BUSINESS IDEA | CASH FLOW BUSINESS

Build in Public 📣 

A shower and a grower

Available Domain: hackerchaser.com

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: If you’re a part of the Indie Hacker community then you’re well aware of the “#BuildinPublic” community where founders, generally building SaaS products, bring users along on their journey by tweeting about their sales metrics, user numbers and more. It’s much more engaging than some of the other content on Twitter.

But the #BuildinPublic movement can suffer from integrity issues, with founders faking screenshots and building up undue hype around their businesses. So let’s build a product to solve exactly that.

Market Size: Difficult to get an accurate market size here, but Indie Hackers has more than 1 million users that are super valuable!

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A platform for tech founders to launch and share their company’s performance with members of the public

How it Works:

• Builders sign up to the platform and launch their product similarly to how they do on Product Hunt

• They also connect up their analytics and payment processing accounts so users can see in real time how their business is performing and can see how they stack versus other builders on a leaderboard

• Builders can send periodic updates to their users, like investor updates

• You could even expand this to offer users a way to invest in high performing ideas

Go-to-market: Build the product in public, that’s the strategy here

Business Model: Monthly subscription fee

Startup Costs: This shouldn’t be too expensive to start once you have a good engineer onside

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Hold: This could be a great hold forever, relatively low effort cash flow business

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Sail Boat Fuel

Never let your sailboat run out of fuel with this universal sailboat fuel.

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Perimenopause

The increasing awareness and discussion around perimenopause is a significant recent trend. Perimenopause is the time around menopause when a woman’s ovaries gradually stop working. This phase of life, which can start in a woman's 30s or 40s and last for several years before menopause, is gaining more attention in health and wellness circles.

Business Ideas

• Perimenopause Tracking App: A digital tool to help women monitor symptoms, hormonal changes, and overall well-being during this transition.

• Perimenopause-specific Telehealth Services: Virtual consultations with specialists in perimenopause and women's health.

• Hormone-testing Home Kits: Easy-to-use tests for monitoring hormone levels at home, with professional interpretation services.

THE MONEYSHOT

Turning a Failing 20 Year-old Brand into a $10bn Business

Most successful founder stories involve someone investing a novel technology or spotting a gap in a market. Not this one.

Because this is a story of a guy who joined a tiny, 20 year-old business and transformed it into a $10bn globally renowned brand.

This is his story.

Back in the early 1990’s Rickard Öste, a Swedish food scientist and researcher at Lund University, was researching the health benefits of oats and developed a proprietary enzymatic process to convert oats into a liquid that mimicked the texture and nutritional profile of milk. This was the genesis of Oat Milk.

So in 1994 Rickard and his brother Björn decided to start a company out of his new invention.

They had just founded Oatly.

While the brothers expected the brand to be a big hit on the market…it wasn’t.

In fact for nearly two decades, Oatly remained a small, niche drink with modest sales, struggling to break into mainstream markets dominated by traditional dairy and other plant-based alternatives like soy and almond milk.

But in 2012 everything changed when Toni Petersson was appointed as CEO. Toni brought a fresh perspective and sought to revitalize the ailing brand, starting with a rebrand.

In 2013 Oatly underwent a major rebranding in 2013, adopting a bold, quirky, and sometimes controversial marketing strategy. Their slogan “It’s like milk, but made for humans” became iconic.

The rebrand worked and has gone down as one of the most famous and successful rebrands in history.

Under Toni’s leadership, Oatly's growth accelerated. The company expanded beyond Sweden into other European markets, including the UK and Germany, where it quickly gained popularity.

But the turning point came in 2016 when Oatly entered the U.S. market. The brand initially targeted coffee shops, recognizing the growing trend of plant-based milks among baristas and coffee enthusiasts. This strategy paid off, as Oatly became a favorite in the specialty coffee scene, particularly in cities like New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

In 2020, Oatly secured 200 million in investment from a consortium led by Blackstone Group, along with celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Natalie Portman, and Jay-Z’s Roc Nation which valued the company at $2 billion. The funding was intended to fuel further global expansion, particularly in Asia.

Then just a year later, in May 2021, Oatly went public on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "OTLY,", raising $1.4bn in the process. The company was now valued at $10 billion, marking one of the most successful public debuts in the plant-based sector.

Post-IPO however, Oatly has faced several challenges, including supply chain issues, increased competition in the plant-based milk market and has really struggled to reach profitability. The company’s stock price has struggled with these issues and the broader market downturn hasn’t helped either, with the company valued at just $550m currently.

Despite the recent performance though nothing can be taken away from Toni. He took a tiny, fledgling brand and turned it into a household name.

It might be time to start looking out for small brands with big potential that could be transformed too…

INFLUENCER IDEAS

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