I said no instantly when my friend asked me to build a dropshipping product -- That was when...

It was not interesting to me at all since I assumed:

1. That the entire world is already doing drop-shipping since the barrier of entry is so low
2. The top sellers on Amazon already have dropshipping nailed, and their advantage is further cemented with their SEO prowess and Amazon reviews

That was when I realized this could potentially be a great idea because a programmer like me had dismissed it instantly. And if I did it, I am sure plenty of other people who are smarter than me might have done the same. Dropshipping is a potential schlep.

I thrive in the gray area.

I do not think I am good at catching schleps. However, I thrive in the gray area with ideas which are still legal but borderline on being illegal. A perfect zone for opportunities because people avoid it for various reasons ranging from ethics to fears of regulatory clampdowns. The gray area is schlep heaven.

• Uber invalidated taxi medallions or similar taxi regulation globally by hijacking cab hailings with an app.
• Airbnb caused an upheaval in the hotel industry by turned spare rooms into tourist lodging.

By the time it was time to regulate, these disruptive startups were already entrenched; leaving governments no choice but to work with them.

The ethics in Facial Recognition is our opportunity

In the US, silicon valley giants are facing ethical pressure against productizing facial recognition software for state actors or other large businesses.

• Shareholders of Amazon voted to prohibit sales of facial recognition system known as Amazon Rekognition to government agencies -- unless Amazon's board concludes that the technology does not facilitate human rights violations.
• Microsoft wiped facial recognition data and followed up by refusing to sell its facial recognition technology to the US police force.

But facial recognition software is here and has been entrenched in our daily lives since a decade ago through you guessed it -- Facebook Photo Tagging.

Sapiengraph

There is an opportunity here for facial recognition software in this ignored region of the world. This is why we are building a people search engine based on the population in Southeast Asia. Our in-house facial recognition with 99.6% accuracy will provide the glue in mapping various identities from different social media sites to a real person in the real world.

I look forward to previewing Sapiengraph by which you can find out everything a person has shared about himself or herself with just a photo of him/her.