Free is the magic number

There’s little doubt that late 2020/early 2021 will be calamitous for business. The combination of Covid-19 lockdown economic inactivity and Brexit will destroy vast amounts of businesses, large and small.

And yet, from some perspectives, there’s never been a better time to go into business. The arguments in favour off this are as simple as they are brutal; people going bust sell their goods off at knockdown prices, businesses that begin and make it through what will almost certainly be the worst economic events since 1929 are fundamentally sound business models, and information technology has democratised business tools to an unprecedented level.

Consider the children’s story, ‘The Indian in the Cupboard’. In the story, a boy receives a cupboard for his ninth birthday. Putting things in this cupboard changes them and brings them to life. By putting the right things in, complicated new things can be made, explored or brought to life.

3D printing is rather the same; things that you could not otherwise have created - or possibly even imagined - can be brought to life at home in a way never before possible. Although the cost of the equipment put this outside the Three Fivers’ scope, the democratisation of IT has made this possible in the very recent past.

If your £5 business was consultancy, you could - via Zoom, Skype, FaceTime etc, reasonably have clients in Surrey, Singapore and Sydney. Even more so since lockdown, location matters not at all.

For free you can write word documents, create spreadsheets, design 3D structures, trade shares or, if you’re desperate enough - start a blog like this.

For the knowledge economy, free things are plentiful, manufacturing and physical things are less well served, though they can be supported.

If your £5 business is making pork scratchings, that’s not much help, but of course you’ll still have to market, sell, account for, re-order etc and for these, free is definitely the magic number.

What free stuff the three £5 businesses use, I’ll document and review. Comments and suggestions are always welcome.

Comments

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