BUSINESS IDEA | CASH FLOW BUSINESS

Fractional Executive Newsletter Business 👔 

Divide and conquer

Available Domain: Execpress.io

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: As we covered back in issue #98 of Half Baked fractional executives are becoming more and more popular. This is where experienced executives work with a number of companies at the same time on a fractional basis as their fractional CFO, CTO, COO etc. Even though “fractional executive” kinda sounds like a boss who does a fraction of the work they should, something we’ve all experienced.

And the rise of the fractional executive presents a massive opportunity for someone to build an incredible content business, like the Morning Brew or even Half Baked for fractional executives. Here’s what we have in mind.

Market Size: The fractional executive market in the United States is estimated to be worth around $1.2 billion as of 2022, but we estimate the market is much bigger

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A newsletter business which writes informative daily or weekly newsletters for fractional executives

How it Works:

• You create specific newsletters for different types of fractional executives, like fractional CFOs, CMOs, COOs etc. who receive your emails regularly

• These emails contain content around best practices for fractional executives, success stories, interviews from successful fractional executives, job opportunities for execs and much more

• You build a collection of newsletters across different verticals, sell ads and over time once you’ve built an audience you can create software tools for this cohort of customers

Go-to-market: Pick a singular niche, like fractional CFOs. Create the best newsletter possible for this cohort, build your audience and grow from there

Business Model: Advertising

Startup Costs: All you need is a Beehiiv subscription and you can start this business

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Hold: You should keep this business and use it as a launchpad to create SaaS businesses, like a community for fractional executives or a fractional executive hiring platform

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

The Baby Holster

There’s no shortage of ways a parent can carry their child. Baby wraps, slings, the list goes on. But what do you do if you’re a cowboy looking to carry your child? There’s no suitable product out there for their lifestyle, right?

Well there is now with this new Bay Holster. Carry your child around like you would your favorite weapon in a natural, comfortable way for both parent and child.

Suitable for the good, the bad and the cuddly.

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Sleepmaxxing

In a previous edition of Half Baked we spoke about looksmaxxing, the practice where youngsters were doing everything they could to maximize their attractiveness. Well a new “maxxing” trend is starting to gain traction online now, called “sleepmaxxing”. This trend sees youngsters adopting an array of unusual hacks for longer and better-quality sleep, such as taping their mouths shut while sleeping, chugging cocktails which supposedly aid with sleep and wearing nose strips to help open their airways and get deeper sleep. I wonder what maxxing trend will come next.

Business Ideas

• Sleep Betting App: from Half Baked edition #178

• Sleep Routines Platform: A platform where influencers, athletes and other famous people share their nighttime routines

• Caffeine Alarm App: A smart alarm which goes off at the time of the day you should stop consuming caffeine based on when you woke up and the “half-life” of caffeine

THE MONEYSHOT

The High School Dropout Building a +$1bn Aerospace Business

In order to reach the magical $1bn valuation mark most businesses have to sell millions of units or get millions of users on their app.

But this founder has managed to build a +$1bn business without delivering a single product (yet).

This is his story.

Blake Scholl has always loved planes.

He grew up in suburban Cincinnati where his parents often took him to the local airport to watch planes take off and land. In fact while at college he learned to fly in his downtime.

But before college Blake had to attend high school, which he dropped out of. But not for the reasons you’d think. He actually never graduated because he was accepted into college a year early. He attended Carnegie Mellon, earning a degree in computer science, where he also graduated early. Show-off.

After college Blake started his career at Amazon as a software engineer in 2001. He was a rockstar at Amazon and later became the first employee and director of product development at Kleiner-backed mobile startup Pelago. In 2010, he co-founded the mobile technology startup Kima Labs, which was acquired by Groupon in 2012.

After the acquisition Blake was trying to figure out what he wanted to do next, a problem he took a pretty novel approach to solving. Blake wrote a list of things he could do next based on two criteria, what was possible and what was the most important thing he could work on for society at the time. He then rated all of his ideas according to how happy he would be if they worked out.

And at the very top of the list was the problem he most wanted to solve in the world…supersonic air travel.

Blake spent the next 2 weeks intensely researching the space and discovered that it was indeed possible. Concorde had been built in the 1960s, so it was clearly possible to build a supersonic jet in 2014. He took about half of his life savings and hired 6 or 7 aerospace engineers to work out of his basement.

Blake had just founded Boom Supersonic.

Pretty quickly Blake realised he would need a gargantuan amount of investment to make this work. Investors, many of whom had backed his previous venture, pumped the first $1m into the fledgling business. But he needed more. Much more.

In 2016 the Boom team were accepted into Y Combinator which really put them on the map, allowing them to raise $8m that year. And since then the business has been on a fundraising spree, raising over $700m between 2016 and 2024 in some huge rounds.

And what have they achieved with these funds? Well they’ve built the XB-1 which had its second successful test flight earlier this year (check it out here, it’s a badass plane) They’ve also broken ground on the factory that will build their first commercial aircraft, the Overture, which will go into operation in 2029.

All of this is great but you may be thinking why will Boom succeed where Concorde failed? Well Blake reckons Boom can succeed because his jets will be far lighter, and therefore much more efficient. Concorde’s unit economics made no sense, where a London-New York return flight cost about $12,000 back in the day. Boom thinks their tickets will be the same price as current airline tickets.

And the airlines are just as excited about this idea as Blake is. Boom's order book stands at 130 Overture aircraft currently, including orders and pre-orders from American Airlines, United Airlines, and Japan Airlines.

Ultimately Blake’s entrepreneurship journey has been defined by patience, with it taking 15 years for Blake to go from idea to (hopefully) shipping a product in 2029 and thinking big. Really big. We all need to start thinking bigger like Blake. If he’s out there building Supersonic jets any one of us can build software, write newsletters, start YouTube channels, whatever it is we want to do.

The sky is truly the limit.

INFLUENCER IDEAS

#HalfBakedBizIdea

Alexis Ohanian (Reddit co-founder) with a video idea he shared on Twitter this week.

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