Re:I can get your kid into an Ivy
by reitzensteinm on Wednesday December 12, 2007 @02:00AM
(#88628)
Or just offer a money back guarantee and honour it. Make 50k off of the 20% who make it through, and Robert's yer mother's brother.
Alan Dershowitz once told the story of a court clerk who would approach the plaintiffs in every trial and say "For $5,000 I'll try to convince the judge to rule in your favor. If you still lose the case I'll give you your money back." Then he would make the same offer to the defendants.
His mistake was not keeping the vigorish.
OTOH, with the speed of our court system, he probably could've made a nice little income on the interest.
I had the same feeling after reading the article.
Brilliant for exploiting and exposing an apparently broken system.
Disgusting because the victims are the kids who use the service (I bet 99% of the time it is the parent's decision, not the kid's), not to mention the kids who lose out to people who bought their admission.
> For only $49,995, I will guarantee your ycombinator application gets accepted in the next round.
Since that's more than their typical investment anyway, you might want to cut them in on that racket... ;-)
What a business model...
Find prospects with essentially unlimited resources and find out what they CAN'T buy. Then provide a service to dramatically increase their probability of getting it. Do that service excellently. And, most of all, find a way to guarantee (if even only semantically) your success.
I know tons of people with lots of money who constantly surprise me with how they spend it chasing something they CAN'T BUY. They chauffer their kids back and forth to every imaginable activity (to improve their chances later on). They take vitamins, eat weird foods, and go to "holistic" retreats to "insure" their health and longevity. They even donate tons of money to religious and spiritual institutions to insure their place in the "world to come".
They can't buy any of it. But they sure can pay to improve their odds. I say this woman is really onto something.
Now if only I could find my angle...
For only $49,995, I will guarantee your ycombinator application gets accepted in the next round. This includes personal start-up business counseling and 2 weeks at my exclusive retreat at a world class resort.
(This guarantee doesn't apply to lame ideas or applicants. "Lame" to be defined by me at a later date.)