BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Olympics Camp 🤺 

Going for gold

Available Domain: Olympics Camp

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: In case you missed it the Olympics kicked off last week. Which means over the next few weeks we’ll all develop incredibly strong opinions on sports we couldn’t dream of competing in.

But let’s be honest there are certain Olympic sports out there we’d all love to try out. Javelin. Fencing. Shooting. Shot Put. The list goes on. So why not create a business which offers this exact experience?

Market Size: Honestly… no idea how big this market is. But since this isn’t a venture play TAM isn’t as important here.

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: An experience where people can try out different Olympic sports using official equipment

How it Works:

• You start by renting a facility and acquiring the equipment needed for the Olympic sports you want to offer to customers

• Small groups can book in for a day where they get to try their hand at various sports, with sessions led by former athletes to show how to approach each sport (and to compare with)

• There’s a leaderboard to introduce a competitive element to this too

Go-to-market: Corporate bookings will be your friend here. If you can get businesses to foot the bill as a day out for their employees, you’re in business

Business Model: Charge per person

Startup Costs: You’ll need to be strategic here about what sports you pick, since some require more facilities (and therefore cost) than others

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Hold: You’re unlikely to get a big exit here, but this could be an amazing cash flow business

TOGETHER WITH OMNISEND

Spend $1 → Earn $72

E-commerce is a game of money-in vs money-out. You spend $1 and make $2. The higher that ratio is, the more successful you’ll be. So check this out…in 2023, for every $1 spent on Omnisend’s email & SMS marketing, merchants made $72!

We (Half Baked) want to work with brands that deliver for our readers (you). That’s why we asked Omnisend to work with us. They agreed.

Omnisend offers affordable, scalable pricing that grows with your business. From popups to newsletters & abandoned carts, 100,000 e-commerce brands are selling more stuff while paying less.

P.S use code HALFBAKED10 for 10% off (you won't get a discount for Omnisend anywhere else)

DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Aquarium Toilets

We all spend much of our lives using the lavatory, which is normally a pretty boring experience.

Or at least it was. With this new aquarium toilet you can watch all your little fish swim around as you do your business.

Truly an incredible concept.

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Supersonic Travel

In recent years there’s been something of a boom (see what we did there) in companies pursuing supersonic travel. And interestingly startups are leading the charge in revitalizing supersonic air travel. It’s probably good that Boeing aren’t since they couldn’t engineer their way out of a paper bag these days.

Raises

• Boom Supersonic has raised more than $700m in funding from various sources

• Exosonic has raised a total funding of $4.1m over 2 rounds from 13 investors

THE MONEYSHOT

Creating a $400m App Before Apps were Invented

Some founders live in the future.

And this founder built one of the world’s most famous apps eight years before the App Store even went live.

This is his story.

Back in 1999 Chris Barton was pursuing his MBA after studying business in college and spending 2 years in management consulting (which is 2 years too long let’s be honest).

During his MBA Chris noticed that many companies were building technology to help people to identify songs on the radio.

But Chris thought bigger. Much bigger.

He wondered if you could just identify any song that was playing directly from your phone, no matter the source?

He went to professors at both MIT and Stanford to discuss his idea, but they told him it was impossible. For this to work Chris would have to develop a search engine supercomputer from scratch and create the world’s largest music database simultaneously. He was up for the challenge.

He recruited his classmate Philip Inghelbrecht and they started their business…Shazam.

But first…they needed money. The pair raised $1m in 2000 to build their demo and to prove the technology worked. In fact Chris demoed the product to a well-known VC who thought that nobody would ever use this. But against the odds Chris raised the money.

The technology worked a little different to the Shazam we all know well…mainly because apps hadn’t been invented yet.

In order to use Shazam users called the number 2580, would put their phone up to the sound and would receive a text with the name of the song. Oh and users had to pay every time they used the service.

With the technology proven out Chris and the team raised a further $7.5m and in 2002 they launched…but it was a disaster.

Very few people used the product in that form and for six years, Shazam teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. Until the iPhone came along and changed everything.

Shazam for iPhone debuted on 10 July 2008, with the launch of Apple's App Store. It was a smash hit. By 2009 Shazam had been downloaded ten million times across 150 different countries.

The app was so successful that Apple took notice and in 2018 Shazam was acquired by Apple for $400 million and to date the app has been downloaded more than two billion times.

I think we can all learn from Chris’ tenacity, where in the face of a seemingly impossible challenge, he persevered.

We salute you Chris.

INFLUENCER IDEAS

#HalfBakedBizIdea

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