Mega CD, record and video exchange seeks start-up capital

From a rare copy of the technicolor Japanese monster movie Rodan on VHS to newer CD and movie releases at a fraction of retail cost, music and movie fans will be able to find it all at our mega CD, record and video exchange. We’re looking for an investor to help us make the initial purchase of a large building in a bustling downtown in northeastern Pennsylvania. Our operations will involve a retail space where CD, record and movie buyers will come to purchase, sell and trade. We’re looking for a deal where the investor’s income would come from rent or a combination of rent and earnings and then other space in the building could be used for additional retail locations. If you’re looking for a real estate investment opportunity and would like to talk, e-mail me.

Invest in our new custom blog wear line

What’s better than seeing your blog posted up on the Net? How about wearing a screen grab from your daily ramblings on a trip to the local mall? Our new blog wear line will make it possible for enthusiastic bloggers everywhere to show off one or two of their favorite posts on T-shirts and other apparel. We’re seeking imaginative investors to make it happen. With more than 200 million bloggers now inhabiting cyberspace based on this report from The Blog Herald, the opportunities are obvious. Don’t wait to get involved. Contact us here.

Help build this Tiki/African art and 50’s vintage clothing store online

We’re seeking investment partners to launch what we hope will be the largest, most comprehensive retail site of its kind on the Net. Our belief is that this unique mix of merchandise, including Polynesian pop culture from wholesalers like Tiki Farm (see photo), African masks and other art from suppliers like African Accents and 50’s vintage wear from sources like the Dust Factory, will create a strong online customer base. Depending on the success of our online store, we hope to open a brick and mortar establishment in a small tourist community in northeastern Pennsylvania like this one. Other expansion of our branding might eventually include our own clothing line utilizing the three themes and a recording label featuring vintage original music. Investors e-mail here with interest.

Help us set up our own venture capital fund

We’re planning to raise funding for one or more of the ideas listed on our site. Investors interested in getting involved should contact me here. Our objective is to evaluate and select a list of possible candidates, perhaps including interrelated businesses to start. The list would then help determine the size of our venture fund. We welcome input from potential investors on the businesses to be included. Make your own list if you like and include it in your e-mail. The venture fund would be set to liquidate in seven years at which time we would either purchase the business ourselves out of existing profits replenishing the fund or sell it to another firm. For more on venture capital funds and how they work, check this out.

Invest in our zine and alternative media publishing service

Nowadays everyone wants to create their own zine. We want to be their publisher. For a small monetary investment you can help us set up a resource center for fledgling zine publishers including high quality color printers, computers for layout and a few other graphic tools. Our center would handle either extremely small runs or help create the layout for a larger commercial offset printer. Our center would also include a library of free clip art and fonts and the opportunity to network with other zinesters. We would also provide technical assistance and design help for beginning do-it-yourselfers. To add revenue and create an even greater hub for the zine publishing community, we would also use the remainder of the space to create a premier alternative zine and book store along the order of Baltimore’s Atomic Books. If interested in lending a helping hand or financial assistance for this project, contact me here.

Help us build Pennsylvania’s premier grass fed beef farm

Invest in a revolution that may transform the American food industry and that of the world. We hope to establish one of Pennsylvania’s premier grass fed cattle ranches supplying local retailers and eventually larger chains like Whole Foods. According to many sources, grass fed beef is an important source of Omega 3 fatty acids and may lower the risk in the United States of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, the dreaded Mad Cow Disease. Read some of the other health benefits of grass fed beef available on the Net here or look at a book on the subject (cover shown above). We hope to establish the ranch in southeastern or south central Pennsylvania once we accumulate sifficient backing. Establishment of a local steak house restaurant and partnerships with other local eateries would be an important first step to establishing a strong demand for our product. If intertested, contact us here.

Invest in our new all-acoustic recording label

In an age of electronic music, help us launch the ultimate alternative. Our new recording label will feature CD’s and tapes of exclusively acoustic music. We will seek out recordings of both great traditional music and innovative new sounds all combined by the unified theme of a distinctly acoustic approach. Music will span a wide variety of styles including, but not limited to, bluegrass, blues, traditional and progressive acoustic jazz, protest songs, singer/songwriters, cowboy music and experimental music. Our recording label will be distributed through independent music retailers across the nation and eventually overseas like those making up the Coalition of Independent Music Stores. The popularity of folk, bluegrass and blues festivals and the existance of publications like Dirty Linen (see above) demonstrate the strong audience for this music. The recording label would also be strongly promoted over the Internet and eventually via a print catalogue providing even more revenue. Venture capitalists needed. E-mail me here.

Help set up the first Kaiju international film festival

Be the proud corporate sponsor of what may be the first annual International Kaiju Film Festival. Named for the popular Japanese term for giant monster movies, the festival would, of course, feature films starring Godzilla and other famous creature stars from the Toho Co. Ltd. stable. But we would also feature films starring Gamera and other monsters created with “suitmation”, the Japanese technique of using suited actors to portray giant beasts. In addition to full length motion pictures by Toho and its chief rival Daiei Motion Picture Company, the festival plans big screen exhibitions of cult classic giant monster TV shows like Ultraman. The annual event would also feature speakers, panel discussions, memorabilia and collectibles and would be promoted internationally through fan organizations and over the Internet through a regularly updated blog. Successful screenings of Godzilla: Final Wars, the last in the Godzilla series, at the 2005 New York Asian Film Festival and 2005 Seattle International Film Festival show the crowd drawing potential of such an event. If this sounds like a unique sponsorship or tax deductible project for your organization or you would like to get involved, please contact us.

Invest in our all natural carbonated beverage business

Our new carbonated beverage line would combine the idea of natural ingredients epitimized by R.W. Knudsen’s fruit spritizers (seen above) with the alternative attitude and imaginative packaging of a Jones Soda Company. The result would be a line of beverages equally at home on the shelf of the local natural foods retailer or the local supermarket. We need initial investment to set up a brewing and bottling facility, but could probably do so by converting a preexisting industrial building. Initial flavors might include raspberry, grape, Jamaican lemonade, orange, lemon lime and perhaps a birch beer and cola flavor. We’d like to build from a small and very hands on beginning with the hopes of selling to a select network of local retailers in northeastern Pennsylvania at first. If you have any suggestions or would like to help e-mail here.

Help turn an ailing suburban mall into a motion picture studio

Help us assemble a team of investors to purchase and convert a suburban shopping mall into one of the east coast’s premier motion picture and television production facilities. A January 26, 2004 article in RealEstateJournal.com estimates a third of the nation’s shopping malls are obsolete with only 47 percent being in the top performing categories. Poorly performing malls “are often crime scenes and a drain on local tax rolls”, said the online magazine, but “expensive to demolish and nearly impossible to convert to another use”. Yet, the success of Silvercup Studios in Manhattan (see photo of Studio 1 above), built in a converted flour silo of the city’s landmark Silvercup Bakery, shows the potential of transforming large existing structures for production use. The possibilities in a large or even medium sized suburban mall for sound stages, television production studios, sound recording facilities and even conventional, satellite or Internet broadcasting studios is nearly endless. Space could be leased to independent production companies or rented by the day or hour. Additional space could be leased to retailers catering to studio and production employees including the lease of former restaurant space for an onsite studio commissary. If you have a production studio looking for a home or would otherwise like to invest, contact us here.

Invest in our online Borders for blogs

Like the famous retail book chain, our website would be a great place to relax with your favorite reading material—in this case blogs. Visitors could browse from an exhaustive selection arranged by category just like in the best mega-retail book stores. Our online café would feature links to great roasters offering coffee by mail and tips on creating your own home café just a few feet away from your computer screen. No, we wouldn’t be selling any books or cappuccino, but with the right investor we could split some lucrative advertising revenue. If interested, e-mail me.

UE now lists PA businesses for sale

The UE now features a new RSS feed listing businesses for sale updated regularly. Since we are located in the state of Pennsylvania, the feed highlights businesses located in the Keystone state. Initial listings included a Philadelphia beer distributor, a 50’s style cheeseburger franchise in Bucks County and an indoor pistol and archery range in Delaware County. Scroll to the bottom of our blog and check out the latest listings. Then look over some of the UE’s own innovative business ideas and get in touch with us here if any strike your fancy. Or check out our friends at BusinessesforSale.com here or through our featured links for even more listings.

Help us establish new Seattle style coffee roaster for a medium market

We’re seeking partners to establish a new Seattle style coffee roast brand for a medium market to fill a niche left by Starbucks and other upper end chains. A 2001 survey shows Starbucks and other similar specialty coffee establishments cater to a large percentage of customers with incomes of $75,000 a year or higher, but also suggests they tap only a fraction of the potential coffee drinking market. And this report from the Boston Globe suggests the Seattle mega-chain avoids less affluent neighborhoods in favor of wealthier communities as part of its marketing strategy. If you own a coffee shop or are thinking of openning one, particularly in the northeastern United States, and would like to discuss the possibility of partnering with a roaster to offer high quality specialty coffee at a more reasonable price, let’s have a latte and talk it over. Contact me here.

The UE will soon be listed on LS Blogs

The Upstart Entrepreneur will soon listed on LS Blogs, a new blog directory. Check it out here and list your blog as well.

Help us launch our new wearable art brand

Invest in a new brand featuring T-shirts and other apparel adorned with the work of underground, yet-to-be-discovered visual artists. Share in a portion of the mark-up on retail sales. Store owners, you could have a steady stream of merchandise at a fraction of what this apparel will sell for online and from other retailers. If you don’t have a store, why not just get a share of our revenue from online sales? Contact us here, and we’ll figure out the details. A small investment could be the key to launching a countercultural phenomenon.

Our website will change the motion picture business forever

Help us build a new site offering motion picture synopses free of charge to independent filmmakers and major motion picture studios alike. The site will post regular plot and synopsis ideas for use or just for inspiration, links to filmmaker websites and chat forums for those at all levels of the industry. Our sister site will also offer script writing services. Make a monetary investment to help us get started and share in the advertising revenue. This should be ample given the attention we expect from the movie community. If interested, contact us here.

Move to a small town and get into the newspaper biz

We are assembling the perfect team to start community newspapers serving two picturesque, historic communities straddling two of Pennsylvania’s burgeoning historic corridors. Help us launch these newspapers with a monetary investment and be a partner in our operations living in beautiful small town surroundings. Check out the communities of Jim Thorpe, part of the Delaware & Lehigh National Historic Corridor and Tamaqua, in the Schuylkill River National & State Heritage Area. If you’re interested in learning more about this opportunity, e-mail Mount Pisgah Publications.

Own the first franchise in our new natural and organic foods chain

Help us establish the central website for a new natural and organic food grocery chain with a monetary investment and become the owner of the first store in our new franchise. You pick the location. You’ll pay no franchise or royalty fee ever! You pick the merchandise you will carry from our list of available products, hire your own staff and establish your own management style. You’ll also be able to order employee T-shirts and other materials including specialized shopping carts and bags with the franchise logo. The website will also contain links to all individual stores joining our chain. To discuss the idea further, just drup us a line here. Your ideas and input on this concept are welcome.