BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Unified Junk Mail Platform 🗑️

Spam. Ban. Thank you Ma’am

Available Domain: Unsubhero.io

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: Whether it’s in your email inbox or through your front door junk mail is the worst. Apart from that one time it paid off.

We need a way to clean up our inboxes and our letter boxes, stopping the spam. So let’s build a platform to do exactly that.

Market Size: In 2021, about 19.6 billion emails were sent and received daily worldwide, with spam accounting for 45.1% of email traffic. Additionally, in the US alone, 41 pounds of junk mail are received per person annually.

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A platform which helps users to unsubscribe from physical junk mail and spam emails

How it Works:

• A user signs up to the platform and enters in their details like their email address and home address

• For unwanted emails the platform will send unsubscribe requests on your behalf and block mailing lists and senders who do not respect such requests

• It can also scan your inbox for emails you rarely open or likely promotional emails to make suggestions on what emails to unsub from

• For physical mail whenever a user receives a physical letter they no longer want to receive they simply take a picture of the letter and the platform reaches out to them on the user’s behalf to stop them receiving letters

Go-to-market: Play the ultimate uno reverse card and market to people through junk fliers and unsolicited emails to show how bad this problem is

Business Model: Subscription model

Startup Costs: The tech stack here will be relatively tough to build, so you’ll need good engineering talent to build it

Competitors: There are some services which offer this service, like Paper Karma, but no-one’s created a unified junk mail elimination platform

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: You could exit to a large email platform like Superhuman who could integrate the offering into their line of services

Exit Multiple: For a successful exit, we could potentially see a multiple of 5-10x annual recurring revenue

TOGETHER WITH OMNISEND

Gone viral yet? Us neither…

Going viral sounds nice and exciting, but even if you succeed the fame is more like 15 seconds than 15 minutes.

So why not to talk directly to the people who already like you and your brand (and we aren’t talking about your mom).

Email & SMS marketing is the GOAT when it comes to this.  As boring as it sounds, Omnisend can help you build an audience of people who like you and convert them into recurring sales.

1. Collect contact details of people who already like your brand.

2. Segment them.

3. Send them personalized offers.

4. Watch sales happen in front of your eyes.

Use code HALFBAKED10 & get 10% off your first 3 months.

For new paid plans only, expires Dec. 31, 2024

DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

My 2 Cents

Let’s be honest, 99% of what people share on social media is trash. Take Twitter, where people post endlessly on the platform inflicting their opinions on the world. Why? Because it’s easy to do and more importantly…it’s free. But if people had to pay to post then surely they’d be more thoughtful with what they share, right? We think so.

And with “My 2 Cents“ users have to do exactly that. On My 2 Cents users have to pay $0.02 every time they want to post something (get it), meaning they won’t post any random musing they have, only thoughts they really care about sharing.

Problem solved.

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Influencer-led SaaS

Influencers are starting to create SaaS businesses. Take Mr Beast, who launched ViewStats, a website provides channel & video data on millions of YouTube channels or MKBHD who launched his wallpaper app last week, although that didn’t go down very well with his fans. Influencers have their own distribution and combining this with the SaaS business model is the peanut butter and jelly of business strategies. And here’s the thing, over the next few years as AI tooling makes it easier to make SaaS products, more and more creators will jump on this trend.

Business Ideas

• PE for Creators: Create a Private Equity fund which works with creators to acquire SaaS businesses which they could own and sell to their audience

• Creator Product Research Agency: Create an agency which researches what products (SaaS or not) a creator should build by testing different products through brand deals

THE MONEYSHOT

Building a $50m Ping-Pong Business in 5 Years

It goes by many names. Table tennis. Ping-pong. Whiff-whaff (no we’re not joking). Whatever you call it over 300m people around the world play this sport.

And this founder used that fact to build a $50m ping-pong business in 5 years.

This is his story.

David Silberman is what you might call a reformed finance bro.

He studied business administration at Wisconsin School of Business and after graduating in 2016 he spent 3 years working as an equity research analyst at UBS in New York. But during his very limited downtime David tried to spend as much time as he could indulging in his favorite hobby…playing ping-pong. But at the time he found it incredibly difficult to find places to play, particularly late at night. Which is when it struck him.

Someone needed to create a 24/7, on-demand ping-pong facility that he and his buddies could go to whenever they wanted to play.

It was 2019 and David was super pumped about this idea. But he knew he’d need financing and a great team to make this a reality. So he got in touch with Max Kogler who previously served as the COO/CFO of Super Soccer Stars and Ernesto Ebuen, a preeminent ping-pong coach and player, having been ranked #1 in the U.S. at one point. The three decided to team up to bring David’s idea to life.

The spent months refining the concept and developing software that could allow a facility like this to operate with no human intervention needed and in February 2020 they were ready to go.

They founded PingPod.

The team started by launching a single PingPod location in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Here’s how they work. Rather than having staff man a location, everything on-site is automated. Users book the space with an app, and they can only unlock the door via a code on their smartphone. This autonomous model not only cuts down on cost, but also expands the times of day a venue can be used.

The location was a hit and in 2021 they opened a second location. From here the business managed to raise $10 million in VC funding in March 2022. Now you may be thinking, how could this business raise $10m? Well becuase this is not a ping-pong business. This is a SaaS business. Here’s why.

In 2023 the PingPod team bundled their technology assets into a wholly owned subsidiary called PodPlay Technologies. Podplay is a SaaS business which licenses the technology they’ve built to bring their tech stack to other like-minded venue operators. This is the big play here.

Last year, Pingpod and Podplay reached $3.6 million in revenue, and this year they expect to hit about $6 million in revenue.

Their most recent round of financing valued the business at $50m and today the business operates 18 PingPod outlets and has over 50 venues which uses their technology, including businesses across billiards, baseball batting cages, pickleball, padel, soccer, golf simulators and more.

All of which goes to show you don’t know where your entrepreneurship path will take you. When David set out to play more ping-pong he didn’t envision building a $50m SaaS business. But that’s exactly what he did.

It reminds us of a famous quote from Steve Jobs’ now legendary 2005 Stanford commencement speech…

“You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future”

INFLUENCER IDEAS

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