BUSINESS IDEA | CASH FLOW BUSINESS

Dormant Email List Agency 📧 

Giving lists a lifeline

Available Domain: Listlift.io

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: Email has experienced a renaissance in recent months. It seems like every business or creator has started their own newsletter recently, despite some obvious issues with email.

But many people out there are sitting on goldmines - email lists of hundreds of thousands of people

Market Size: In 2024, e-mail marketing revenue was projected to surpass $9.5 billion. But given this service extends beyond just email marketing the TAM here is huge.

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: An agency which helps people with large email lists to reactivate them

How it Works:

• You reach out to creators or businesses with large, dormant, email lists that they’re getting no value from currently

• You work with them to re-activate their list by importing their list to a newsletter platform, creating new content with them, sending mails and creating unsubscribe flows to churn disengaged subs.

• For customers who don’t want to re-activate their list you can help them to sell it to a person or business who wants it and take a % of the sales price for arranging the deal

Go-to-market: Set up a landing page for the service, drive some Facebook ads to the site and gauge the level of interest in this service

Business Model: Flat fee to reactivate an email list and ongoing fee to manage the list

Startup Costs: You could start this business for a few hundred bucks using the method above

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Hold: This could be a great money-spinner, throwing off cash and laying the foundation to start a high growth SaaS business

TOGETHER WITH BONNER WINE CLUB

Are you a trend setter? Here’s one to uncork

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Sourced from remote Andean vineyards, they’re as rare as that unicorn business idea.

Not many people know about this yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

These wines defy the ordinary.

Curious? Well…this will make you more curious.

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Drunk Food Delivery App

Ever arrived in home after a few drinks, ordered food to be delivered only to wake up hours later with some very angry texts from a delivery driver? I certainly have. But we’re solving that very problem today.

Our new food delivery app can detect when a user is drunk based on the time of day and how they use the app, meaning the food doesn’t go to waste and the delivery driver is happy too

Everybody wins!

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Repair Cafés

In recent months and years “repair cafés” have become more and more prominent. These are free meeting places where people come together to repair their tech. This points to a broader trend where users are trying to extend the lifespan of their stuff for as long as possible to reduce waste.

Business Ideas

• Repair Café Directory: A platform which lists different repair cafés and maps out where they are

• AI for Device Repair: Develop an AI co-pilot trained on repair data to help users to repair their own devices

THE MONEYSHOT

From $0 to a $52m Exit in 4 Years

Building a business to a life-changing exit takes a long time, usually 8 - 10 years.

But this founder managed to take his business from inception (as in the beginning, not the movie) to a $52m exit in just 4 years.

This is his story.

Marshall Haas is the definition of a badass entrepreneur.

At age 19 he dropped out of college (without his parents knowing) to start his first tech company with $40k of investment he received, not from a friend or an angel investor, but from the Chilean Government.

Then at 22-years-old, he founded a startup studio called Need/Want that spun up different e-commerce brands. Alongside co-founder Jon Wheatley, they launched everything from “Smart Bedding” (bed sheets that clicked together) to pool floaties and emoji masks.

The pair tried a lot of different products. Some took off, most failed. But their biggest success came from selling phone cases. The pair launched a slim phone case brand called Peel, which is still running today.

But during these e-commerce excursions Marshall had a tactic he used to keep costs down…hiring overseas talent. This was his secret weapon that he would eventually come back to.

Fast forward to 2019 and Marshall was doing the digital nomad thing with his wife. He dropped by the Philippines to finally meet his virtual team face-to-face, including Joemer Embernate.

While they were hanging out Joemer threw out a Half Baked idea he had to make outsourcing more efficient. They'd find someone, ramp up their skills, then let clients directly manage them, doubling the hours billed without the fuss of constant oversight. That was the key insight.

So in 2020 the pair decided to team up and start a business offering this exact service.

They founded Support Shepherd (called Somewhere.com today).

The value proposition was genius. Support Shepherd would help companies hire top overseas talent which cost 80% less than US workers.

The launch was low key. Just a tweet and some emails to buddies who might dig it. But the timing was perfect. During covid remote work was exploding, and finding top talent was almost impossible.

The product solved a huge pain point for business owners and by May 2021 they were doing about $50,000 a month in revenue. But they still needed something to take the business to the next level.

Enter Nick Huber.

Nick, a famous entrepreneur and influencer, became an avid user of Shepherd, with 80% of his hires coming through Shepherd’s talent pool.

Nick was so impressed by the business that he wanted in. A deal was struck with Nick receiving a 15% affiliate commission for each client he delivered by talking or tweeting about the business.

This was huge for the business and in 2022, a year after Nick joined, revenue had 7x’d.

Similarly Shaan Puri, founder and co-host of the My First Million Podcast, wanted in so he invested secured a minority stake for $1.4 million and agreed to share the business with his audience.

Lightning struck twice. In just one year Nick and Shaan helped to triple Shepherd's revenue and profits, boosted the company’s value to over $35 million.

Eventually in 2023 Nick had seen enough. Being an affiliate wasn’t enough for him.

So in late 2023 Nick began to discuss a potential deal for him to become a majority owner. He went out and raised $20.8 million in cash, totalling $29.7 million for the deal, giving him controlling interest of Support Shepherd.

Once Nick took over they rebranded the business to Somewhere.com and today Marshall, Shaan and Joemer still remain partners in the business.

But with Nick at the helm the future looks bright for Somewhere.

Could this become a billion-dollar business one day?

Only time will tell.

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