I tried to start a personal computer rental business. I thought I had it all lined up:

-Finance for initial hardware purchases
-Fancy business premises
-Cash-flush business partners
-Technical know-how and enthusiasm

My business plan fell apart when I tried to calculate the costs of insurance. Imagine this: rent out 10 desktop computers, a server and three laptops. should have been easy. The purchase value in today’s terms is about R80000. Rent it out with an 18 month return on investment and get ready to rake in the bucks.

Hmm. Customer doesn’t want PCs – he wants productivity. Email.  Spreadsheets. Word processor. MS OFFICE ! and it only works on MS windows. add R 4000 per PC. Sigh. Okay. Recalculate. R130000. HMMM – MORE MONEY – YAY. Happy shareholders – lets dance the dance of greed.

Time to mitigate risk. Phone for insurance quote. 2% of capital value? No problem. I’ll sweeten the deal- include it no charge.Nearly missed the last thing the insurance rep says,

“NO INSURANCE ON SOFTWARE” – what?

Seems that most software comes with licences that make it worthless for resale. You are not allowed to resell Office or Windows (or antivirus or CAD for that matter) because it is licenced for use by one owner and nowadays may even be tied to the computer is installed on. That money you spent on software can only be realised on productivity. YOU WILL NEVER BE ALLOWED TO RESELL IT.

I threw the business plan in the rubbish bin. To this day I do not know how to run a legal PC rental business with reasonble control of risks.