do better brainstorming a list yourself and asking others their opinions on them rather than expect the Fastlane community to do all the leg work for you. Especially on your first post.

It is easy enough to find successful businesses in any niche that are Stateside focused then search to see what is available in your specific Country.

You will find us a great supporting community but not babysitters eager to spoon-feed you.

It's the 'give a man a fish' ethic.

My advice would be to do some research. Google is your friend.
 

Roland

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Trying to find a killer business in the US to replicate it in EU sounds like a strange idea to me.

The reason is that by doing this you will associate two big weaknesses: on one side, you don't know the US market and why this particular business is a killer there and on the other you don't know what sort of response a US killer idea could get in EU.

Generally speaking I think that business are not a "killer", they may become a killer but all of them started from 0.

So why wouldn't you rather try to find an area that you know close to you, find what could be improved in this area and find your first customers. You can then start to make some extra money to "get by" as you said and then you can start thinking about making your business a killer.

But stop thinking about finding a shortcut to success because there is only one and it is to understand that there is no shortcut to success. You have to go through all the steps and the sooner you understand that the sooner you will start taking the appropriate action to build something that has the potential to become great down the line.

Good luck
 

Konradd

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RazorCut and Roland, first of all thank you for your interest.

I think my message wasn't delivered exacly how I wanted (my english isn't perfect anymore).

To be clear, I am not looking for any shortcuts to succes as you Roland suggested. Razorcut, I'm also not being lazy hoping you guys will do all the work for me. Of course a "killer" bussiness is build from nothing and I am aware of that more than you assumed. Maybe "killer" wasn't the best word to use. I work a lot on myself. I spend a lot of time, energy and money on education and developing myself as a bussiness person. I also understand the differences betwen customers in the US and UE. I also know how to check the market for demant before initializing a bussiness.

My question isn't from a lazy person that thought of starting a bussiness 5 minutes ago. I regulary brainstorm with myself, friends, family, girlfriend.

I just hoped, that maybe someone here recently thought of a company that has been doing well being creative, clever and bringing value. And maybe that would bring me to fill a undiscovered niche in Poland/UE. I don't see it as looking for a shortcut, because I know that excecuting on an idea is the hardest part.

But maybe you were right. Maybe i shouldn't be asking this here.

All the best,
Konrad.
 
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Kung Fu Steve

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I'm also thinking there's a huge difference between cultures.

They tried opening a Cinnabon in Riga, Latvia my first year there -- it lasted about 2 weeks because nobody understood it. (I'm guessing you don't even know what it is? :) )

I would be skeptical trying to bring U.S. culture to Europe as a viable business model... but the flip side of that coin is everyone in the U.S. likes European stuff.

Hell, actually... now that I think of it, I've got one for you. I'll just GIVE you an idea that has already been proven:

http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/sto...ULJbdEqpS3kkx3Xm6ZUEN1qz8s5odfrpeVhoCSerw_wcB

So these were being imported into Riga for a long time (they make washing dishes so freaking easy) but the demand became too overwhelming for the woman that she couldn't afford to ship enough product in so she closed her business.

When my flatmate and I ran around looking for them at different stores every single one of them said "yeah 3-4 people a week come in asking for these but we haven't had them in over a year"

There you are.

Handed to you.

I tested the market myself.

Now be sure to send me one in the mail.
 

Michał Kóska

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Hey Konrad,

I live in Poland, PM me, we can stick together :)

There were some good US ideas brought here in the past but I think it is hard nowadays to easily find such a killer.

The cultural difference is really big,
 
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nomeus

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They tried opening a Cinnabon in Riga, Latvia my first year there -- it lasted about 2 weeks because nobody understood it. (I'm guessing you don't even know what it is? :) )

I am Latvian, I loved it when I was in Canada, then I thought that I need to bring it to Riga. I googled it and saw that someone had already tried that.
 

najz

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Kung Fu Steve

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I am Latvian, I loved it when I was in Canada, then I thought that I need to bring it to Riga. I googled it and saw that someone had already tried that.

Ka tev iet!?

And that pretty much exhausts my Latvian besides yelling at the ladies "tu esi loti skista"

My first two weeks in Latvia it had JUST opened and I was all excited to go and it closed within a couple days. But McDonalds is killing it there! :p

EDIT: Oh! And Subway just opened 3 or 4 stores in the last year
 

nomeus

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Ka tev iet!?

And that pretty much exhausts my Latvian besides yelling at the ladies "tu esi loti skista"

My first two weeks in Latvia it had JUST opened and I was all excited to go and it closed within a couple days. But McDonalds is killing it there! :p

EDIT: Oh! And Subway just opened 3 or 4 stores in the last year

Labi! :D

Oh, This is awesome! Great to know that someone here knows what Latvia is!

And opening some more Subway stores this year. And I happen to know one of the co-owners. They are really excited, but I am kind of sceptical about Subway success here. Will see how this goes.
 

Konradd

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Thank you so much guys! It's awesome that strangers show so much interest and are happy to help :)

All the best,
Konrad.
 
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Jake

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Rocket Internet copies successful U.S companies and brings them to new markets. You may be able to get some ideas from them.

https://www.rocket-internet.com/companies

"We identify and build proven Internet business models and transfer them to new, underserved or untapped markets where we seek to scale them into market leading online companies."
 

Supa

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I can remember that before Facebook got big in Germany, there were some guys who did a similar social network for the german market, they were actually pretty big over here. Until Facebook became more known..
 

najz

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Exactly the same situation was in Poland, only in this case it was a copy of a separate brand - it's called http://nasza-klasa.pl/ , this has created two millionaires. exactly the same thing happened in the case http://freebee.pl/ - This is also an idea that has been proven first in another country under a different logo. Apparently, there "is something about it"
 
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mystery1994

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I'm from Toronto- Canada but living in Warsaw - Poland since I was 10 years old.
Hey Konrad,
I live in Poland, PM me, we can stick together :)

Hey lads, i'm living in Belgium currently but there is a big chance move to Slovakia soon,
maybe we can speak together sometimes over the internet and brainstorm toghether, per skype or some message app ;)


Can't you log into Amazon from different countries (I said that wrong) and see what's hot where?

i dont know about this, here in Belgium the Amazone niche isnt killing it.. people just seem to not 'like' or understand it..
 

Michał Kóska

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Hey lads, i'm living in Belgium currently but there is a big chance move to Slovakia soon,
maybe we can speak together sometimes over the internet and brainstorm toghether, per skype or some message app ;)

Sure- what do you use for communicaton? :) Skype?
 

Jon L

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I don't know Polish culture, but it seems like it would be quite different from the US. What if you found another country that is similar to Poland (same basic beliefs, same standard of living, etc., etc.) and started looking at what is popular there that isn't yet popular in Poland.

Someone already said that stuff that works in the US might not work elsewhere, and I think they're right. For example, the average household income is around $4000-$5000 a month in the US, but about $900 a month in Poland. So, a lot of businesses that rely on the average person having a lot of extra income wouldn't work there. Take Disneyland as an example. In California, Disneyland is something like $125 per person plus expenses. A family of four can easily spend $1000 on one day at Disneyland (hotel, food, toys, etc). (We spent $600 on one day, and we stayed at an average hotel, and ate at chain restaurants (not extravagent). And, the tickets were free because my dad works for Disney.)
 
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najz

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I Agree with Jon L, but in reality the market validate all ideas, so it's better to choice something and just try to make fast MVP to share it with the potencial customers.
 

AgainstAllOdds

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Healthy fast food.

Fast food became a big thing in Poland over the last 10 years. Polish people are slowly getting fatter and fatter. They'll eventually want something that tastes as good, but doesn't get them as fat.

In my opinion: a Chipotle-like restaurant would do really well (Mexican food). Or maybe more Mediterranean like Roti (http://roti.com/).
 
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AgainstAllOdds

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I don't know Polish culture, but it seems like it would be quite different from the US. What if you found another country that is similar to Poland (same basic beliefs, same standard of living, etc., etc.) and started looking at what is popular there that isn't yet popular in Poland.

I disagree.

If you look at Russian billionaires, they either got rich in natural resources, or by taking an American business model and applying it to Russia. Polish people have less disposable income, however the same wants as western cultures.
 

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