BizTuesday: Make money out of people charging their phones

There are two types of people in the world: those who live for the presence and those who live for the future. Unfortunately, I’m falling between the two, so there are days that I will charge my phone before I leave my house and there will be days that I start off at 30% battery.

I live for the presence because I can’t be bothered to buy an extra portable phone charger. At the same time, I’m also living for the future because I know there will be incoming emails and phone calls from my uber driver that I can’t miss. It’s these few seconds that make a functioning phone so precious — I just can’t afford to lose it.

I don’t think I’m the one person in this world who goes through this situation daily.

I guess everyone could agree that we all hate airport phone chargers. (You know those sections in the airports where they let you use their sockets and untangle cat-hairball-like bundles of charging wires.) We’re simply not a fan of it because we have to be present at the charging station and stay there until our phones are ready to take off again. We don’t like it when we have to put on the parent’s hat. Nobody got excited when they heard Siri talked for the first time. All we want to tell her is what we need without asking why she needs to listen us in the first place. Imagine if we do this to an actual person in real life. Completely, socially unacceptable.

The best product design is the one that is tailored to human behaviors. The products which are capable of thinking and feeling like humans.

The true phone charging service that we will graciously welcome into our lives is the one that’s willing to travel with us. The concept is as simple as the fear for long distance relationships. We want to comfort of knowing that our phones will still work and get charged on the go.

The business model is simple like Boston’s Hubway — the public bicycle renting service. Customers can rent out a portable phone charger on a small fee by inputting their credit/debit cards where their deposits secure the loss, broken, no return items.

The popularity of adopting the products will depend on the price points, the accessibility to the vending machine, and the workability of the chargers.

We can even go as far as maximixe the product value by turning the product design into an advertisement space. Companies can feature their brands and logo on the phone chargers while our customers become the moving advertising space that take it more eyeballs.

Every Tuesday I publish a disruptive business idea that risks myself being banned from the companies.