BUSINESS IDEA | VENTURE STARTUP

QR Code Security Platform 🕵️

Gone phishin’

Available Domain: Seqrity.ai

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: Despite being invented in 1994 it took a global pandemic for the QR code to become really mainstream.

But this uptick in QR code usage has led to issues with ”quishing”, or QR code phishing attacks in a business context where employees are sent emails with QR codes containing malicious links. So let’s create a tool to solve this.

Market Size: In 2022, 38 million QR codes were scanned in the USA alone

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: An AI-powered platform which scans and reads QR codes received by employees

How it Works:

• Employees are automatically signed up to the platform once their company is paying for their seat

• Whenever an employee receives an email containing a QR code it is automatically scanned by AI and opened in a sandbox environment where it’s tested to see if it’s malicious or not

• Employees also have an app on their phones which scans QR codes and shows the link they’re clicking on in huge letters so they can see if it’s a fraudulent link or not, in case the system misses it

• Finally employees are also provided with training on how to spot emails which may contain malicious QR codes

Go-to-market: Figure out what industries are most exposed to malicious attacks from QR codes and go from there

Business Model: Charge per seat

Startup Costs: This is a highly technical build so you’ll need to raise a decent seed round here to build this

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: Sell to a large cybersecurity software vendor, although I doubt Crowdstrike are in the market for anything right now..

Exit Multiple: Median trailing-twelve-months (TTM) revenue multiples for cybersecurity startups were 7.3x in Q4 2023

DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Bicycle Seat Belt

Seat belts save lives, right?

So why not add them to bikes…

Genius.

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Full-body MRIs

As more and more people focus on their health and longevity many people are opting to use services like Prenuvo to get full-body MRI scans which can detect health conditions before they become big issues. In fact 1 in 20 scans result in a potentially life-saving diagnosis according to Prenuvo’s numbers. This is part of a wider trend of giving access to advanced medical tests to people who want to ensure they are as healthy as possible.

Business Ideas

• Medical Tourism Packages: Offering travel packages that combine full-body scans with vacations in locations known for advanced medical facilities.

• Portable Dexa Scan: A dexa scan business which travels around to gyms to measure people’s bodyfat

• Insurance products: Designing new health insurance models that incorporate regular full-body scans and adjust premiums based on proactive health management.

THE MONEYSHOT

The 29 Year-old Worth +$500m

In yesterday’s edition of Half Baked we told the story of Alexandr Wang’s meteoric rise to become the world’s youngest self-made billionaire.

But what happened to his co-founder who left the company in 2018 just 2 years into building the business? Well, it’s fascinating…

This is her story.

Lucy Guo has always had a rebellious side to her.

Growing up in the Bay Area, she says her Chinese immigrant parents were "very, very strict" and pushed her to do well in school. Instead, she would get into trouble for selling her classmates everything from stationery to Pokemon cards.

But, like almost all great tech founders did, while in high school Lucy taught herself to code and began experimenting with creating websites and apps.

So by the time she arrived at Carnegie Mellon University, she had gotten into hackathons, which she frequently won, and gravitated toward the startup world.

Lucy was killing it in college until Peter Thiel came knocking and offered her a Thiel Fellowship, which she dropped out of college to accept.

After this she joined Quora’s design team where she met Alexandr Wang. After a brief stint at Snap while Alexandr was at MIT, the pair decided to chart their own path and build their own startup, which is when they founded Scale AI.

Scale AI started as a data-labeling service for AI, with Lucy focusing on product development, design, and user experience.

The company quickly gained traction, securing significant contracts with companies in the autonomous vehicle space and other AI-driven industries.

But in 2018 Lucy left the business due to a "division in culture and ambition alignment", which we still don’t really understand…

But after leaving Scale, rather than trying to build her own unicorn, she decided to focus on passion projects instead, like creating PokéCrew, a widely used assistant app for the Pokémon GO game.

But after a few years she got the itch to build something new. So in 2022 she floated a new business idea to her friends and within 48 hours, she had raised $3.5m, and shortly after that, $8m of funding committed.

She had just launched Passes.

Passes enables creators to monetize their base of followers by connecting directly with fans and turning them into super-fans.

The business has been thriving ever since it launched and earlier this year the platform raised $40m.

Oh and for good measure Lucy’s remaining stake in Scale is valued at around $500m making here the second richest self-made woman under 40 in the world, after Kylie Jenner.

Not bad for a 29 year old.

INFLUENCER IDEAS

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