BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Local Podcast Network 🎙️

Peas in a pod-cast

Available Domain: Lopods.com

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: Podcasts are great. They’re informative, entertaining and you feel like you’re really part of the conversation. Kinda.

But most podcasts focus on global affairs, the news and big events to drive the highest amount of viewership possible. But what about podcasts which cater to local issues and needs? That could be a huge business. So let’s build it.

Market Size: The global podcasting market size was worth around $24 billion in 2023

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A podcast network which specializes in creating podcasts for towns, universities or other small communities

How it Works:

• You pick out locations where you want to create local podcasts for, like a town or a university.

• You approach people in the community and find hosts for the podcasts. For example you go to Arizona State University (which has 80,000 students), interview a number of students and then work with them to create podcast (or multiple podcasts) covering topics like school news, gossip and so on

• You sell ads to local businesses or to larger businesses looking for highly targeted advertising to this particular audience. You could offer hosts a revenue share to keep them motivated.

Go-to-market: Start with large university campuses which lend themselves well to this model and expand into local towns from there

Business Model: Sell ads to local businesses

Startup Costs: You’ll need some money here to be able to buy the equipment and pay the podcast hosts, but you can start this with a few thousand dollars

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: Sell to a large podcast network like Acast

Exit Multiple: No idea how much a podcast network could sell for, but Parcast sold to Spotify for $56m, so there are big exits in this market

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Subway Deodorant

Subway is in trouble right now. This week they held an emergency meeting of franchisees to deal with plummeting sales. But given the price of a sub has doubled in the last few years it’s hardly a mystery as to what’s going on. But regardless we have a solution for them.

Subway deodorant.

Who doesn’t love that distinct Subway restaurant smell? Well Subway could sell it in a can so you can not only eat fresh, you can smell fresh too.

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Childhood Obesity

For the first time in history there are as many children in the world who are obese as there are underweight, which is a crazy statistic. And a public health crisis this big needs solutions, which is where business opportunities present themselves.

Business Ideas

• Kid-friendly Fitness Centers: Create fun, safe exercise spaces designed specifically for children

• Healthy Vending Machines: Place machines with nutritious snacks and drinks in schools, community centers, and other kid-friendly locations.

• Wearable Fitness Trackers for Kids: Create engaging, gamified devices to encourage daily physical activity

THE MONEYSHOT

The Journalist who Sold his Company for $300m

When people picture startup founders they think of young, coding whizzes in their 20s with a great idea and nothing to lose.

But that’s nonsense. Because anyone with any background can become a great founder at any age.

This guy’s story proves exactly that.

By the mid-90s Don Katz had a very successful career. He had spent 20 years working as a journalist for Rolling Stone and as an author had published multiple books.

But one day, in 1995, Dan was jogging around a Park in Manhattan. He was listening to an audiobook on a cassette player and with a fanny pack of other tapes strapped to his chest. He thought to himself…there had to be a better way.

He had an idea.

So he decided to close the book on this chapter of his life and with the support of his wife and kids, Don started a new chapter.

He decided the world needed someone to create a portable digital audio player which could play digital audiobooks. He raised $500,000 from the telecom company Apax and founded his company.

He founded Audible. The year was 1995 but Don had a very different vision for Audible than the company we al know today.

In 1997 Audible released their first product, the Audible MobilePlayer. It could hold about 2 hours of audio and retailed for $199. How times have changed.

But still the concept was a hit. Don had invented the iPod for audiobooks 5 years before the iPod came out.

The business kept growing and Audible went public in 1999 raising $72 million.

But trouble was just around the corner as the dot com crash killed their momentum. The dot com bust hit Audible hard, and at one point its stock traded at just 4 cents a share, down from $21 per share at the IPO.

The company struggled for years, losing money as they built out their technology and content library. Until Audible made a strategic pivot which saved the company.

As MP3 players and later smartphones grew in popularity, Audible adapted its strategy, moving away from their own hardware to putting audiobooks on other devices.

They spent the next few years working with different MP3 player and smartphone manufacturers creating apps to allow their users to download audiobooks to their devices, which culminated in the Audible app which we all know today.

But in 2008, just as the smartphone revolution was picking up momentum, Don and the team decided to take their chips off the table and Audible was acquired by Amazon for $300m.

It was a huge win for Don and the team and his story shows that no matter your background or what period you’re at in your life, if you have a business idea you want to pursue and back yourself…you can make it.

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