The Nouveau Riche are people who have amassed wealth in their generation without kickdowns from others and who mostly came from a lower standard of living. Many tech startup entrepreneurs are good examples of how you can go from “rags to riches” almost overnight - from Yahoo’s Jerry Yang to Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
How can you tap the disposable incomes of this upper-class? Well, it depends. The Nouveau Riche in Moscow, for example, hit it big in the early 90s from oil money. Why not build a social network for this crowd? Russians love showing off their status - flaunting material goods is a way of life. Letting them express this via an exclusive social network would be a great way to tap this underserved market. That’s not to say there are already players in this arena.
Many VC’s are flocking to places around the world like Moscow where people have accumulated huge disposable incomes that make it smart for businesses to cater to them. The only tricky thing is how to classify a group of people just by socioeconomic status. Solutions like social networking are a good idea because they appeal to any personality type. Whether it’s true or not when the old money players say that the Nouveau Riche lack sophistication, there is obviously some room to tap this market.
Filed under: Start-ups
