“I have a lot of business ideas. The problem is the police.”
That was how the pitch began.
The investor across the café table lowered his coffee and considered leaving, but curiosity won over. The entrepreneur opened a folder labeled OPPORTUNITIES and slid over several neatly typed proposals. None of them were illegal exactly. They simply became illegal whenever described in enough detail.
The first involved unused parking spaces, temporary ownership, and license plates that changed more often than weather. The second required a refrigerated truck, three abandoned warehouses, and an extremely flexible definition of seafood. The third was described only as “subscription-based burglary,” which the entrepreneur insisted had excellent recurring-revenue potential.
“You understand,” the investor said, “that most businesses try to solve problems.”
“These do.”
“For customers.”
“These do that too.”
The entrepreneur explained that law enforcement lacked imagination. Every time a promising market appeared, somebody eventually called it fraud, theft, smuggling, extortion, or operating a zoo without appropriate permits. Innovation, apparently, was always being punished by vocabulary.
The investor should have walked away. Instead, he asked about the final page.
The entrepreneur smiled.
That proposal was completely legal. No contraband, forged documents, stolen goods, or suspicious livestock. It merely offered consulting services to people with unusual business concepts.
“What kind of consulting?”
“Compliance.”
The investor stared.
The entrepreneur leaned forward and explained the model. Clients paid generously to discover which laws their ideas violated before the police did. Premium subscribers received introductions to accountants, attorneys, permit offices, insurance brokers, and, where necessary, therapists.
Within six months, the firm occupied two floors downtown.
Within a year, it employed forty people.
Three years later, the founder gave a keynote speech at a business conference about ethical entrepreneurship.
During questions, someone asked where the idea had come from.
The founder smiled at the packed ballroom. “I used to have a lot of business ideas,” he said. “The problem was the police.”
©2012 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys
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