10 Smokin’ Hot Business Startup Ideas

The small business owners in the United States are world class entrepreneurs. Always thinking – always on their feet. While many job opportunities are being given to foreign countries, local business owners are coming up with amazingly innovative concepts for saleable products and services.  CNN Money and BusinessWeek gave some of the best samplings of the stratosphere for entrepreneurs in the U.S.:

Online Media Publishing
The CulturalConnect is a collection of four interlocking Web sites and e-magazines aimed at spotlighting and connecting young minority professionals with each other and to the nonprofit world. 24-year-old Sumaya Kazi is the co-founder of the company with a staff all under 30 that work remotely. The site, which had more than 560,000 page views in September and spends no money on advertising, is profitable, relying mainly on banner advertising.

Robot Programming
We now can use industrial robots for everything from analyzing blood samples to mixing drinks for cocktail hour. Some of the largest technology companies and auto manufacturers, such as Panasonic and Toyota need industrial robot programmers. Matt Zeigler is a 35-year-old self-trained robot programmer that calibrates the moving parts to work with perfect precision.  Industrial robots are helping to get people off assembly lines and into fields of business where more technological skill is required.

Healthy Food Provider
23-year-old Sean Kelly founded Fit Fuel in 2002, a health food and vending machine supply business, to tap into what he saw as prime vending real estate. He stocks his vending machines with a selection of trail mixes, nutrition bars, energy drinks, and other snacks targeted at athletes. Kelly is happy about his10 employees, projected 2006 revenues of $3.5 million, and a new Web site that accounts for 40% of Fit Fuel's business.

Training Video Producer
Cammon Randle, age 25, started creating elaborate stop-motion movies around his house when he was 8. In December, 2004, he started CopperRain Productions to make promotions, training videos, and creative shorts for companies of various sizes, including Hitachi DataSystems, Xango, and The Marketing Success Institute. His revenues last year were about $50K and he has already strategized how to increase this through internet sales.

Disease Mapping
Through the use of satellite imaging and databases, this business provides an important service to the United Nations, governments, universities and consulting firms for determining how disease epidemics spread around the world. Andy Tatum is a 29-year-old with a Ph.D. that carefully plots out the data he has collected to predict for example, where the next malaria outbreak will happen.

Information Engineering
Data. Data. Data. There are plenty of businesses, especially in the internet universe that depend on fresh new information to understand the fickle nuances of their membership. If they can’t stay on top of it, competitors like Paypal, Slide and other Web 2.0 startups will surely snag their customers in nanosecond. 34-year-old Bob Lee ponders around 200 gigabytes of data every day from more than 5 million users. He uses the information to point out trends, and determine if new features will fly or flop.

Digital Media Service
23-year-old Sudhin Shahani founded Musicane, where artist can sell his work—audio, video, or ringtone—online. Artists create storefronts for themselves for $20 a month, price their content, and post it for anyone to buy. Shahani says he knew he was on to something when R&B singer John Legend signed on to sell individual tracks on Musicane for $.99 each. Shahani launched the service in beta at the beginning of this year, and it has grown by 45% per month, with 3,500 separate digital stores now up and running on the site. He estimates bringing in more than $600,000 in revenues over the next year.

Second Life Law Firm
What were we thinking – of course we need a lawyer in our virtual lives! At least 25,000 of the more than 2 million Second Life members are investing in real estate and designing all sorts of virtual products and services. Over a 6 month period between 2006 and 2006, the highest income earned through Second Life tripled and doing virtual business requires legal support. Stevan Lieberman handles both the online and offline needs of his clients and he’s one of the proponents of the website’s “law island.”

Bank Card Service
Jared Isaacman, 23, put together the plan for United Bank Card, a nationwide transaction processing company, alone in his parents' basement. While working in IT for a credit card company he saw that the big financial institutions ignored the processing end of the credit-card business and focused more on issuing the cards to consumers. The industry was using outdated hardware, and transaction processing and setup times for new business customers were slow. The company enables a variety of businesses, from restaurants to multilocation retailers, to accept credit-card and other noncash-based payments from their customers. In 2005, the company did $56 million in business.

Vehicle Scouting
Chuck Branding, age 25, received an intriguing business proposition from a family friend: Find him a good lease on a red limited-edition Jeep Liberty and put half the amount he saved in his pocket. Not only did Branding deliver, he enjoyed the car hunt so much that he made it his business. Branding founded MyCarScout and says the majority of clients are business professionals who don't want to spend time searching for a specific car. Branding charges customers either a flat fee of $450 or half the amount saved from each car he tracks down.

These are only a few of the absolute hottest business startups in the country. You go U.S. entrepreneurs!