IDEA #1 | STARTUP

Airbnb for Storage 📦

He shoots, he stores!

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

At Half Baked we’re obsessed with companies that manage to uncover hidden markets. Take Airbnb or Uber who unlocked huge amounts of supply that was hiding in plain sight to build multi-billion dollar businesses.

Naturally their success, along with the success of other big companies, has created a kind of shorthand which people use to come up with business ideas.

Normally we’re sceptical of these ideas, but we think we’ve found one that could be huge…storage.

Almost everyone has an old shed, loft or that they don’t use for anything in their homes. Let’s unlock the value hiding in plain sight for them by bringing the Airbnb marketplace model to the $29.5bn storage industry.

2. Solution ✅

Here’s the idea…create a platform where people can rent out space in their homes for others to use as storage.

Users would sign up for the platform and could list how much square footage they have available that people could use for storage. This could be a garage, an outhouse, a loft, whatever space the user is comfortable giving up.

Then people looking for storage could sign up for the platform and search in their locality for storage which they can use. They would take an inventory of the items they’re giving to the host to store and then hand over the goods. They would pay the host for however long they store the goods for.

Today people own more crap than ever before, as evidenced by the growth in demand for storage units, so this solution would massively help people to declutter their homes, as well as to generate income for those storing goods.

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: start off in a market where storage units are in high demand. That’s where you’ll find unmet demand and your first customers.

Monetisation: Charge a transaction fee for storage

Startup Costs: Minimal - you’re just setting up a marketplace

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

There’s 2 paths to an exit here - you could exit here to a large, somewhat antiquated storage company like U-Haul who are looking to diversify into a tech platform, or to a large marketplace player like eBay.

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IDEA #2 | STARTUP

Automated Investor Updates 🔔

The intelligent investor = the informed investor

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

A founder’s time is incredibly precious.

With so much to do and so little time they’re constantly looking for ways to get time back in their day, time that could be spent sending memes on Slack, reading Hacker News or talking shit about their competitors on Twitter.

But one major time drain for founders are the dreaded investor updates. Every few weeks the founder must take the time to write an update to their investors on how the business is doing, recent performance, any big changes in the business and plans or initiatives for the next few weeks. Some investors will read every investor update they’re sent, others won’t even open them.

It’s like having a penpal who almost never writes back, but if you stop writing to them they won’t give you millions of dollars in the future.

Quite the conundrum.

Investor updates are just a part of the game, but nonetheless still take away time that the founder needs to build their business. So let’s create a platform to give founders this time back.

2. Solution ✅

Here’s the idea…create a platform which automatically creates and sends investment updates to a company’s investors at a specified cadence.

Here’s how it works. A startup founder signs up with the platform and connects their accounting software and other analytics platforms to the platform.

They then use a template to create an investor update where certain data points are pulled automatically from their software platforms, meaning whenever the update is sent this data is fully up-to-date.

For example, the update could show a company’s recent burn rate based on their quickbooks data, their cash on hand through connecting to their bank accounts or their CaC (customer acquisition cost) through connecting to Meta’s ads platform.

This data could be shared with investors in a static way, where they can simply see the most up-to-date figures, or even dynamically where they could share tables, charts and graphs which could be manipulated by the investors to look at the data in as much detail as the founder feels comfortable sharing.

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: The key here is to get investors recommending your product to their portfolio companies. Start with investors with small investments, test the software out then move to scaleups with higher budgets

Monetisation: Monthly subscription fee

Startup Costs: As a software platform startup costs should be pretty low here, but the build could get quite complex so you’ll need great engineers working on the platform

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

There are many paths to an exit here. Companies whose customers are founders such as Angellist or Carta would be lining up to acquire this kind of business.

NO BRAINER IDEA

Free Ride Hailing App

Ride hailing apps like Uber and Lyft are great but with inflation, increased take rates and surge pricing they’re getting pretty expensive to use.

Until now that is.

Introducing a new ride hailing service where rides are free because the driver loudly reads out ads to you during your trip. No earphones allowed though.

Look out Uber, we’re coming for your crown.

BIG DECK ENERGY

Adobe’s Failed $20bn Figma Acquisition Deck

Year: 2022

Stage: Acquisition

Amount: $20bn

On September 15, 2022, Adobe announced its plans to acquire browser-based design startup Figma in a cash and stock deal worth about $20 billion. However, in December 2023, the deal fell through due to regulatory opposition. Check out Adobe’s deck outlining the details of the acquisition right here.

JUST THE TIP

The First Will be Last, and the Last Will be First

What do Apple, Google and Facebook all have in common?

It’s not that they’re all money printing machines…which they are.

It’s not that each of these companies know more about you than your wife does…which they do.

No, these tech giants share another incredibly interesting trait.

None of them were the first to market.

When Google launched in 1998 they were the 15 or 20th search engine to market. Facebook had to contend with Friendster and MySpace when they launched in 2004, as well as the potential threat posed by the Winklevoss twins until Mark Zuckerberg told them to go Zuck themselves. When Apple launched the iPhone in 2007 phones had been around for decades with the smartphone market dominated by Blackberry.

None of these companies were the first to market, but they all won their markets.

How? Through something simple, but not easy. By being the best.

Google’s superior search algorithm (PageRank), Facebook’s ruthless competitive spirit and iPhone’s technological superiority all meant these companies rose above their competitors and dominated their respective markets. They still do today.

So if you want to win big, you only have one choice. Be the best.