What’s the number one thing people stress about? (apart from money that is!) It’s how they’re seen and perceived by others. ‘Joyable’ is a San Francisco based company that is making money by helping people with their social anxiety. The company offer an online cognitive behavioural therapy programme which lasts for 12 weeks and costs $239. Clients start out with a thirty minute start up call and then are assigned a coach for the duration of the programme.

Social anxiety doesn’t have international barriers and I can see something like this having potential here in the UK. In a world where people are becoming increasingly isolated through reliance on social media and the internet, I can see the number of people having problems interacting with real live people, only growing over the next few years.

Go back a generation or so and your options for a U.K wedding venue were limited to church or registry office. Changes in legislation opened up the market to hotels, castles, stately homes and other venues, but we’ve a long way to go to catch up with the United States.

‘The Tiny Chapel’ is a mobile wedding venue for those who prefer affordable intimacy and romance to an expensive ‘do’.  The 100 square-foot Tiny Chapel was built and decorated by retired minister Bill Malbon, who now performs non-denominational weddings full time from his mobile wedding chapel. The chapel can seat up to 25 guests and includes a small area for the bride’s pre-ceremony preparations.

The chapel can be hired for  as little as $100, which buys an off-peak wedding package including a 30 minute time slot for the ceremony and photos at the chapel’s permanent location in Richmond, Virginia. Alternatively you  can splash out and pay $500 for a peak one hour time slot at a location of your choice within one hour of Richmond.

I don’t think a mobile venue would get a licence here in the UK, but there are a couple of thoughts to come from this:

1. Are there other innovative ways to bring down the high cost of a wedding?

2. What other normally static services might be ripe for conversion to a mobile version?

www.tinychapelweddings.com

When people are new to financial trading…and indeed when they’re quite experienced…they are often hungry to hear tips and advice from others. ‘Goinstavest’ provides a platform for traders to share what they’re doing with the world, and perhaps make a commission by  allowing others to copy what they’re doing.

Investors create an account and post their stock market investments on the site, detailing the company,  the amount invested and rationale behind the investment. Potential investors can then browse the full list of investments on the site and choose trades to copy. They can mimic the trader entirely through Instavest, which will automatically copy the actions of the original investor when they sell or buy more stocks in the company. Users are encouraged to give the original trader a portion of their profits – approximately 5 percent. Instavest takes 20 percent of that 5 percent.

I’m not sure how confident I would be copying the trades of “some guy on the internet”, but it’s an interesting idea. And if you’re “some guy on the internet” with a knowledge of trading, this could be an opportunity to build a profitable following.

https://goinstavest.com/