BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Events-based Dating App 💘 

Love at first site

Available Domain: Rendezvenue

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: Dating apps have been getting a lot of hate recently. And with good reason.

But there’s here’s the thing…in person dating experiences aren’t much better. Like speed dating. Getting 5 minutes to talk to someone totally random hoping for a match doesn’t seem like a great idea. People are craving more ways to find love in real life. So let’s give them that exact experience.

Market Size: There are around 350m dating app users worldwide in a market valued around $8bn

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A platform which arranges singles only events designed specifically for compatible people to meet

How it Works:

• Users sign up to the platform and fill out their profile as they would on any dating app

• Users are then bucketed into different groups based on their location, preferences, interests, career and so on

• Small 20 - 30 person events, such as parties, running clubs, walking coffee dates etc. are then set up with the most compatible people only invited to attend to increase their chances of finding the one

Go-to-market: All of your customers are on dating apps, so why not set your location to a specific radius and push your app to those people? You might get a few profiles banned here and there but worth it to speak to potential customers.

Business Model: Charge users per event they attend

Startup Costs: You could start this very cheaply by having a simple website and hosting cheap events before investing in a full app build-out

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: Sell to one of the bigger players in the dating market, like Match Group

Exit Multiple: Publicly traded dating app companies are trading around 2.0x - 8.0x revenue currently

TOGETHER WITH NAME.COM

330,000 Entrepreneurs Use ______?

If you filled in the blank with Half Baked, you’ll be correct soon.

If you filled in the blank with name.com, you’re correct right now.

Name.com is your one-stop shop to launch your business.

Domain + email + website = covered.

What’s the most common character trait amongst successful entrepreneurs?

Action bias.

So here’s a suggestion - think about the business you’ve been threatening to start, give it a name, and claim your free domain on name.com down below (you’ll also get 50% off their yearly plan).

DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Tech Neck Collar

In a previous edition of Half Baked we covered the perils of tech neck, a term used to describe the neck pain that has become increasingly more common due to our overuse of technology. Who knew that staring down at our phones for 8 hours a day was bad for you?

But now we have a solution to this affliction…the tech neck collar. Simply attach your phone to the collar and the collar to you and you’re good to go.

Oh and don’t ask us why the girl on the packaging has two phones, we don’t know either.

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Wine Consumption

As we’ve discussed before alcohol consumption is declining across the board, but one area that’s seeing the biggest drop is wine consumption. The world’s total wine production declined dramatically in 2023, shrinking by 10% and wine consumption fell 2.6% to an estimated 221 million hl (that’s hecto-liters) last year, slipping to the lowest level since 1996.

Business Ideas

• Wine Barrel Repurposing Business: Repurpose wine barrels into eco-friendly furniture, decor or even cold plunges (very trendy)

• Sommelier Retraining: Sommelier retraining programs for the non-alcoholic beverage market

THE MONEYSHOT

Turning $1.7m into a $50bn Company

Most business stories are pretty similar. Someone finds a business idea, raises some money, build a huge business and gets super rich. But not this one.

These founders managed to raise $5m with no business idea at all, but still turned it into a company worth $50bn.

This is their story.

It was 1989. The Berlin Wall was on the brink of collapse, work had just began on a little thing called the Internet and Rodney Sacks and Hilton Schlosberg had just met in South Africa.

At the time Hilton worked for a UK conglomerate called J. Bibby & Sons and Rodney was an executive recruiter for a California-based company called Confidential Assignments.

When the duo first met they hit it off immediately and for reasons that no-one really understands, they both decided to quit their corporate jobs and go into business together.

The pair moved to Orange County, California and began hitting up friends and family to raise money for their new venture. What was the venture? They had no idea. But they still somehow managed to raise $5 million in what’s known as a FFF (Friends, Family and Fools) round.

With $5m raised their next job was to find a business idea, which is when a banker gave them a tip that would change their lives.

The banker told them about a struggling, family-owned local business called Hansen Natural. Hansen Natural had been around since the 1930s when a man named Hubert Hansen and his three sons launched a small business that sold juice to film studios and retailers throughout Los Angeles.

Hansen was modestly successful, but competition in the mid 80s from companies like Snapple and Gatorade slowly pushed the business towards bankruptcy, which it filed for in 1988.

So between 1990 and 1992 Rodney and Hilton acquired the Hansen Natural Corporation for $1.7m in cash and assumed $12 million worth of debt in the company and subsequently took it public. At that time sales were $17.5 million and the business had 12 employees.

Between 1992 and 1997, not much changed at Hansen Natural. But during that same time period, something did change in the beverage industry. That "something" was a little company called Red Bull.

Rodney was paying very close attention to the rise of this newly invented energy drink sector so in 1997 Hansen introduced its own version of an energy drink under the Hansen label. However these early forays into the market were not well received by consumers. But Rodney and Hilton still pressed forward.

They spent years testing hundreds of formulations to find the perfect one and in 2002 Hansen launched a new energy drinks brand.

They launched Monster Energy.

Monster came into the market with a simple strategy to take on Red Bull. They went big. When the drink was launched Monster was the exact same price as Red Bull, but the can was twice as big. This was the main driver of their success, more value for money. Turns out size really does matter.

The brand kept growing and by 2012, Monster had become the second largest energy drink in the world, behind only Red Bull. That same year Hansen Natural officially changed its corporate name to Monster, trading under the ticker MNST.

And since then Monster has been one of the best performing stocks in the world. Between Feb 14, 1994 and Feb 14, 2024 the stock appreciated by about 200,000%. So if you had invested $1,000 in 1994, the stake would be worth about $2 million today.

Today Monster is worth around $48bn, booking revenues of $7bn in 2023. Which leaves Monster with one last goal to reach…becoming the biggest drinks brand in the world.

Will they manage to dethrone Red Bull? We’ll have to wait and see.

INFLUENCER IDEAS

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