What is a good solid business in todays world?

I was talking to a friend today, and he mentioned we should set up a business. Between us we have a wide array of skills, we can learn fast, and between two of us we can raise a fair bit of capital to invest.

The problem is, as we run down the list of possible things we could do, we found that all of it would be doomed to fail in the current market. (we live in spain).

It would seem to me, that if you have less than one million dollars to invest, you are almost doomed to fail from the start.

The question is, what is a good solid business in todays world? what kind of business could you set up for less than a million that is at least guaranteed to earn something?

It used to be everyone was almost guaranteed to earn a living, you could buy a boat and bring in some fish and make a profit, or open a bar and sell beer and get some profit, but now, it’s like every business has bigger expenses than profits.