BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Duolingo for Life Skills 🧑‍🍳 

Skills to make bills

Available Domain: Lifeolingo.com

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: Navigating this crazy thing we call life can be tricky. And when it comes to learning the important stuff, school was no help.

We all have deficiencies in key life skills that we all need to learn, like how to cook, how to do our taxes, personal finance skills, negotiation…the list goes on. So let’s build a business out of this.

Market Size: The global e-learning market was valued at $306bn in 2023

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A gamified learning app which helps users to learn important life skills using short, engaging lessons

How it Works:

• A user signs up to the platform and chooses what skill they want to learn

• The platform turns complex life skills into digestible, interactive modules which users progress through.

• As they progress they earning experience points, unlock achievements, streaks and level up as they master real-world skills

Go-to-market: Pick one skill to focus on, build a course around this and go from there

Business Model: Freemium subscription model with tiered pricing

Startup Costs: As with most of our ideas you’ll need a developer for this, that’s the major bottleneck here

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: Acquisition by a major ed-tech company like Coursera or Udemy

Exit Multiple: Edtech companies typically see exit multiples ranging from 3x to 10x annual recurring revenue (ARR), depending on growth rate, market position, and profitability.

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Bold Ideas, Bolder Wines (For the Unconventional Entrepreneur)

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Their wines are grown in the harshest conditions. This results in flavors you won’t find anywhere else.

Perfect for those who think outside the bottle (get it?).

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Baby’s First Diaper

For parents experiencing their child’s “firsts” is a magical experience. Their first steps, their first words. But you don’t get a keepsake for many of these firsts.

Until now.

With this service parents can get their baby’s first diaper framed so they can keep it forever and hang it proudly in their homes. We think this will be huge…

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Underconsuming

Underconsuming, or “underconsumption core”, is hot right now. This is a lifestyle trend that challenges overconsumption by encouraging people to minimize their purchasing and maximize the utility of their purchases by holding on to items for as long as possible. Now while this feels like a rebranding of minimalism, we’ll go with it, since it presents us with business opportunities.

Business Ideas

• Durability Reviews Platform: From edition #153 of Half Baked

• “Buy nothing" Community Platform: Create a local exchange network for giving away and receiving free items

• Repair Cafe Franchise: Set up a network of spaces where people can learn to repair their own items with expert guidance

THE MONEYSHOT

The Founder Who Started 2 Billion Dollar Companies

The odds of someone starting a billion dollar company are miniscule.

But starting two billion dollar companies in almost impossible. Yet this founder has done exactly that.

This is his story.

Jeff Raider comes from humble beginnings.

He was raised in Wellesley, Massachusetts by his single mother who was an entrepreneur herself, starting a company in the loyalty-card space when Jeff was 11.

He studied International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and after graduating went to work for Bain and Co before moving to Charlesbank Capital Partners. But in 2008 he got the opportunity to do an MBA at Wharton, which he took. But Jeff’s was an MBA like no other.

Early on in business school Jeff was sitting around after class with one of his good friends when another good friend of theirs asked a question that would change their lives foerver: “What do you think about the idea of selling glasses online?”

This was a lightbulb moment for everyone. They couldn’t stop thinking about it. So Jeff along with Neil Blumenthal, Andrew Hunt and David Gilboa spent their 2 years in business school starting a business which sold glasses online.

They founded Warby Parker.

Interestingly, unlike his co-founders, Jeff decided to go back to his previous job at Charlesbank Capital Partners after business school rather than working art Warby Parker. But pretty soon Jeff grew sick of corporate life. Warby Parker had given Jeff the entrepreneurial bug, but he wasn’t sure what to build. Which is when fate intervened.

One day Jeff received a call from Andy Katz-Mayfield, his good friend, who had an idea. Andy was frustrated with the high prices and ridiculous number of razors that all claimed to be the best at his local pharmacy. The pair envisioned an online brand that sold high-quality shaving products at more affordable prices.

They knew this was a winning idea and decided to go big. The pair leveraged the success of a similar business, Dollar Shave Club, to go out and raise a staggering $122.5m seed round. And no, that’s not a typo.

By March 2013 they were ready to launch.

Harry’s went live.

Harry’s kept their offering very simple. They sold only one type of blade and the refill cartridges came at a price of $1.87. They started out with an inventory of 10,000 razor handles in March 2013 and immediately sold out within a couple of days.

Part of the company’s strategy to keep costs down was to vertically integrate. So in January 2014, Harry's acquired the German razor blade manufacturer Feintechnik for $100 million, in an effort to provide control over the entire process of manufacturing their products.

That same year Harry's generated approximately $20 million in revenue. And from there the business just kept growing. They hit the $100m revenue mark by 2016 and $500m by 2020, raising hundreds of millions along the way to support this growth.

In 2023 the brand cleared $750m in revenue and earlier this year reportedly filed for an IPO, where the company will go public at a multi-billion dollar valuation. They’re killing it. But what about Warby Parker you ask?

Warby Parker had a similar growth trajectory to Harry’s, exploding in growth over a few years and the brand went public earlier this year. Today it’s valued at $1.8bn.

All of which goes to show that we all need to be much more ambitious with our goals. There are people out there who have started multiple billion dollar businesses.

In this day and age literally anything is possible.

INFLUENCER IDEAS

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