BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Private Label SaaS for Creators 💻️ 

Ctrl + Alt + Create

Available Domain: Saasmith.io

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: As we discussed in a recent edition of Half Baked, creators are starting to launch their own SaaS businesses. Take Mr Beast’s ViewStats and Marques Brownlee’s Panels for example. Which is an interesting departure from what creators usually get up to.

The combination of a creator’s reach with the killer unit economics of a SaaS business is a force to be reckoned with, meaning that more and more creators are gonna start doing this in the future. But most creators aren’t technical. So why not build a business to create these businesses for them? Supliful for example allows influencers to create supplement businesses overnight through private labelling, so why not create this for SaaS?

Market Size: The global software as a service market was $315 billion in 2023

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A platform which allows creators to create SaaS products to sell to their audiences through private labelling

How it Works:

• A creator signs up to the platform and chooses what SaaS product they want to sell from a range of options, such as habit trackers, jobs boards, marketplaces etc. with no upfront cost to the creator

• The product is then branded however they want and any custom features can be added to the platform for an extra cost

• The product goes live and is shared with the creator’s audience who buy/subscribe to the product. The business takes a cut of each sale, minimizing risk for the creator

Go-to-market: Create a single SaaS product and focus on a single creator vertical to get your first customer

Business Model: Take a % of revenue generated through the SaaS products

Startup Costs: You could hire a team to build a product for a few thousand dollars using no-code tools to get your first customer

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: This business could be a great add-on for one who already has a huge user base of creators, like Patreon

Exit Multiple: The fact the business is a SaaS business full of SaaS businesses means you’re getting valued as a SaaS business (unsurprisingly), so 4x - 10x revenue here should be achievable

TOGETHER WITH SAASTOCK

SaaStock Europe is 2 Weeks Away. Don’t Miss Out!

 4,500+ of the who's who of SaaS will be gathering in Dublin for SaaStock Europe on 14-16 October. Do you want to join them? 

Founders, C-Suite leaders and Operators from the industry's hottest startups, pre-seed to series B+, SaaS investors and VCs, and everyone in-between. This is where the SaaS industry gathers to do business. Benefit from unrivalled networking opportunities and world-class content you won’t find anywhere else.

We’ve got an exclusive 30% discount for you to be part of the leading SaaS event in Europe. Register online using the discount code “HALFBAKED-30”.

See you there!

DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Live Out-of-office Updates

Let’s be honest, out-of-office emails are pretty dry. They’re usually “I am currently out of the office until [return date] for [reason]. I will be happy to reply to your message when I return.” What we really want is to make OOO emails much more fun.

Which you can with this new, live out-of-office email updater. It uses AI to analyze your recent pictures and give anyone emailing you a summary of what you’re up to at that moment.

Truly an incredible innovation.

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Face Yoga

Yoga has become increasingly popular in recent years, with one particular branch of yoga becoming especially popular…face yoga. Face yoga refers to facial exercises intended to improve the appearance of facial skin through muscle toning, improved blood flow and lymphatic circulation and relaxation. We reckon you could build some businesses in this space.

Business Ideas

• AI Face Yoga Programs: Develop AI-powered facial analysis tools to provide personalized face yoga routines based on individual facial structures and concerns

• Face Yoga Teacher Training Platform: Build an online platform connecting aspiring face yoga instructors with experienced teachers for mentorship and training

THE MONEYSHOT

The Founders Who Earned $3.5bn for Other People

Most entrepreneurship stories focus on how much money the founders make for themselves.

But these founders came together to create a business that’s helped others earn more than $3.5bn.

This is their story.

Jack Conte (R) is a creative at heart.

Growing up in Marin County, California Jack’s father was a musician who encouraged his son to follow his creative pursuits early on in life. Music became a lifelong passion for Jack and from 2002 to 2006 he attended Stanford where he earned a degree in music, one of the few Stanford entrepreneurs who didn’t drop out.

After college Jack wanted to pursue his music dream so he and his now wife Nataly Dawn formed a band called Pomplamoose in 2008. Their unique "VideoSongs" format on YouTube helped them build a an audience of 100,000 subscribers. But despite their success they still had a problem. Money.

Despite having a large audience they only earned around $100 in ad revenue per video, meaning they were losing a small fortune on each upload.

Which is when Jack had a lightbulb moment. He wondered if some of his fans would be willing to support him directly by paying him for each video he released? He sketched out his idea on 14 pieces of printer paper. This was the start of his journey.

Since Jack wasn’t a programmer he reached out to his old Stanford roommate Sam Yam who was a rising star in the Valley at the time. Sam was one of the first engineers at Sam Altman’s social-mapping startup Loopt, founded AdWhirl which he sold to Google and at the time was working on his own new idea, a freelance photographer marketplace called OurSpot.

The pair met in a Coffee Bar on March 6, 2013 to discuss Jack’s idea. Sam loved it, but he was already committed to launching OurSpot with press coverage on the launch just around the corner. Despite this Sam went with his gut and he began coding v1 of the platform for Jack.

Once a version of the platform was ready they tested the concept on Jack’s audience. He left a link to the site one of his videos and his fans respond with encouragement…and their wallets. While Jack normally made just $100 in ad revenue per video, his fans committed to funding him with more than $5,000 per video within a few weeks.

The concept worked.

Jack and Sam had just launched Patreon.

When Patreon went live Jack, his girlfriend, and his roommate were the only creators on the platform when it launched. But buzz about Jack’s thousands of dollars in patronage triggered hundreds of creators to sign up.

They knew they needed to raise to fund their growth so in August 2013 they set out to raise $700k from angel investors, but ended up raising $2.1 million in an over-subscribed round.

Investors could see the potential in this idea and a few months later after stellar early growth they raised a $15m series A in June 2014. In fact, within 18 months of launching they signed up more than 125,000 "patrons" to the site.

This laid the groundwork for a $30 million series B round in January 2016 and since then the company hasn’t looked back. By 2017 they had over 50,000 active creators and 1 million monthly patrons on the platform. By 2022 this had ballooned to more than 250,000 creators who were using the platform and more than 8 million active patrons from 200+ countries using the site.

To-date the business has sent more than $3.5bn in earnings to creators and the platform is worth around $1.5bn itself, down from its peak valuation of $4bn in 2021 (like all startups who raised in that era).

All of which goes to show that, as we keep saying in this newsletter and we’ll keep saying it until everyone believes it, oftentimes the best way to build a business is to solve your own problems.

That’s where your story could begin.

INFLUENCER IDEAS

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