BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Reference Checking Platform 🗨️

For future reference(s)

Available Domain: Realrefs.com

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: Reference checking is a critical part of important processes. Getting a job, renting a new place. That’s probably why we all put our friends down as references for everything.

But reference checking is critically important for companies, since hiring the wrong person can cause huge problems. Do getting an honest reflection of a person’s character is critically important. So let’s build a platform to take the pain out of this.

Market Size: The global online recruitment technology market size was valued at $10bn in 2022

2. Solution✅

The Idea: A platform which automatically collects references during hiring processes

How it Works:

• Employers or recruiters sign up to the platform and connect it to their CRM or recruitment software. The platform looks at all of the candidates in their pipeline where reference checks are required to be completed and compiles a list of their references which can then be outbounded automatically via email

• Feedback from these references is then collected and summarized for hiring Managers to review

• Based on a candidate’s employment history the platform can also suggest other potential reference checks, like employees they worked with but who are not specifically given as references (Note: in some geographies this kind of reference checking is not permissible, so make sure you check local laws if you’re gonna start this)

Go-to-market: Start by working with recruiters who need to do huge amounts of reference checking and work with them to mould the perfect product

Business Model: Recruiters/businesses pay a fee per candidate checked

Startup Costs: There’s some complexity to this build but you could get this off the ground with a few thousand dollars

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: You could sell this business to a large recruitment platform as a natural add-on to their services

Exit Multiple: You could likely sell this for approximately 4x - 7x revenue in a few years time

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

BetterYell

Sometimes in life it all gets a bit much and you just want to scream at the top of your lungs.

Well with BetterYell you can.

It’s like Betterhelp, but instead of getting matched to therapists you get matched with one of our “listeners” who you can shout at to your hearts content. They’ll simply listen to you for as long as you need to vent.

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Data Breaches

So far in 2024 1 billion records have been stolen in large scale data breaches and the number of data compromises skyrocketed last year. It’s no wonder then that funding is growing rapidly in this space, with cybersecurity startups raising nearly $2.7 billion in Q1-24 and even Google is getting in on this market through their acquisition of Wiz.

Recent Raises

• CultureAI raises $10m to spot employees’ risky cyber behaviour

• Cybersecurity platform Coro raises $100m at valuation of $750m

• Cybersecurity startup Axonius raises $200 million from returning investors

THE MONEYSHOT

Turning $1,000 into a $100m Exit in 2.5 Years

Business ideas can come from anywhere.

And for this founder reading the back of a can led to a $100m exit just 2 years later.

This is his story.

One day Moiz Ali did something scary. Something that we all know we should do more of, but refrain from.

He read the ingredients on the back of a product.

The product in question was a can of Axe (or Lynx if you’re on the other side of the Atlantic) and Moiz was shocked by what he read. Aluminum Zirconium Tetrachlorohydrex. Isopropyl Palmitate. Cyclopentasiloxane. It was an alphabet soup of terrifying words.

He had his business idea.

With a small exit already under his belt, selling Caskers (a flash sales site for spirits) for $7m in 2014, Moiz was ready to go for a home-run.

But he immediately had a problem…he knew absolutely nothing about the deodorant market. So he decided to launch the brand in an incredibly low risk way.

So in July 2015 he launched Native, his natural deodorant brand, with zero deodorants in hand and no photos of the physical product. Instead, he found someone to 3D render the product to use as images on his site.

He launched his idea on Product Hunt and got 51 orders from the launch. This gave Moiz the confidence to contact a manufacturer and order 100 sticks of his deodorant. Who was his manufacturer? A woman who was making the product in her hobby room in Southern California.

From there the business scaled rapidly. Moiz found early success with Facebook ads and scaled the business to $100k per month in revenue by May of 2016. Over time the product kept improving and repeat purchases meant growth exploded. By November of 2016, Native had 5 employees and was doing $1m per month in revenue.

On the back of this incredible growth in early 2017 Moiz decided to capitalize and sell the business.

He hired a banker, created a list of 100 potential acquirers and started into a competitive sales process, which ended in November 8th, 2017 when Native was acquired by Proctor & Gamble for $100 million.

While we could all learn a lot from Moiz’s story there’s one thing that really sticks out here.

Early on in Native someone once asked Moiz what he knew about deodorant that made him qualified to run a deodorant business.

He replied “I know nothing about deodorant, but in 6 months, I will know everything there is to know about it.”

This is the attitude you need to be a great founder.

INFLUENCER IDEAS

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Boss Wrangler (great name) with a simple but potentially lucrative idea

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