BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Email List Acquisition Platform 📧 

List-en up

Available Domain: Listbuild.io

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: Email, invented back in 1971, is the oldest form of communication on the internet. Yet after all that time we still don’t have the ability to edit emails after we sent them…

But email has had something of a renaissance in recent years meaning more and more companies are looking to grow their email lists by acquiring other email lists. This however can be problematic due to regulations like GDPR and the CAN-SPAM Act. Buying and selling email lists is a bit like cutting in line, it’s not illegal, but it’s kinda frowned upon. So let’s build a platform to make this work.

Market Size: The global email marketing market was valued at around $6.5bn in 2023

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A platform where users can acquire email lists from those looking to sell their lists

How it Works:

• Users who wants to sell their email lists upload them to the platform

• The platform then performs checks on the list, like scanning for fake email addresses and ensures that subscribers on the list are real

• Buyers can then browse email lists they want to purchase and once they purchase it they can send emails from the existing email account asking subscribers to subscribe to the new email list, all ensuring GDPR and CAN-SPAM Act compliance

• Sellers are then compensated based on how many engaged subscribers are sent to the new newsletter

• Sellers could opt to sell their list once or multiple times on this type of platform

Go-to-market: Start by facilitating the sale of email lists, performing the role of the platform manually and start building your business from there

Business Model: Take a cut of each transaction on the platform

Startup Costs: If you started as an agency facilitating these transactions you could start this very cheaply, then build the platform from there

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: Get acquired by a major email service provider like MailChimp or Sendgrid

Exit Multiple: You’re likely selling this for 5x - 8x revenue

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

The Mowercycle

No explanation needed.

The mowercycle is badass and you know if it existed you’d buy one.

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: AI Coaches

AI is transforming the coaching industry. Over the next few years all of us are going to have bespoke, personalized, AI coaches trained on our data to help us with whatever our goals are, from getting fit to saving money. so why not get ahead of the trend and build a business in this space?

Business Ideas

• AI Influencer Coaches: Work with influencers and experts to create AI coach versions of them for their fans to use.

• AI Running Coach: Create an AI which ingests running and fitness data and develops tailored training plans based on the user’s goals.

THE MONEYSHOT

The Banker who Built a +$150m/Year Popcorn Empire

Popcorn isn’t exactly the most innovative product in the world.

But this guy managed to acquire a popcorn brand for $250k and turn it into a +$150m/yr business.

This is his story.

If you’re a movie buff then you’ll know who Gene Hackman is. But apart from starring in classic movies like Bonnie and Clyde, Mississippi Burning and Superman, Gene is something of an entrepreneur too.

One day, back in the early 2000s, Gene’s wife Betsy was talking to him about the Atkins diet, the trendy, low carb diet half of the world was on at one stage. Betsy lamented the fact that on the diet she couldn’t enjoy one of her favorite treats…popcorn. So Gene did what any loving husband would do in this situation. He started a company.

He reached out to Michael A. Sands and Jim Cramer (yes…that Jim Cramer, the host of CNBC's "Mad Money) and in 2004 the three of them decided to start a healthy popcorn company.

They founded LesserEvil.

The company’s first product was kettlecorn and over time they added new products to their line-up. But just like so many of Jim’s stock picks, pretty quickly things started to go wrong.

The company spent substantial amounts of money on branding and marketing and as costs grew, the original founders lost faith in the company's direction. By 2011, the brand was struggling badly and retail buyers described the company as "a dog with fleas". But one man’s trash is another man’s treasure and in 2011, Charles Coristine (pictured above) came into the picture.

Charles was a Wall Street veteran. He had spent 17 years working for Morgan Stanley as a fixed-income trader. But after so many years of grinding Charles found his mental health was deteriorating, so he decided to take some time out to figure out what his next move would be (aka he did an MBA).

And during his MBA he met the previous founders of the business and something about it spoke to him. He saw the kernel of a great business (the only popcorn pun I’ll use…I swear) and agreed to purchase the failing business using $250k of his life savings. Charles had found his next move.

When Charles took over he realised there was a lot to do. The company had no processes in place, a skeleton team and had made around $900k of revenue since it was founded. Charles was effectively starting from scratch.

He decided that the best path forward was to vertically integrate (own all aspects of the supply chain) so in 2013 the company took a big risk and acquired a 5,000 square foot factory in Danbury, Connecticut.

They started experimenting with new flavors, like coconut oil and himalayan pink salt, creating new exciting flavors. He also set about rebranding the business which led to this new look for the product.

It worked.

In 2014 they launched a new flavor of popcorn using extra virgin coconut oil, which helped to improve the flavor while reducing fat content, and it started popping off (ok that’s really the last popcorn pun). The brand did $6m in revenue that year. Pretty soon the big retailers started noticing the growth of the brand and in 2015 Kroger became the first major retailer to sell LesserEvil popcorn.

From there growth was very strong and in 2018 LesserEvil raised $3m from Eco Invest to support another rebrand to the packaging you see on the shelves today.

From there the brand hasn’t looked back. LesserEvil has been profitable since 2021 and in 2023 generated $103m in revenue and $14.4 million in EBITDA. That same year LesserEvil sold a "significant minority" stake to Aria Growth Partners to further develop manufacturing and retail distribution. The company's products are now sold in about 35,000 stores, including major retailers like Walmart, Target, and Costco and they’re on track to do $165m in revenue in 2024. Quite the turnaround story.

All of which goes to show, apart form the fact that Jim Cramer is wrong a lot, that great execution is just as important as having a great idea. They go together as well as peanut butter and jelly or popcorn and melted butter.

If you come up with a great idea and pair that with great execution, you’ll be unstoppable.

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