Open-Source Business Plans?

bigattichouse asks: "I've been working on a business plan lately, sort of a 'If I ever get out of computing' fantasy. Its simple, a bakery. But since I *know* I'm not going to do anything with it, I thought it would be interesting to create a GPL equivalent.. a plan, logos, recipes, methods that anyone could use to start their own bakery/delivery service under a GPL/Copyleft sort of arrangement. I image there are a LOT of potential entreprenuers who might benefit from a 'Free/Open' franchise looking at the market. Has anyone done something like this?"

Comments

Start one, and I'll help you out

[Vendekkai]

Hi. Sounds like a fun thing to do.

Why don't you start off the project, and I'll chip in with documents and stuff? I evaluate business plans for a living, so this should be right up my alley.

V.

People would be grateful

[Korpo]

Especially if such a project would show them how to handle paperwork or to deal with the local administration. It may not be _that_ much of a problem in the US, but e.g. in Germany the bureaucracy is really overwhelming.

How would you handle the openness? GPL-ish? (Every sub-franchise gets the whole deal) Or BSD-ish? (You may keep some of your secrets)

Re:People would be grateful

[SkunkPussy]

"Especially if such a project would show them how to handle paperwork or to deal with the local administration. It may not be _that_ much of a problem in the US, but e.g. in Germany the bureaucracy is really overwhelming."

I think the bureaucracy in Germany is pretty formidable, particularly the way they regulate the size of your TP!

Open source business plan

[Anonymous Coward]

1) release free software
2) run out of money, bescause you have no income
3) ???
4) move back into parents basement
5) profit!

Bakery? Why not a brewery!!

[zcat_NZ]

One thing I've always wanted to do, but never got around to doing, is to develop a fairly decent homebrew recipe and release it under the GPL.

Just to totally confuse RMS's "free as in beer" analogy.

Prior art........

[Anonymous Coward]

Thinking about it, this is pretty much the way high quality wines and food products such as Parmesan cheese are handled.

The producers "own" the marketing oraganization which both control the quality of the production and market the product.

It is a small step moving this concept to the 'marketing' per se. Obviously here we have a more open structure, but obviously some sort of volontary control must be there, if you just have e.g. a GPL logo that anybody can use then the logo will come to mean "but here and you could get any rubbish".

However marrying the concept of OSS with a trade organization with standards and rules (so a type of bread with a certain name must match a standard recipie) would be a powerful combination, it would be much quicker to react to the market and be more fun, as everyone can try out thier ideas on a small experimental scale yet rely on tested ready made solutions for day to day operations.

Open-Mickey-Deez

[1iar_parad0x]

I'm a programmer, so sure it sounds great.

However, lawyers aren't usually OSS friendly. if you can navigate the headaches, knock yourself out. If McDonalds and Subway can franchise, so can OSS.

Market Saturation

[bjb]

I think the one thing that you'll have to worry about and address in the plan is avoidance of market saturation in a neighborhood. Basically, if everyone has this business plan, anyone can use it. Lets say then that 5 people want to start a bakery in the same town using this plan. They all go to the same bank for a loan to start such an operation. If they all have the same recipies, they end up making essentially the same product and thus their price competition comes down to purely aesthetic issues of the store front and location. However, given that aesthetics are an equal, there is a point where setting up too many of these essentially identical businesses in the same area will reduce the potential return for the bank (the lender of initial capital). Given also that bakeries are typically cash businesses (read: a lot of income is not declared), this poses the lender's profitability to be even less in a saturated market.

So basically, you may want to consider some kind of formula or description that can give these businesses a bit of difference, and a "volume multiplier" that estimates how many customers this operation could support, given the surrounding market conditions, preferences and demographics.

Then again, I live in NYC and I've seen two starbucks on opposite corners staring at each other, and they're both busy. I could be completely wrong :-)

Re:Market Saturation

[dk.r*nger]

Well, that's not isolated to store-front businesses..

You can have, say, two OSS consulting businesses, selling essentially the same product, but they will by definistion differ in areas like pricing, people (leadership/support), websitedesign, phone-number/website-address rememberability, proximity and all over karma..

Re:Market Saturation

[stienman]

Then again, I live in NYC and I've seen two starbucks on opposite corners staring at each other, and they're both busy.

Their business plan consists mainly of:
* Pay city of New York to change pedestrian crossing times and patterns such that it takes 20 minutes to travel kitty corner.

-Adam

OS Business Plan?

[mchawi]

What about OS accounting? Post all your accounting information online for the public to view, comment on, etc. That to me seems like a true open source business model.

I don't think the world is ready yet though :)

GPLed cola recipe.

[KevinDumpsCore]

> One thing I've always wanted to do... is to develop a fairly decent homebrew recipe and release it under the GPL.

Like this cola recipe?