BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Psychometric Tests for Founders 🧠 

Where valuations meet psych evaluations

Available Domain: Psychcheque.com

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: Getting a job these days is hard. You end up doing an application, a phone screen, countless interviews, a case study and more all to become an overpaid excel jockey. Never mind the aptitude or psychometric tests you end up doing, which can lead to some interesting conversations…

But here’s the thing. Founders applying to startup accelerators are almost never subjected to psychometric tests. Even though the hardest part about being a founder is often just managing your own psychology. So let’s create a business around this opportunity.

Market Size: The psychometric tests market was valued at around $18bn in 2023

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A platform which offers psychometric testing to startup accelerators and other businesses that work with founders

How it Works:

• Startup accelerators or other entrepreneurship programs can sign up to the platform

• They then have access to a range of psychometric tests which they can give to the applicants they’re working with. The tests are specifically designed to identify people with personality types and traits that are best suited to entrepreneurship, which is very particular

• Candidates are scored based on their test results and this feeds into the accelerator’s selection process

Go-to-market: The path to market here is imply to sell into startup programs directly

Business Model: Charge a fee per test administered

Startup Costs: You’ll need some time and expertise to build out the testing framework, but the development costs here shouldn’t be too bad

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: Exit to any of the big players in the psychometric testing space, like SHL or Pearson Assessments

Exit Multiple: You’d expect a business like this to sell for 8x - 12x EBITDA all going well

DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Glow in the Dark Toilet Roll

Ever need to use the bathroom at night, but don’t want to turn on the bathroom light in case you wake yourself up too much?

Well now you don’t have to with our glow in the dark toilet roll.

Oh and don’t worry about the fact we use radioactive material to make the product glow in the dark. It’s totally safe…we think.

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Space Startup Funding

Space. The final frontier. Or for VCs, a re-emerging frontier for them to deploy dollars into. In 2023 startup funding to space startups recovered well and from April to June of 2024 startups in the space industry attracted $2.41 billion in global investments, marking a third consecutive quarter of growth in funding. We are so back.

Recent Raises

• Space Pioneer raises $207 million for reusable rocket

• Space tech startup raises $19m for GPS alternative satellites

• LeoLabs raises $29M to help companies safely operate in space

THE MONEYSHOT

From Almost Bankrupt to a $180m Exit in 44 Days

Getting a nine figure exit is an astonishing accomplishment which normally takes years or even decades to achieve.

But for this founder he managed to do it in 6 weeks.

This is his story.

Dan Porter’s career has had many twists and turns.

After graduating from Princeton in 1998 he worked as a teacher, was the President of Teaching America, the COO of TicketWeb and also worked for Richard Branson's Virgin Group. But things really changed for him when he joined a fledgling startup called OMGPop as their CEO in 2008.

OMGPop had been founded 2 years earlier by Charles Forman and Dan Albritton. It was a YC-backed dating company that morphed into a gaming studio. They had raised $10m but both founders ended up leaving the company and subsequently Dan was brought in to right the ship.

Over the next few years the studio achieved moderate success with its dozens of web-based Flash games, but they had yet to have a break-out hit. This left the business burning through cash and on the brink of bankruptcy.

So Dan and the team decided to give it one last shot. They split into small teams and all set about designing games. This is when Dan came up with the idea for Draw Something, a game where two players take turns drawing a picture of a given word, after which their partner must guess the word from the drawing.

They saw its potential and launched the game on February 6, 2012. Almost immediately it became a viral sensation.

30 days after launching it hit 12 million downloads and after just 50 days it had been downloaded 50 million times. By March 2012 it was the most played game on Facebook, registering 10.8 million daily active users.

This incredible growth caught Zynga’s attention, so they acted quickly. Zynga’s founder Mark Pincus offered to buy Draw Something, hiring 2 legal teams to get the deal done as quickly as possible (one team worked all day, the other team worked all night).

So on March 21, 2012, just 44 days after launching, Draw Something (and by extension OMGPop) was acquired by Zynga for $180 million.

That’s gotta be some kind of record.

Regardless this is one of the true great turnaround stories in the entrepreneurship space and goes to show that you can completely change the course of your life in just a few days.

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