BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

AA for Tech Addiction 📴 

Cut the cord

Available Domain: Ridscreen.com

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: Alcoholics anonymous (AA) is a pretty incredible organization, helping millions of people to beat their alcohol addictions. Although the name did always confuse me.

But today a new addiction has emerged that plagues almost all of us…tech addiction. We’re all addicted to technology products. Phones. Social media. Streaming platforms. And it’s making us more unhappy and anxious than ever before. So let’s build a business to help solve this problem.

Market Size: According to a 2022 survey of internet users in the United States, 48% of people consider themselves addicted or somewhat addicted to digital devices.

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A program to help people to overcome tech addiction

How it Works:

• Users sign up to the platform and are placed into cohorts of 8 - 10 people

• Members are given training on methods and systems they can put in place to help them cure their tech addiction. They are also given access to a plethora of software tools which help users to monitor, manage and reduce their screen time

• Cohorts meet weekly where they discuss their wins, challenges and their progress as measured by their screen time, increasing accountability. You could even implement a screen time leaderboard to introduce a competitive element to it

• There are also quarterly “reset retreats” where cohorts can go away together on trips where they have no access to screens at all

Go-to-market: Find people on forums complaining about their tech addiction and sell to them. You could also sell into companies as a benefit for employees

Business Model: One-off payments for programs

Startup Costs: You could start a simple version of this for almost $0

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Hold: This could be an incredible cash cow business for whoever starts it

TOGETHER WITH OMNISEND

E-commerce founders save time with Omnisend

As an e-commerce founder your time is incredibly valuable.

You’re a marketer, a salesperson, a product guru, a hiring manager, a model, a strategist and so much more all rolled into one.

To be successful you need to optimize. That’s where Omnisend comes in.

Over 100,000 e-commerce founders use Omnisend’s automated email & SMS platform to save time, cut costs and win more customers. In fact for every $1 spent on Omnisend’s email & SMS marketing, merchants make $72. So you’re while you’re saving time, you’re making money too.

Get started with Omnisend today!

DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Vapes for Babies

Vapes are everywhere now, but they can still only be sold to adults, meaning vape companies are losing out on the highly lucrative kids market.

Or at least…they were. With my first vape your child can become a member of vape nation from 9 months old.

What a great idea.

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Drone Deliveries

2024 could be the breakout year for drone deliveries. Companies in the space like Zipline, Wing and Manna are using drones to deliver everything from burritos to medical supplies via the skies.

Business Ideas

• Drone Ports: create landing spaces which can be used by different drone companies and where their fleets can be recharged

• Drone Delivery Network Management: Develop software and platforms for managing and coordinating a networks of drone deliveries from different providers

• Drone Planting: a service which provides farmers with drones to plant seeds more quickly and efficiently

THE MONEYSHOT

Selling for +$50m Without Launching a Product

What if I told you these founders managed to make more than $50m by selling their company before they even launched a product?

Well that’s exactly what they did.

This is their story.

During the summer of 2013 Kayvon Beykpour, who recently quit his job, was planning to travel the world. And one of the stops on his trip was Istanbul, Turkey. But just before Kayvon left however, protests broke out near the hotel he was scheduled to stay at.

So he looked at news platforms, social media, everywhere he could online to see if it was safe to go there. But he was baffled by the fact that he couldn’t see what was going in real time.

Eventually Kayvon did make it to Istanbul, but more importantly, he had stumbled upon a killer business idea.

He recruited his cofounder Joe Bernstein and the duo set out to build a live-streaming app that would let you broadcast what you were seeing to anyone in the world, in real time.

They founded Periscope.

They started the company in February 2014, under the name Bounty, and raised $1.5 million from investors to build out their app.

The team spent months and months building out the technology and perfecting the platform, preparing for a big launch. And one year later, in February 2014, a major live-streaming app launched on the world stage…but it wasn’t Periscope.

It was a similar live-streaming app called Meerkat.

Meerkat gained rapid popularity after its Product Hunt launch and was the darling of SXSW that year, catching on like wildfire.

This could have spelled the end for Periscope before it even began, but in March 2015 there was a stunning revelation.

Twitter had actually acquired Periscope two months earlier, before the product even launched, for around $50m (the exact purchase price was never disclosed). No live product. No users. No revenue. $50m. Incredible.

Twitter was betting big on this idea and under Twitter’s ownership Periscope launched in March 2015.

The app was a huge hit and by August 2015 Periscope had 10m accounts on the platform.

Periscope had played the ultimate uno reverse card on Meerkat, which ended up going out of business in 2016.

Kayvon and Joe joined Twitter and oversaw Periscope’s growth which was strong in the early years. Over time however, like many social media platforms, Periscope faded into obscurity and by March 2021 the platform was shut down.

For us the Periscope story shows how valuable ideas can be. People like to say that “ideas mean nothing, execution is everything”. But, Kayvon and Joe would tell you, they have at least 50m reasons as to why that statement in wrong.

INFLUENCER IDEAS

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