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- Business Ideas #137: Competitive Fitness, Quitting Vaping...
Business Ideas #137: Competitive Fitness, Quitting Vaping...
Plus Turning 2 Internships into 3x Billion Dollar Companies
Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up business ideas more hotly anticipated than the Olympic games’ opening ceremony.
Here’s what we’ve got for you today:
Business Idea💡: Bringing more competition to the fitness space
Drunk Business Idea 🍻: Making the most important meal of the day even better
Just The Tip 📈: Young people are trying to quit vaping
The Moneyshot 🤑: Turning 2 internships into 3x billion dollar companies
P.S…if you want to read any previous editions of Half Baked you can on our website.
P.P.S…if you were forwarded this email and want to subscribe, you can here.
Let’s get into it.
BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP
Competitive Fitness App 🚴
Fighting fit
Available Domain: Fitfaceoff.com
💡 TLDR: An app which allows fitness enthusiasts to compete with each other across different activities and devices
1. Problem/Opportunity❓
The Problem/Opportunity: Being healthy is a real struggle. We all go through phases where we focus on our health and treat our bodies like temples. Until the motivation wears off that is.
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/404556c9-f4c7-4957-8907-69999c21bc95/Untitled.png?t=1722086194)
But one thing no one wants to do is to lose. We want to win at whatever we do. So let’s help people to tap into that competitive spirit when it comes to their health and fitness.
Market Size: The global fitness app market size was valued at $1.54bn in 2023.
2. Solution ✅
The Idea: An app which allows fitness enthusiasts to compete with each other across different activities and devices
How it Works:
Users sign up to the app and connect up their fitness wearables or fitness apps to the platform. They can use whatever fitness device they have, like Apple Watches, fitbits, oura rings…any device they have
Users can then challenge each other to specific challenges, like who runs the most miles in a week, who gets the most hours of sleep, it could be anything. These can either be 1 on 1 challenges or in big groups
These challenges can go on for a few days or even weeks or months with winners crowned based on their wearable data
Go-to-market: Start by finding communities full of competitive fitness enthusiasts who all use different devices, like triathlon clubs, who could be your early adopters
Business Model: Freemium model - charge a subscription for an unlimited number of challenges per month
Startup Costs: You’ll need some great devs to work on this given the complexity of the build
3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰
Exit Multiple: App valuations are normally in the 4x - 8x revenue range, but can vary wildly based on growth rate, churn etc.
DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA
Alcoholic Breakfast Cereals
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. But as we know many breakfast cereals are solely designed for kids. What about the adults out there?
Well this new line of alcoholic breakfast cereals is definitely not for kids.
Coming soon to a store near you.
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/665b81d8-b07a-4f7b-a673-c70eb78fa021/image.png?t=1722086253)
JUST THE TIP
Trend 📈: Quitting Vaping
As we’ve all seen vaping has become incredibly mainstream in recent years. But as time goes on more and more people are looking to quit vaping. Maybe it’s for health reasons? Maybe the cool factor is starting to wane. But regardless more and more people are looking to quit vaping, with the number attempting to quit doubling year-over-year.
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/fcdb3127-cbd9-49e5-b4bc-7fc1d6ade309/Screenshot_2024-07-27_at_13.24.03.png?t=1722086395)
Business Ideas
Nicotine Gum for Vaping: a nicotine gum brand aimed at Gen-Z (from edition #2 of Half Baked)
BetterHelp to Stop Vaping: a support network to help individuals to stop vaping
THE MONEYSHOT
Turning 2 Internships into 3x Billion Dollar Companies
The exploits of the Paypal Mafia are the stuff of legend. YouTube. Tesla. Space X. LinkedIn. Yelp. All of these companies came from the
But what if I told you that one of PayPal’s interns during this period went on to found 3 billion dollar companies after he left?
Well that’s exactly what this guy did.
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/a6cc311d-9a2f-43b5-bb7c-67263023a658/Untitled.png?t=1722086514)
Like so many famous entrepreneur stories Joe Lonsdale’s begins in sacred entrepreneurial ground…Stanford.
In 2002, while studying at Stanford, Joe applied to work as an intern at PayPal. But he was rejected. Undeterred Joe decided to apply again and this time he got in. And it turns out this simple act would change the entire course of Joe’s life.
He spent 6 months working in Paypal and there he met an incredible team, led by Peter Thiel. Joe worked so well with Peter that he went on to intern at Clarium Capital, Peter Thiel's global macro hedge fund. After college Joe joined Clarium and became became a principal at the firm, working there for 6 years. But while he was at Clarium Peter was cooking up another business…and he wanted Joe involved.
In 2004 Peter Thiel joined forces with Joe, Alex Karp, Stephen Cohen, and Nathan Gettings to start a business in the data analytics space.
They founded Palantir, a data mining and analysis company used by government intelligence agencies, armies and large corporations.
For years Joe split his time between Palantir and Clarium, until 2009 when he decided to set off on his next adventure.
In 2009 he founded Addepar, a wealth management platform for registered investment advisors. The platform took off and today manages over $6tn of assets.
Still not content though 3 years later Joe founded OpenGov, a platform which offers cloud software for the public sector.
Clearly Joe has an addiction to starting companies. But where did these all end up?
Well today Palantir is valued at $60bn, Addepar is valued at $2.17bn and OpenGov at $1.8bn. Oh and for the record he also co-founded Affinity and Opto, but these are only valued around $500m each…barely even worth mentioning.
So can we mere mortals take away from Joe’s story? Well I think it harkens back to a famous quote by Charlie Munger: “The first $100,000 is a bitch, but you gotta do it.”
Similarly starting your first business is a bitch, but you gotta do it. And once you do you can leverage your time, money and brand to build an many businesses as you want, like Joe does.
But it’s all about getting that first business founded.
So get to work.
INFLUENCER IDEAS
#HalfBakedBizIdea
Natalia Burina coming in with a an idea in the retail space
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