How would you bootstrap a business if you were given #10?

Matt's answer:

Here’s a really interesting question from Syne in Australia. Syne asks, the UK recently ran the “Make Your Mark With A Tenner” competition, where students were given 10 pounds and challenged to make a profitable business with it. How would you bootstrap a business if you were given 10 pounds? Wow. That’s a really good question. I have to say I would probably then that 10 pounds to buy one domain name and as much hosting as I could get with that one domain name. I could probably get about a month’s worth. And from there on I’d try to bootstrap it. And I think whether it be doing something with AdSense, or whether I tried to make a really great site that would have affiliate links– but still added value –or whatever it was, I think I would probably start with the domain name. Because if you can come up with something that’s a really good idea– think about the million dollar home page where you pay a dollar for each pixel, that sort of thing –whatever it is, if you come up with a website and a good idea, you can reach the entire world. If you’re thinking about something like, I’m going to buy equipment to shine shoes, you can only reach 5,000 people who live in your immediate vicinity. So that’s the beauty of the web– you can start a business for very little money, and you can often make a big impact across the entire world without having to go and see each person around the entire world. So I’d have to think about what specific business I would try to tackle, but I think that if I only had 10 pounds I would probably use that to buy a domain name and then go from there.

by Matt Cutts - Google's Head of Search Quality Team

Original video: