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Business Ideas #203: Resource Aggregation, Microplastics Blood Testing...

Plus Making +$50m/Year Selling Salt

Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up business ideas which cause as much of a stir as Sydney Sweeney’s Dr Squatch commercials.

Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

  1. Business Idea💡: A free idea for a free platform for free stuff

  2. Drunk Business Idea 🍻: Making money off the ever-rising housing market

  3. Just The Tip 📈: The next at-home blood testing trend that’s about to take-off

  4. The Moneyshot 🤑: Making +$50m/Year Selling Salt

P.S…if you want to read any previous editions of Half Baked you can on our website.

P.P.S…if you were forwarded this email and want to subscribe, you can here.

Let’s get into it.

BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Free Resources Aggregator 🆓 

Post-itively free

Available Domain: Sharespot.io

💡 TLDR: A platform which aggregates free resources like eBooks, cheat sheets or guides shared on social media platforms like Twitter or LinkedIn into one centralized database

1. Problem/Opportunity

The Problem/Opportunity: Everyone loves free stuff. Who doesn’t, right? But some people love free stuff a lot more than others…

Everyday on social media thousands of experts in different fields share “lead magnets” like eBooks, cheat sheets or guides. But many of these get lost in the social media ether despite how helpful they are. So why not create a database of all of these resources so anyone can access them whenever they want? Let’s do it.

Market Size: Hard to get an accurate market size here but TAM won’t be an issue here

2. Solution 

The Idea: A platform which aggregates free resources like eBooks, cheat sheets or guides shared on social media platforms like Twitter or LinkedIn into one centralized database

How it Works:

  • The platform scans sites like Twitter for posts where people are sharing interesting resources, tools or guides, and takes whatever action is needed get the resource (e.g. like, retweet, comment)

  • These resources are pooled, indexed and added to a database which can be searched by users by resource type or creator to find whatever resources they need

  • The platform also offers personalized recommendations based on user interests and browsing history.

Go-to-market: Comment underneath posts where people are sharing resources about the product, since these are your target users

Business Model: Put ads on the site

Startup Costs: You could start this for next to nothing

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Hold: This could be a great cash flowing business for whoever builds it

TOGETHER WITH BONNER PRIVATE WINES

Bold Ideas, Bolder Wines

Let’s face it.

You subscribe to Half Baked, that means you don’t settle for the ordinary.

Neither do we.

That means we go above and beyond ordinary to get extraordinary results

Here’s a prime example of someone who does just that: The Extreme Altitude Club.

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?).

For Half Baked readers only: Order below will get $25 off & free shipping.

DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Affordable Homes Magazine

Finally, a home magazine that’s honest about today’s housing market…

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Microplastics Blood Testing

Bryan Johnson has just launched, in his own words, “the world’s first at-home microplastics test.” It’s a finger prick test and tells you the kinds of microplastics circulating in your bloodstream and how you compare to others. This will almost certainly open the floodgates to different microplastics testing services as we all become more aware (and afraid) of how widespread the microplastic problem is.

Business Ideas

  • Mobile Testing Units: Develop mobile laboratories that can travel to different locations, providing on-site microplastics blood testing services.

  • Environmental Consulting: Offer services to businesses and organizations to assess microplastics exposure risks for employees or communities.

  • Amazon for Micro-plastic Free Products: From this edition of Half Baked

THE MONEYSHOT

Making +$50m/Year Selling Salt

In recent years salt has been villainized as something we all need to minimize in our diets.

But this founder completely bucked the trend and co-founded a $200m business that’s trying to get everyone to incorporate more salt into their diets.

This is his story.

Robb Wolf has always been a fitness fanatic.

He pursued a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry from California State University, Chico and worked as a research biochemist after college. He went on to gain recognition as a 2x New York Times bestselling author with titles including The Paleo Solution and Wired to Eat. Oh and for good measure Robb also co-founded the 1st CrossFit affiliate gym in the world. He’s all about that fitness lifestyle.

Robb is also, unsurprisingly, an incredible athlete. He’s a former California State Powerlifting Champion, was an amateur kickboxer and as of 3 weeks ago was awarded his blackbelt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu (that’s how deep our researchers go for these stories btw).

But despite Robb’s intense focus on his health for years he never felt amazing. He followed a strict low-carb, ketogenic lifestyle but didn’t feel like he was performing to the best of his abilities. So he worked with different coaches to see what the problem was and they told him he was missing one thing from his diet…sodium.

After a year of not taking his coaches advice to increase his sodium intake Robb eventually gave in. He started looking around at different electrolyte products but found that they were full of sugars and other additives and didn’t contain enough sodium for his needs. So Robb started making his own drinks full of sodium to increase his intake.

The change was instantaneous. It was like Robb had unlocked another level he could reach in his physical pursuits.

Robb saw a clear need in the market for this product so he teamed up with his wife Nicki Violetti, Luis Villaseñor and James Murphy to start their own electrolyte brand in December 2018 with was cleaner than other products on the market and also provided higher doses of sodium.

They founded LMNT.

The brand started off strong, making c.$3m in revenue in their first full year of trading in 2019. And from there the brand kept growing. In fact this chart shows their revenue growth from 2019 - 2021. The business was only going in one direction.

On the back of this strong performance LMNT raised $3.3 in a funding round in July 2021. They went on to raise a further $2.1m in August 2022 on Republic, which gives incredible detail on how the business was trading back then.

At that time the business was on a $50m/year revenue run rate and today the business could be doing as much as $100m in revenue per year, but recent financial details are scarce right now.

However we do know one thing for sure, that this business still has a huge amount of room to grow into the $9bn hydration market.

The story of LMNT shows that conventional wisdom isn’t always wise, and if you can go the other way you can build an incredible business.

So get out there and start challenging the status quo.

INFLUENCER IDEAS

#HalfBakedBizIdea

Garry Tan (CEO of YC) requesting that someone builds “perplexity for travel”

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