BUSINESS IDEA | CASH FLOW BUSINESS

Durability Reviews Platform 🖥️

Tried and tested

Available Domain: Lifetimereview.com

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: In yesterday’s edition of Half Baked we discussed the emergence of the BIFL trend (buy it for life). Not to be confused with the BNPL (buy now pay later) trend, which has gotten out of hand.

But with more people looking to buy longer lasting products there’s a need in the market for trusted ownership advice from people who have owned a product over months or even years. So let’s build that destination.

Market Size: The market size of the consumer ratings and reviews platform industry is sitting around $10bn currently

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A review platform with product reviews from long-time owners of products

How it Works:

• Users who want to leave reviews can sign up to the platform and in order to leave a review must provide proof of ownership to show how long they have owned the product, with a minimum set (could be 1 year)

• Shoppers can then go to the site and look at the reviews and decide if they want to purchase or not

Go-to-market: Spend some time in r/BuyItForLife, see what categories of products are most discussed and start there

Business Model: Companies can pay to claim their pages and there could be affiliate links to products too

Startup Costs: You could start this for almost $0

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Hold: This won’t be a huge, venture backed business, but could be a nice little cash spinner

TOGETHER WITH PORTLESS

Improve your gross margins by 40%

This is wild.

You know Section 321 of the US customs? Of course you do....us too....

Luckily you don't need to learn it by heart, all you need to know if that you can use it to get insane reductions on your shipping rates.

Portless have regularly improved customer margins by up to 40%. Not to mention slashing shipping time from 60 days to 5-10 days.

What are you waiting for? Get in touch with Portless now and find out how they can do the same for you.

P.S. tell them Half Baked sent you and you'll get 20% off your first 3 months pick-and-pack fees.

DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Birthie Stick

Are you having a baby? Worried that you might miss your favorite tv show or a few minutes of scrolling?

Well worry no longer with the birthie stick. Distract yourself during this magical process by watching the latest episode of Selling Sunset or a YouTube video. Hell you could even scroll on TikTok, why not?

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Gaming Time

Since 2019 the amount of time young men are spending gaming has increased hugely. Obviously covid was a big factor here but that increase in gaming time has remained high even post covid. And this trend presents us with many opportunities.

Business Ideas

• Dating App for Gamers: as covered in a previous edition of Half Baked

• Gaming Therapy: Therapy sessions where participants play games during sessions to increase interaction and make therapy more engaging and enjoyable

THE MONEYSHOT

From Retiring at 33 to a $50bn Net Worth

China has a lot of people. 1.4 billion to be exact.

But recently this founder became the richest man in China…on the back of a company he launched just 2 years ago.

This is his story.

Colin Huang was a math prodigy growing up. He always excelled in school and left China in 2002 to pursue a master’s degree in computer science at the University of Wisconsin.

After leaving college Colin joined Google in the USA and two years later moved back to China to help set up Google China.

But Colin was fascinated by entrepreneurship and e-commerce specifically. So in 2007 he left Google and founded e-commerce site Oku, which sold electronics. He sold the site for $2.2 million in 2010.

This is when Colin’s entrepreneurial spirit went into overdrive. He amassed an ever growing team of engineers and hackers in an office block in Shanghai to build site after site. So let’s run through them.

They started Leqee in 2011, which helped big brands run their shops on China’s biggest internet shopping platforms, Alibaba and JD.com. They also started Lebbay, a series of online shopping websites that aimed to get to the top of the search rankings for their offerings. On top of this they also started an online gaming business, just for good measure.

Colin’s empire was slowing growing until it all came crashing down in 2013 when Colin got sick and stopped working at the age of 33, effectively retiring. In fact, Colin spent an entire year at home thinking about his next move.

But while he was sick this is when Colin hatched the idea for the venture that would change everything.

In 2015, he asked his team to build a “social ecommerce” venture, so they created Pinduoduo, an e-commerce platform for group buying to achieve huge discounts.

Pinduoduo was a smash hit and Colin quickly ascended the ranks of the world’s richest people, with his net worth peaking at $71.5 billion in early 2021. Until it all came crashing down again.

The value of Pinduoduo tumbled 87% in the span of about a year due to a slowdown in the Chinese economy and crazy competition in the space.

But this is when, for the second time in his career, Colin staged an epic comeback.

Because Pinduoduo was quietly building a brand to sell Chinese goods around the world.. And in 2022 it was ready.

They launched Temu.

Temu surged to the top of US app stores upon launching in September 2022, targeting inflation-weary Americans with cheap, unbranded products shipped directly from China.

It’s one of the fastest growing companies in history, doing sales of $18 billion in 2023. They’re forecasting to do $60bn of revenue in 2024 and Temu’s success has buoyed Pinduoduo’s stock performance.

All of this means that this week Colin Huang became China’s richest person, with an estimated net worth of $50bn.

Quite the comeback story from this founder.

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