---
title: "How to Increase 5 Dollars by 100 Times in 2 Hours? The Result Is Unexpected!"
description: "In a Stanford University class, Professor Tina Seelig gave each of 14 teams an envelope with $5 as seed money, challenging them to make as much money as possible in two hours. The most successful teams didn't use the $5 at all; instead, they identified unmet needs and leveraged their most valuable resources, achieving returns of over 4000% and even selling their three-minute class presentation for $650."
author: "蒂娜 · 齐莉格"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2017-02-21"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/how-to-increase-5-dollars-by-100-times-in-2-hours-the-result-is-unexpect-e6660b4f/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/how-to-increase-5-dollars-by-100-times-in-2-hours-the-result-is-unexpect-e6660b4f.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Ro9FhZzoZW09z3q1RLO4vA"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E5%A6%82%E4%BD%95%E5%9C%A82%E5%B0%8F%E6%97%B6%E5%86%85%E8%AE%A95%E5%9D%97%E9%92%B1%E5%8D%87%E5%80%BC100%E5%80%8D-%E7%BB%93%E6%9E%9C%E5%87%BA%E4%B9%8E%E6%84%8F%E6%96%99-e6660b4f.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/how-to-increase-5-dollars-by-100-times-in-2-hours-the-result-is-unexpect-e6660b4f/"
usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt"
---

# How to Increase 5 Dollars by 100 Times in 2 Hours? The Result Is Unexpected!

> In a Stanford University class, Professor Tina Seelig gave each of 14 teams an envelope with $5 as seed money, challenging them to make as much money as possible in two hours. The most successful teams didn't use the $5 at all; instead, they identified unmet needs and leveraged their most valuable resources, achieving returns of over 4000% and even selling their three-minute class presentation for $650.

**Click the image for details**
**How to increase $5 by 100 times in 2 hours? This sounds a bit unreliable.**
But in a Stanford University class, Professor Tina Seelig conducted a small test, not with $1, but similar:
She gave each of the 14 groups in the class an envelope containing $5 as seed money. The students had four days to think about how to complete the task.
When they opened the envelope, the task was activated.
Each team needed to use the $5 to earn as much money as possible within two hours. Then on Sunday night, they had to compile their results into a document and send it to the professor, and on Monday morning, they had three minutes to present to the whole class.
Although Stanford students are all top-notch and smart, for students with little worldly experience, this was still a considerable challenge. To complete the task, students had to maximize the use of their resources—that is, the $5.
>
**1. If it were you, how would you complete this challenge?**
When the professor first posed this question to the students in class, answers from below included, "Take the $5 to Las Vegas and gamble!" and "Use the $5 to buy a lottery ticket!"
Such answers undoubtedly drew laughter from the whole class.
Doing this is not impossible, but they would have to take enormous risks, and it would be almost impossible to accomplish.
Several other common answers were to use the initial $5 to buy materials, then help people wash cars or set up a juice stand.
These ideas were indeed good and could earn a little money. However, a few groups came up with better ways to break the mold. They took the challenge seriously, considered different possibilities, and created as much value as possible.
How did they do it?
**2. Your most valuable resource is not the $5**
>
The teams that earned the most money almost didn't use the professor's seed money—the $5.
They realized that limiting their vision to the $5 would reduce many possibilities.
Five dollars is basically nothing, so they thought beyond the $5 and considered various possibilities of starting from scratch.
They observed their surroundings: what needs of people were not yet met. By discovering these needs and trying to solve them, the top teams earned over $600 in two hours, and the average return on the $5 was an astonishing 4000%!
Many teams didn't even use their seed money, so from that perspective, their return on investment was infinite!
So how did they create these miracles?
**Miracle method one:**
One team noticed a common problem in the university town—on Saturday nights, some popular restaurants always had long lines.
This team saw a business opportunity. They reserved seats at restaurants in advance, and as Saturday approached, they sold each seat to customers who didn't want to wait for up to $20.
**That night, they observed some interesting phenomena:**
> 1. The female students in the team sold more seats than the male students, possibly because women are more approachable. So they adjusted their plan: the male students were responsible for contacting restaurants to reserve seats, and the female students were responsible for finding customers to sell the right to use those seats.
>
>
>
>
> 2. They also found that when restaurants used electronic number tickets for queuing, it was easier to sell seats for those restaurants, because the physical exchange gave customers a tangible return after spending money, making them feel that their money was well spent.
**Miracle method two:**
Another team used an even simpler method.
They set up a small stall next to the student union and helped passing students measure their bicycle tire pressure. If the pressure was insufficient, they could pay one dollar to inflate their tires at their stall.
It turned out that this idea, though simple, was feasible. Students could conveniently get free inflation at nearby gas stations, but most were happy to pay at their stall and expressed gratitude for the service.
However, after running the stall for an hour, this group adjusted their way of making money. They no longer charged for the inflation service but asked for donations after inflating the tires.
In this way, their income suddenly soared! Like the team that sold reserved seats, this team observed customer feedback during implementation and optimized their plan, leading to a significant increase in revenue.
These teams performed well, and the other students in the class were impressed by their presentations.
But the team that earned the most money was the real standout; they truly took "think outside the box" to the extreme.
**Miracle method three:**
This team believed that their most valuable resource was neither the $5 nor the two hours of earning time, but the three-minute presentation in class on Monday.
Stanford University, as a world-renowned institution, not only has students scrambling to get in, but companies also scramble to recruit there. This team sold the three minutes of class time to a company for them to run a recruitment advertisement.
Just like that, they earned $650 in three minutes.
They discovered: **Their most valuable resource at hand was neither selling their time nor selling their connections, but selling their classmates—these talents are what society needs most.**
**This way of thinking is what everyone is pursuing now: "Think outside the box."**
**3. Find the most obvious solution and then exclude it**
>
What is the best "Think outside the box" practice demonstrated by this group of Stanford students?
The following principle will be very useful to you.
**"When encountering a problem, first find the most obvious solution, then exclude it. Okay, now you can start thinking about other solutions."**
This concept may sound a bit vague, so let me give an example.
Imagine you are an ambitious entrepreneur, say you want to open a restaurant, like the one below.
What does a restaurant do? It provides food.
But no, now I tell you—this restaurant cannot provide food, or the food is very average.
In other words: you want to open a restaurant that does not attract people with food.
Since you decide not to use food to attract customers, what will you use instead?
You can focus on creating a unique dining atmosphere and open a themed restaurant, for example, an aviation-themed restaurant (making the restaurant look like an airplane).
Or, you can invite a great band or dance troupe to perform, like this:
You can also arrange the dining environment like a children's playground to attract family dining, like this:
You can even move the dining environment outdoors, like this:
And there are many, many other options...
**When you exclude the "food" highlight, what you need to think about—are the unconventional ideas, that is "think outside the box."**
People who are good at "thinking outside the box" not only discover solutions that others don't see, but also identify resources that others don't realize, and package them to maximize value.
That's it. In doing anything, you can try different solutions—first exclude the obvious one, and use that as a premise to think:
If the simplest solution to your current work is not effective, what other methods do you have?
If your boss doesn't pay you today, what other ways can you make a living?
If Valentine's Day doesn't allow sending flowers, what would you give your beloved?
If popular tourist attractions don't issue visas to tourists, where else can you go?
......
"You live in a box, work in a box, you drive the box, and eventually you are buried in the box. Jump out of the box of thinking. When you truly discover this way of thinking, you will find that there is actually no box outside."
Jump out of your thinking box, and your life will have many more possibilities.
What you gain will be far more than just $100.
-END-


---

## Copyright and AI use

This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL.

Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671