Bad ideas, sent weekly.

Every aspiring entrepreneur has a stack of ideas that they chose not to pursue. While likely flawed, these ideas are still valuable inspiration for other entrepreneurs. We're a group of Harvard MBAs who collect bad ideas, polish them, and publish one new idea each week. Subscribe to get these ideas in your inbox.

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We'll hit your inbox with a business idea once per week. Some of these ideas will be grounded e-commerce opportunities and some will be bizarre futuristic moonshots. It's then up to you to go execute.

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Example Idea

Opportunity
Employees that leave a company on good terms are an underutilized resource for the company. Even after an employee leaves a company, that employee can still continue to help the company with recruiting, contract-based work (continuing their old role), or general promotion of the company. As we continue to realize a future that embraces the “future of work”, companies have an opportunity to tap into their alumni network to help them continue to grow.

Approach
There is an opportunity to develop a platform that helps companies transition employees out of the company and into a productive alumni relationship. This platform might include some simple messaging and event functionality to keep alumni engaged, but more importantly - it could leverage alumni to help recruit new employees (and earn a referral fee), or tap into alumni on a contract basis for project-based work. These past employees know the company, know the culture, and know the product. They are the perfect contractors and best possible recruiters.

Competition / Existing Behavior
Some larger companies (e.g. McKinsey) already have an alumni engagement platform, but it isn’t actively used by most employees. Much of the ongoing relationships are managed through email or Facebook/LinkedIn alumni groups. There’s an opportunity to give these alumni relationships more structure and make better user of these relationships.

How does this make money?
This is a B2B play. The company could charge the company to license the platform and charge SAAS fee per alumni, or it could take a cut of referral fees or fees for contract work paid to the alumni.

Additional Thoughts
Harvard Business Review wrote an article that outlines the value of maintaining relationships with company alumni: https://hbr.org/2002/06/cultivating-ex-employees.