BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Post-purchase Discount App💲 

The price is wrong

Available Domain: Apresave.com

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: Everyone loves a good deal. And these days we need good deals more than ever before.

And there are a plethora of apps out there that help users to spot discounts when purchasing goods online, like Honey or Rakuten. But did you know that if goods are discounted after you purchase them you can still be entitled to a discount? We do. So let’s build a product around this idea.

Market Size: The global e-commerce market will surpass $6.3 trillion in 2024

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A platform which monitors your purchases and requests refunds if those goods get a discount after they are purchased

How it Works:

• Users sign up to the platform using just their email address

• Whenever the user receives an email receipt from an online purchase it is noted by the platform which compares the purchase price to the listing price on the site

• If the price of the item drops the platform automatically submits a refund request or contacts customer service

• The refund is passed onto the user (minus a platform fee)

Go-to-market: Focus on a market with high average order values, like watches or sneakers, where the value of the refunds will be higher and continue from there

Business Model: The platforms takes a % of every successful refund (10% - 20%)

Startup Costs: You may need to do a small raise here to build this, unless you have a developer friend who’s willing to get involved

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: The path to riches here is to sell to a platform like Honey (who Paypal owns) or Rakuten

Exit Multiple: When Paypal acquired Honey it was at a 40x revenue multiple. Expect to get something more in the 5x - 10x revenue region.

DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

3-in-1 Doritos

Do you love Doritos? Of course you do, who doesn’t love them?

So how about you get more Doritos in your life with this Doritos 3-in-1 body wash, shampoo and conditioner.

Just make sure you don’t get the salsa verde in your eyes…that sh*t hurts.

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Solo Dining

Traditionally going out for dinner have been a group activity. But in recent years solo dining at restaurants has taken off, with single-person reservations rising 29% at American eateries over the last two years, according to reservation platform OpenTable. This is a super interesting trend which we can see some businesses emerging from…

Business Ideas

• Solo Dining Review Platform: Create a website or app where solo diners can rate and review restaurants based on their solo-friendliness.

• Mindful Eating App for Solo Diners: Develop an app guiding users through mindfulness exercises while dining alone.

• Solo Dining Blog/Newsletter: Create a blog/newsletter focused on restaurant reviews and tips for enjoying meals alone in different cities

THE MONEYSHOT

Bootstrapping from $0 to $50m ARR in 3 Years

When you hear a headline like “bootstrapping from $0 to $50m ARR in 3 years” you automatically think of a high growth software business.

But this founder achieved exactly this through his food supplement business.

This is his story.

Julian Hearn was far from a model student during his school years.

He graduated school at 16 with virtually no qualifications, barely getting good enough grades to make it to University.

So Julian decided to enter the working world and spent the next 3 years working in a store and in road construction. But one day his girlfriend sat down and told him he was wasting his potential digging holes, so Julian decided to go to college and university (they’re different in the UK) graduating with honours from both.

Julian then spent a decade working in marketing with giant brands like Starbucks and Tesco, becoming a CMO in the process. But Julian thought he could achieve more. Much more.

So he took just $1,875 (so specific) of his own money and in 2008 founded his first company Mash Up Media, an affiliate marketing business whose main website was Promotional Codes.

Within 3 years the brand was doing $3m of profit per year and in 2011 he sold Mash up Media to Internetbrands. But even with a successful exit under his belt Julian still didn’t rest on his laurels. Because in 2012 he had his next business idea.

He was sick of being bombarded with conflicting diet and exercise advice, so he founded Bodyhack to solve this problem - a platform that helped users to trial different health plans to find out which ones actually yielded the best results. But the platform had a number of problems, primarily that the diet plans were too complicated for users to follow and took too much time to prepare. Which got him thinking…could eating healthily could become as easy as having a protein shake?

This was his “a-ha” moment. He shuttered Bodyhack and decided to go all-in on this new idea.

He started working with James Collier, a nutritionist and the former owner of MuscleTalk, to create a meal replacement product that was nutritionally complete, vegan and environmentally friendly. They spent nearly 2 years testing out different formulations in Julian’s garage until 2015 when they were ready to launch.

Huel was live.

Their first product, Huel Powder, was a nutritionally complete meal replacement shake and it quickly gained a following among people who were looking for a convenient and healthy alternative to traditional meals.

Just 3 years after its official launch the business had grown to $50m ARR and took on its first outside investment of $25m, valuing the company at $275m.

And since then the business has continued growing, expanding its product line each year and in 2022 Huel was valued at $560m. Last year the brand did $184m in sales, 10xing revenue over the last 5 years. Ballers.

All of which proves that one of the best ways to find a business idea is to try different things and see what works and what doesn’t. Julian found his big idea by working on a completely different business.

The same could happen to you.

INFLUENCER IDEAS

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