IDEA #1 | VENTURE STARTUP

Next Generation Restaurant Menus 🍽️

Tasty tech for the restaurant biz

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

In the early part of the 21st century the humble QR code was slowly fading into obscurity. No one wanted to use them.

Until they were saved by an unlikely source. Covid-19.

Covid-19 ushered in the instantaneous, widespread use of QR codes. They were used for concert tickets, boarding passes and much more.

Most notably however they found a home in the restaurant business as a replacement for menus. But here’s the problem…QR code menus suck.

They’re hard to read, poorly formatted and are generally worse than being given a normal menu.

But unfortunately it looks like QR code menus are here to stay, which means that someone needs to come in and create a 10x better product in this space.

This is how.

2. Solution ✅

Here’s the idea…create next generation QR code menus for restaurants, powered by AI. Menus would be highly customised, beautiful pages built for mobile with all the usual details you’d expect - prices, macronutrient information, details of allergens etc. but this is all expected. We need to make this way better.

The first way is to allow restaurants to add videos of their dishes to the menu, as long as the videos of the dishes somewhat mirror real life. As we all know food never looks as good in real life as it does in videos.

What about AI though? Menus would come with a GPT-powered waiter that could answer questions or recommend what to eat.

Say a customer asks their digital waiter “hey, do you have any vegan, gluten free, soy free, antibiotics free, raw, non GMO, organic fat free, low carb options on the menu?” The AI powered waiter could recommend the best dish for the customer based on what they want.

This supercharged menu could also be used as the basis to revamp a restaurant’s often outdated website, given how important online presence is for restaurants these days.

In fact, a recent survey found that 40% of Gen Z customers won’t go to a restaurant if they can’t check the menu first. When asked for comment one responded: ”It’s giving…anxiety. Even if my bro told me the food is bussin’, I won’t go there if I can’t check the menu beforehand. No cap.”

If you integrated with EPOS systems you could also layer in payments, tipping etc. all into this product. The possibilities here are endless.

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: The strategy here should be to pilot your software with small, independent restaurants to test it out, and once you’ve got it working well then you can try work with larger chains.

Monetisation: charge restaurants a monthly subscription to use your product

Startup Costs: as a software business this shouldn’t be too expensive to get off the ground. Find yourself a technical co-founder and get building!

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

There are huge software businesses in the restaurant space, like Irish unicorn flipdish. The goal here should be to exit to a company like this, where your product would roll perfectly into their product range.

IDEA #2 | STARTUP

Employee X Podcast 🎙️

New pod, who dis?

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

Everyone loves a good podcast.

Maybe you’re a Joe Rogan fan, or an All-In stan. Maybe you’re an ardent fan of the Beef and Dairy Network’s podcast, because that’s a thing apparently.

There’s a podcast out there for everyone and everyone has an idea for a podcast.

In fact, we’re willing to bet everything we have ($2.09 last we checked) that someone has said the infamous words to you “we should totally start a podcast.”

Even though there are more than 3 million active podcasts in the world, everyone believes the world needs another one.

Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.

The business podcast space is particularly saturated today, with all manner of business podcasts being produced, usually with the same founders doing the rounds around different podcasts, rehashing the same stories.

Someone needs to come up with something new in the business podcast space. And we think we have something.

2. Solution ✅

Here’s the idea…create a podcast where you only interview early employees in incredibly successful businesses about their experience in the early days of these businesses. Think employee number 5 at Stripe or employee number 6 at Airbnb.

This would make for incredibly engaging content. You get a different perspective on what it was like to work with iconic founders in iconic companies from day 1, rather than the PR polished version the founder themselves tell.

You’ll also get the opportunity to speak to a wide variety of people with very different backgrounds, from designers to engineers and everything in between.

Also, booking guests for the pod should be easier than if you were to go after the founders themselves. You’re more likely to get a response from employee number 9 at Facebook than Zuck himself

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: Record, record, record. Then try and get the word out there, some early guerrilla marketing will be needed to get those early listeners.

Monetisation: Sell ads on the podcast. Given your audience would be executives, founders and business people, advertisers will be willing to pay a high CPM to advertise to this cohort

Startup Costs: There’s very little capital required to start this business. Buy yourself half decent mic and you should be good to go!

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Once you’ve built distribution in the form of an audience, the key is to create businesses and products that your audience want and to put them through your distribution. Think Mr Beast and Feastables or KSI/Logan Paul and Prime. They sell their own products to their audience. You can do the same here.

IDEA #3 | STARTUP

LinkedIn Bio 👔

One link to rule them all

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

“Link in bio” has always been an elegant solution for creators looking to direct their followers to their product or service, particularly when the destination may involve content that’s NSFW.

And this “link in bio” real estate is incredibly valuable.

Linktree, the biggest player in this space, raised an eye watering $110 million in March 2022 at a $1.3bn valuation. Not bad for a product which is essentially just a list of hyperlinks on a page.

Peak bull market exuberance or a fair valuation? Well a 52x revenue multiple is looking a little steep in 2023.

The focus by linktree and many other players in the market on creating a product optimised for links in Instagram and Tik Tok bios has left one social media platform largely ignored….LinkedIn.

Which is where we believe there’s an opportunity.

2. Solution ✅

Here’s the idea…create a link in bio tool designed for professionals on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is great for building a network, creeping on old classmates and for pure entertainment value courtesy of good some old fashioned LinkedIn cringe.

But the actual profiles on LinkedIn are pretty stale. If you’re looking to give a more detailed, nuanced account of who you are then LinkedIn won’t cut it. We need to create a product which offers exactly this.

This platform would allow users to create customised pages for themselves, using the details from their LinkedIn profile as a starting point with a bit of AI magic. On their personalised site users could:

• Showcase their creativity, such as design portfolios, previous writings etc.

• Suggest what they’re open to, such as working on side projects, consulting or freelancing

• Give more detailed backgrounds beyond just a list of previous jobs, such as previous travel experiences

• Give recommendations on favourites books, podcasts and more

Polywork is the only real player in this market. Interestingly they’ve only recently pivoted into this area. Previously they were trying to compete with LinkedIn directly.

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: Companies have deep pockets, so the ideal go-to-market strategy here is to find workers who find this tool very valuable, then approach companies with these workers and get them to pay for the service. Failing that, just go directly to your users.

Monetisation: Charge end users, or preferably companies, a monthly subscription fee. Somewhere between $5 and $15 a month per user/seat seems about right.

Startup Costs: you could spin up an MVP pretty cheaply here, you’d need just a few thousand dollars to get this going.

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit: The goal here should clearly be to exit. The link in bio market has a lot of players in it all looking to increase market share, so selling to one of them makes the most sense once you’ve built a solid user base. Hopefully once you’re ready for an exit multiples will be back at 2021 levels.

THEIR PAST, YOUR FUTURE

Do you know this guy? You should.

We’re 99% sure you don’t know who this guy is…but you’ve used his product before.

So who is he?

No, it’s not your father who went out for cigarettes 15 years ago (you gotta let that go).

This is Michael Arrington and back in 2005 he founded techcrunch.

It started out as a hobby, but his high quality content, diligent publishing schedule and a lack of competitors meant his website was soon getting millions of views every month.

He bootstrapped the business to millions of dollars of revenue per year and in 2010 AOL acquired the blog for an estimated $25m, just 5 years after he started the company.

Michael owned 85% of the company when it was acquired, so got himself a pretty nice payout over a very short time span.

If he did it, you can do it too (cringe… BUT TRUE)