First exposure to entrepreneurship: a revolutionary toilet seat
When I was a graduate student at the University of Akron, I had a conversation with Amir Abtahi, a fellow grad student in many of my classes. He said he had a wonderful idea for a microprocessor-controlled toilet seat, and even though I thought the idea was a little silly, we WERE studying ways to use microprocessors, so... Anyway, besides an automatic flush, something we often see in public toilets these days, his seat would be equipped with a clean-water spray (hopefully warm -- he didn't say) to wash your ass, a blow dryer to dry it, and even an optional powder puff to soften your ass with talcum powder. Or something like that. The technology is all there, he said; it was just a matter of putting the whole thing together. He may have been right. Besides the auto-flush, you see they use LEDs to tell you at night whether the seat is up or down (we would never need that, because unlike most men I have been trained :-) :-) :-)). The water spray is available now in the form of bidet seats. (Those things also come with the air-dry.) There doesn't seem to be a powder applicator yet. But there will be.
The bottom line is that Abtahi, back around 1983, saw the future. My experience tells me that if you can see the future once, and you are still willing to keep your eyes open after that, you will see the future again. So he should have become an entrepreneur. Alas, I don't know where he is now. But I always use this anecdote to remind my students that something that sounds silly now might make your fortune later.
posted by Ron @ 8:53 AM
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