BUSINESS IDEA | VENTURE STARTUP

Energy Drink for Anxiety Sufferers 🖥️

Nervous energy

Available Domain: Nervousenergy.com

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: Anxiety is rough. You can be having the best day ever until boom…out of nowhere…it hits you.

In fact, over 40 million adults in the U.S. (19.1% of the population) have an anxiety disorder. And these people have to be extremely careful about consuming stimulants like caffeine, since too much caffeine can amplify symptoms of anxiety. This means that energy drinks, with their huge caffeine levels, and anxiety go together as well as socks and sandals do. So let’s create a product for this market.

Market Size: The global energy drinks market was estimated to be worth $62bn in 2023

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: An energy drink designed specifically for people with anxiety

How it Works:

• The product consists of small cans (250mls) with low amounts of caffeine (40mg, half that of Red Bull) and l-theanine (200mg) which helps to eliminate any jitters as a result of the caffeine intake. It also comes in a variety of flavours

• The product is positioned as a healthy alternative to other energy drink brands and specifically caters to this vertical

• Customers can buy the product online through an e-commerce store (ultimate goal is to get to retail stores)

Go-to-market: As mentioned above, start as an e-commerce store to prove demand for the product then sell into retail stores

Business Model: Sell in packs of 8/12 online and single units in retail stores

Startup Costs: You’ll need some funding to get this off the ground realistically, so look to do a raise to get the product formulated and go from there

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: The ultimate strategy in the CPG (consumer packaged goods) space is to sell to one of the big boys in the industry, like Coke, Pepsi, Monster etc. That should be the aim here.

Exit Multiple: CPG companies are valued on revenue, since all acquirers really care about is adding sales to their top-line. So focus on revenue growth here. Rockstar Energy was acquired in 2021 for c.7.9x revenue, which is a good comp here.

DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Zoom Games App

If you’re anything like us you’ll have spent hours (in aggregate) sitting in Zoom waiting rooms with nothing to do.

Until now that is.

With our new Zoom app you can play classic games, like snake, while you wait for your meeting to start.

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Software Developer Job Postings

Per the Fed, the number of job postings for software developers has collapsed since 2022. This is most likely driven by hiring freezes in big tech companies and other tech companies slowing hiring to get to profitability against a tough economic backdrop. But the big question here is will the productivity gains from AI mean that this number will never go back up?

THE MONEYSHOT

The $13bn Red Bull Competitor That Nearly Went Bankrupt

If you live in the US then over the last few years you’ve almost certainly come across this brand:

It’s almost as if it’s appeared out of nowhere, an overnight success.

But the reality couldn’t be further from this.

Celsius, one of the fastest growing drinks brands in the world, was founded in 2004 by husband and wife duo Steve and Janice Haley.

It was originally invented as a weight loss drink, which had high amounts of caffeine to speed up one’s metabolism and help them to burn fat. And when Carl DeSantis, a billionaire who made his money by selling Rexall Sundown, a vitamins brand, tried the drink for the first time a few months after launching he knew this product was a winner.

But over the next decade not many people agreed with him.

The brand saw ok success with DeSantis’ backing and managed to go public for the first time in 2008, when it was doing less than c.$5m in revenue. But after many years of losing money, the company was delisted from the Nasdaq. They also lost their Costco listing, which accounted for 60% of revenue.

The company spent nearly a decade going nowhere until around 2015 when the company decided to reposition themselves in the market as an energy drink.

This small shift in messaging and packaging completely transformed their performance and DeSantis ploughed more investment into the brand, but this time it paid off.

In 2020 growth started to hockey stick, with sales hitting $314m in 2021, $654m in 2022 and $1.3bn in 2023.

Their growth was so impressive that Pepsi wanted a piece of the action, so in 2022 PepsiCo invested $550m in the brand.

So while Celsius may look like an overnight success, it’s really an overnight success 20 years in the making.

INFLUENCER IDEAS

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