BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Dine and Dash Prevention 🍽️

Gone appétit

Available Domain: Dashdeny.com

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: But with a recent increase in appetites and the cost of living more diners than ever are giving restaurants the “dine and dash” treatment. Although this guy tried more of a “die and dash” approach.

And when customers don’t pay their bills it’s normally up to waiting staff to pay for their meal, which is incredibly harsh. So let’s step in and solve this problem.

Market Size: The full service restaurants market size is estimated to be worth $325bn in 2024

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A platform to help restaurants to proactively identify and prevent dining and dashing

How it Works:

• Restaurants sign up to the platform which connects to the restaurant’s security cameras and uses computer vision to monitor diners who could potentially dine and dash.

• If the system notices someone trying to dine and dash all staff are informed so they can stop them from leaving. The restaurant door could also automatically lock too (but that could be a bit much)

• Details about customers who dine and dash, or attempt to, are shared with law enforcement and across the network of other restaurants on the platform who are then informed when they enter their restaurants

Go-to-market: Start by finding a restaurant owner with multiple locations to pilot the technology and go from there

Business Model: Monthly subscription fee

Startup Costs: There’s some pretty complex integrations in here so you may need to do a small raise to get it going

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: The move here is to exit to a restaurant management software provider, like OpenTable or Toast

Exit Multiple: As of Q1 2024, industry reports cited SaaS revenue multiples slowly picking back from their three-year low of c.5.5x, which now sits closer to c.5.9x

TOGETHER WITH FOUNDERS (POWERED BY DOGPATCH LABS)

We are looking for the next generation of important #Founders.

You’re a Half Baked reader, which means 2 things:

1. You’re incredibly attractive

2. You have a killer business idea you’re waiting to build

Well why wait?

Through Dogpatch Labs’ Founder program you can join a network of the most exceptional talent (ex Google, Stripe, Meta, Space X and Nasa) to find a co-founder, build your startup and get your first €100k of investment…all in just 12 weeks.

Check them out to find out more.

(btw this isn’t actually sponsored, we’re just trying to be helpful here since it’s a great program)

DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Baby Dentures

Being a kid is tough. All that eating, sleeping and pooping makes for a difficult life. But by far the toughest part is . Painful teething, dentist visits, teeth falling out…it’s a nightmare.

Or at least it was.

With these new baby dentures you child can skip all of that and go straight to dentures. The tooth fairy might not be too happy but she’s pretty rich already.

They also look great, your child won’t look creepy at all 💀

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Male Contraception

Funding has been pouring into the market for alternative birth control methods for men, with startups like Contraline, Next Life Sciences and YourChoice for a variety of new contraception methods for men, including pills and topical gels. And it’s no wonder why. According to one 2023 survey published in the journal Contraception, three-quarters of 2,066 male respondents said they’d be willing to use new contraceptives.

Business ideas:

• Male Fertility Monitoring: Create devices or apps that help men monitor their fertility levels

• Telehealth Contraceptive Services: Offer telehealth consultations for male contraception, providing access to information and prescriptions from the comfort of home.

THE MONEYSHOT

Hacking Shark Tank to Secure the $54m Bag

What if I told you there was a founder who went on Shark Tank, got no investment, but sold his business a year later for a cool $54m?

Well that’s exactly what Garrett Gee did.

Back in 2010 part-time Taylor Lautner impersonator Garrett Gee was a student at Brigham Young University. And like all college students Garrett was fascinated by weed girls mobile app development.

One day, after downloading a barcode scanning app, Garrett spent hours trying to find the best one on the market. But none of them were up to his standards.

So he decided to build one himself.

6 months later, in February 2011, Garrett launched the Scan app and it was an instant hit. Just 3 months after launch the app was downloaded 1m times. It even found its way to the top ten chart in the app store, dethroning the mighty Angry Birds, giving them another target for their anger.

The app kept growing and by December 2012 Scan had been downloaded an astonishing 25m times.

Which is when the sharks started circling.

Garrett was asked to go on Shark Tank and knowing there would be millions of eyeballs on his app, he wanted to make sure he converted them into downloads. So he hatched a plan.

Now there’s a rule on Shark Tank that you can’t show a URL on screen. But there was no rule about QR codes. Garrett showed a large QR code as an example of something his app could scan. And when he left the studio he updated the QR code link to go directly to his app. Genius.

While he didn’t get any investment from the sharks viewers at homs scanning the QR code rocketed his app back to the number 1 spot in the app store.

A few months later, in 2014, Garrett got a Godfather-esque call from Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel who made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Snapchat went on to acquire the app for $54m that year.

Since then Garrett and his family have been (very publicly) travelling the world together under the “Bucket List Family” monicker.

I’m not jealous. You’re jealous.

INFLUENCER IDEAS

#HalfBakedBizIdea

Sharath Kuruganty looking to productize the famous Mom test. Cool idea!

DM us or use #halfbakedbizidea on X/Twitter to get your idea featured in our newsletter.