IDEA #1 | VENTURE STARTUP

SaaS Usage Platform 🤑

No more being ripped off my SaaSholes

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

In 2023 companies everywhere were cutting costs…everywhere.

Layoffs became more and more commonplace, even affecting Big Tech.

And it looks like 2024 will provide much of the same.

Team trips to Hawaii and free unlimited kombucha are out, layoffs and cost cutting are in.

And one area businesses have been looking to reduce spend is on their software tool costs.

Revenue in the Software as a Service market will hit $282.bn in 2024, showing just how much companies are spending on SaaS tools. But here’s the question…are the employees and by extension the business actually getting value out of the tools?

Let’s build a platform to answer this question for businesses.

2. Solution ✅

Here’s the idea…create a platform that tracks actual software usage against the number of seats businesses are getting billed for to ensure businesses are getting value for money from their SaaS contracts.

Here’s how it works.

Businesses install the software which then monitors the software usage of different employees. It looks at how often they use it for and what features they use the most too and produces reports for the finance team and management to show how often the platforms are being used and for what purposes.

By monitoring feature usage the platform also makes intelligent suggestions on cheaper alternative software packages that could be a better, cheaper fit for what employees are using it for. For example say employees are using notion, which is very expensive, just to write simple docs, then the software would suggest switching to Google docs which would be an order of magnitude cheaper.

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: once you have a prototype built offer a few small startups (around 50 employees) the chance to use the for free, see how much they save then go from there

Monetisation: You could charge a flat subscription fee or charge a % of the amount saved each month

Startup Costs: this will be a relatively complex build, you’d likely need strong engineering talent to make this so a small raise may be needed here

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit to to a large spend management player like Spendesk or Ramp. This would be a SaaS business itself so SaaS multiples apply. Between 2015-2023, a median SaaS company was valued at around 5.1x revenue, so that’s a decent guide for the kind of exit opportunity here.

IDEA #2 | STARTUP

Retiree Consulting Platform 🌴

With age comes wisdom…and an opportunity

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

Everybody’s dream is to retire…or at least they think it is.

Let me explain.

We work and save for years until that sweet sweet moment when we get to bid our office cubicle adieu for the final time.

But here’s the thing…when people actually retire they tend to have a very different experience. They find they lack purpose and more often than not start working again in some capacity.

Take Tom Brady, he’s retired from football more times than I’ve gotten laid, but he just couldn’t stay away.

Once they retire highly experienced business professionals are often eager to get back working, maybe not full time, but certainly in a consulting capacity where they can share the knowledge they’ve built up over decades of work.

So let’s build a platform for this.

2. Solution ✅

Here’s the idea…create a platform where businesses can hire retired professionals as consultants for their businesses.

Retired professionals would sign up for the platform and enter their details, previous experience and different areas of expertise, either manually or by linking their LinkedIn profiles. Businesses would then sign up and could browse the various professionals on the platform for someone with expertise in an area they don’t have.

This would effectively function like a marketplace similar to Fiverr or Upwork, but for highly experienced knowledge workers, meaning there’s more money to be made.

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: start by focussing on professional industries with mandatory early retirement ages, like law or accounting firms. Talk to these people and find some of them some consulting gigs.

Monetisation: charge a fee, similar to recruiters, for consultants who find work with businesses

Startup Costs: you’ll need no capital to get this going.

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

This could be a startup with an incredibly valuable network, making it valuable to a potential acquirer, which would likely be a talent marketplace like Upwork.

NO BRAINER IDEA

Red Flag Dating App

Dating is hard. It takes a long time to really open up to someone and get to know them.

Until now. How about a dating app where you can pay to see someone’s red flags? A simple solution to a big problem. What could possibly go wrong?

BIG DECK ENERGY

Kahoot!’s $28m Deck

Year: 2020

Stage: Not specified

Amount: $28m

Kahoot! is a free game-based learning platform that makes it easy to make interactive quizzes to aid learning. The company was purchased for $1.72bn in 2023 in an all cash deal by a consortium led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management. In 2020 they used this deck to raise $28m.

JUST THE TIP

How 19 People Created +$1tn of Wealth

“You're the average of the five people spend the most time with.”

This incredibly famous quote goes a long way to explaining why my friends and I are all broke.

But it also may explain the success of the so-called Paypal Mafia.

Paypal’s founding team was incredible. It probably contained the highest density of entrepreneurial talent of any organisation, including Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Keith Rabois.

Take a look at this graphic which shows their exploits which has created over $1 trillion of value for the world (granted a lot of that is Elon).

All of these people thrived by working alongside incredible people, which allowed this small group of people to leave an indelible mark on Silicon Valley.

There’s a pretty important lesson here.