$50k for a small business, what do you got?

move to southeast asia (or anywhere 2nd/3rd world that suits your fancy) float for a year or two on the money you bring with you (you can stretch a little money a looooong way in a place like, say, indonesia) while you're floating, take language courses, make connections, and brainstorm business ideas involving imports/exports - highbrow/lowbrow art? handicrafts? fashion? (if you're a graphics guy i assume you've got a good eye for these sorts of things) or whatever else strikes you as a success story waiting to happen. you could easily stretch 10k to a year+ in one of these places while you figure out what you're doing/wait for the economy to recover a bit...

I would start a coffee shop. With your visual sense, I'm sure you could create a space that is enjoyable, interesting and stimulating to visit. You don't have to worry about moving merchandise, and the product itself is very basic, with extremely high margins. There are a lot of coffee shops out there, but only about 10% of them have actual ambiance. And only 10% of coffee shops actually have good coffee and good snacks. You could copy what Starbucks does - coffee is what drives customers to your commercial space, and once they are there you offer opportunities to buy stuff. Starbucks is kind of tacky, so you could try selling local pottery or artwork. Buy a bunch of used CDs from some wholesaler or clearance site on the Internet, and sell them, too, for a 1000% markup. It's getting easier to source your own beans, and it's cheaper to roast your own as well. You'll need to leverage your 50K to get a loan to cover startup costs, so you'll need to create a business plan. One option would be to create your own coffee stand, to limit your costs. Somebody set up a coffee stand about a block from my son's school (it's in the commercial part of a very livable and walkable middle class neighbourhood, next to a video store and a fish and chip shop). One of the more popular independent coffee shops in town started out as a coffee stand catering to tourists (we're a tourist town). However, the fellow who started out with the coffee stand 15 years ago was very very focused on success, even as a university student. He would hire his friends to help out at the coffee stand, but many of them quit because it was such hard work. But anything worth doing is going to be hard. Anyway, this sounds like a real opportunity. It will be interesting to hear how it turns out, whatever you decide to do.

One that will receive government funding and/or significant tax breaks, both under long-standing law and under recent legislation. I would make it a government contractor and have someone (you or someone else) who is a woman and possibly a minority own enough of a stake in the company to qualify for the numerous advantages that woman-owned government contractors get in the bidding process. I would probably find an angle that would qualify the business for advantages given to "green" companies, including, but not limited to having it be a company that develops and/or sells some sort of "green" product according to whatever the legal criteria are for that.

This might be too new of an idea to be profitable, but you could go 3D and start up a http://fab.cba.mit.edu/ like the one at MIT or http://www.shapeways.com/. Basically you help make small custom designed objects with things like laser cutters, 3D printers and scanners, and other toys. Just think how annoying it is when you want something specific and have to go to 5 stores or scour the web trying to find it. Instead someone could give you the specs, you could draw it up in CAD or something and pop one out for them. Either charge a flat fee plus hourly, or a percentage of the materials. Do a couple of pro-bono gigs for the girl scouts or other community groups. Have a workshop through your local library to get the word out. Pass out flyers to artisan groups. You could do it all in one room and set up a website so people could send you designs and then you could ship the finished project.

Seconding the graphic design studio. Start at home, buy a computer. Make sure you go out a lot to network. Profit. 25k should be more than enough. Invest in a good name, a good visual identity (d'oh), and be sure you know what kind of clients you target (a hint: don't bother with small business - they'll invariably find some nephew that's "great" at design, target the ones with at least 4or 5 employees that are thriving). The key to profitability is: - low overhead (no office space, no car, no machines, no stock, no staff) - low overhead - low overhead Good luck.

A low-cost/risk approach is to think about ways of packaging your main skills into a 'product'. For example, you could set up a business helping others set up in business, covering branding, web/print design, technology advice and pointing people in the right direction for things like accountants and lawyers (who'd promote you in return). By all means go outside that comfort zone if you have the right skills and find the right opportunity, but ask yourself tough questions. If someone who's always run a coffee shop suddenly decided to go into graphic design & branding you'd be highly sceptical, right?

Name your favorite hobby on earth that isn't computers or design, something you love to do in your free time. Start a business doing/selling/teaching something related to that. With money not being a problem, you can totally run with it and love every second that you do it. If it becomes successful, you're stoked, if it doesn't, that still means you got to do your one favorite non-work thing on earth for a while (and you got to call it "work" during the time you did it).

Where do you live? If the conditions are right, there's success to be had in services like http://recyclenrv.com. That's the business I started (with much less money).

Graphic design is not a good industry in a down economy. Not at all. He's not starting an industry, he's starting a business. A lot of companies are looking at cutting costs right now. They're going to be shopping for cheaper alternatives for work they have to do anyway (packaging, mailings, logos, product design, branding). A small business where they have a direct line with the owner instead of some account manager might be just the thing they're looking for. If your price is 15 % cheaper and you have 30 % less overhead than your competitors (because you work from home and have no account managers, secretaries and other costs), you'll have a *very* profitable business, even in a down economy.