BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Hybrid Used Car Marketplace 🚗 

Wheel meet again

Available Domain: Motor Medley

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: Buying stuff online is great, but for bigger purchases (like cars) it can be risky.

In general buying or selling a car online can be a pretty painful experience. Buyers have to manage countless potential buyers all viewing the car at different times and sellers can often have to drive for hours to view cars they’re interested in buying one at a time. So why not build a platform which combines online and offline to make the car buying experience seamless? Well since you asked…

Market Size: The used car market in the US was valued at $217bn in 2023

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A marketplace for buying and selling cars that combines online and offline elements to create a better experience for both buyers and sellers

How it Works:

• Sellers sign up to the platform and list their cars on the site as they would on any normal platform

• Every weekend in a local, unused area like a college car park, sellers can bring their cars and leave them there for a few hours to meet potential buyers

• Buyers within a certain radius (as chosen by them) can view cars that are on the platform and see what cars they can view on a particular weekend, whether they want to see specific cars or just browse

• This model brings together high intent sellers and buyers into one place and makes it easy for sellers to meet multiple potential buyers

Go-to-market: Start in your local community. Find people selling their car and get buyers together to view cars on a weekend to prove out the concept

Business Model: Charge sellers a listing fee and take a % of the sales price of the vehicle

Startup Costs: You could start this very cheaply by organising the meet-ups first to prove out the idea, then building from there

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: You could sell to a large car marketplace like cars.com

Exit Multiple: Marketplaces at scale are valued at roughly 1x annualized GMV (typically about 6-8x annual revenue)

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Cargo Socks

Socks with pockets.

That’s it. That’s the idea.

You know these will be huge.

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Adulting

Being an adult is hard. Which is why searches for “how to adult” or “adulting” (not to be confused with “adultery“) have been increasing over the last few years. Young people are looking for a guide on how to navigate adulthood, presenting opportunities for those who can build businesses to show them the way.

Business Ideas

• Duolingo for Adulting: A platform to help young people to learn important life skills in a fun way.

• Apartment Starter Kit: Create and sell comprehensive kits with essential items for first-time renters.

• Virtual Assistant for Adulting: Develop an AI-powered chatbot that answers questions and provides guidance on various adult responsibilities.

THE MONEYSHOT

The 15 Page PDF that Made $500m

What do you and your friends do together? Go for drinks? Watch the game? Maybe travel?

But this group of 8 friends turned a 15 page PDF into $500m.

This is their story.

Our story begins at a New Years Eve party in Chicago in the late 2010s where Josh Dillon, Daniel Dranove, Eli Halpern, Ben Hantoot, David Munk, David Pinsof, Max Temkin and Eliot Weinstein had just reunited for the first time in years.

They were looking for a fun game to play, but with 30+ people at the party, their choices were limited. So they decided to invent their own game.

They wrote out a bunch of hypothetical questions on Microsoft Word, printed them off and started to play. The winner was whoever could come up with the most heinous answer to a question. Sound familiar?

They called it “Cardenfreude” and it was a smash hit with everyone at the party. In fact it was so popular that in 2008 they turned it into a 15-page PDF of questions and answers.

As it became popular on their campus, the 8 founders posted their PDF on Kickstarter for free, raising $16k in the process. In their first 18 months, the game had over 1,600 downloads. (You can still download the entire game for free from their site. Here’s a link).

With demand for the game growing and growing the team decided to turn it into a card game which players could buy, officially launching in May 2011.

They had officially launched Cards Against Humanity.

If you’ve never played the game it’s very simple. Every round, one player asks a question from a black card. Then everyone answers the question with a white card from their hand. The one with the funniest answer wins the round.

A few months after officially launching they listed their game on Amazon and in 6 days they were the #1 selling card game on Amazon.

Sales kept growing and after 2 years they had made $12m in revenue.

But in order to keep growing the team decided to take an alternative route to traditional marketing channels. Instead they went for bold campaigns which would go viral, like selling people boxes of cow manure for $6, buying an original Picasso from 1962 to shred it and give pieces to their customers, or paying for a Super Bowl commercial which was just a picture of a potato.

Despite all their success though the founders still treated it as a side hustle and all worked 9-5s for the first few years of the company.

But by 2021 they had built a huge business doing $40m in revenue per year. That year the founders explored a sale at a $500m valuation, but opted not to sell. My gut tells me they probably should have sold, since they’ll never experience that covid revenue spike again (hopefully…).

All of which goes to show that great businesses don’t need to be groundbreaking technology solutions. You can make millions by simply helping people to have fun.

INFLUENCER IDEAS

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