BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Expert Consultations for Investment Firms 🧠 

The smart money

Available Domain: Requestforexpert.com

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: The life of the finance bro is tough. Long hours. Endless excel spreadsheets. The stress of deciding what Patagonia fleece you’re going to wear that day…

But one legitimately tough part about working in venture capital or private equity is the need to have expertise across a wide variety of domains. For example a former colleague of mine was once given stick for not having expert knowledge on the Danish housing market during a deal. And in these big investment decisions these companies are willing to pay a lot to get these decisions right. So let’s build a business to give these investors more comfort (and us more money).

Market Size: These are vast markets. As of 2024, the global venture capital market was valued at approximately $300 billion, while the private equity market exceeded $4 trillion.

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A platform where VCs, private equity firms and other investors can tap into expertise in fields related to investments they’re making

How it Works:

• A VC or PE firm signs up to the platform and has access to the database of experts on the platform

• Individuals with expertise in different fields and markets can sign up and offer their time for consultations for a fixed per hour fee

• Firms can book in time with these experts when required and pay the hourly rate for their time

• Think of it like Fiverr, except instead of paying $5 you’re paying $500 for a consultation.

Go-to-market: Initially focus on top-tier VC and PE firms in major financial hubs like London, New York or San Fran

Business Model: Charge firms a monthly subscription fee for access to the platform

Startup Costs: You could start this for almost $0

Competitors: There are other expert marketplaces out there but you could create a huge business in this space

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: You could exit to a large consulting platform like GLG

Exit Multiple: This would probably be in the 4x - 8x revenue valuation range

TOGETHER WITH NAME.COM

Quick Fire Ideas

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So let’s get your creative juices flowing with these quick fire business ideas and domains so you can get started straight away:

💡 Idea 1: A tool which summarises unread emails in your inbox and surfaces any important information from those emails

Kickass Domain: Leftonunread.com

💡 Idea 2: An online learning platform which directly links the cost of a course to its completion, where you pay a large fee upfront and get refunded based on how much of the course you complete

Perfect Domain: Stakeschool.io

💡Idea 3: Negotiation-as-a-Service - A service where users can hire experienced negotiators to work with them for large deals or transactions

Ideal Domain: Negotiace.io

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Weighing Scale App

Ever been on the go and wondered “wow, I wonder how much I weigh right now?“ It’s something we’ve all experienced, right?

Well with our new WeighApp you simply stand on your phone and it will give you your exact bodyweight. Accurate, convenient and efficient.

Note: we won’t be held liable for any broken phones, thats on you.

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Solo Travel

Whether it’s shopping in NYC or backpacking across Western Europe (shoutout all the Friends fans) more people than ever before are travelling alone. In 2023, 25% of Americans (c.83m people) considered taking a solo trip. And this is a group who like to spend. According to a 2021 survey, most solo travellers spent between 1,000 and 2,000 U.S. dollars per week on average. So let’s brainstorm some ideas for products for these solo travellers.

Business Ideas

• AI Travel Companion: An app or device that acts as a tour guide for solo travellers, giving information about countries and specific areas

• Niche Group Tours: Create group tours for solo travellers which cater to specific niches, such as people who are recently divorced or people with pets traveling with them

• Luggage Delivery Service: Offer a service that transports solo travelers' luggage between destinations, allowing for easier mobility.

THE MONEYSHOT

How a Lawyer and a Dentist Make +$100m/yr Selling Ugly Sweaters

Many believe the path to success is reserved solely for computer science graduates who build innovative tech companies. But that just isn’t true.

Take these far from typical founders have created a far from typical business that’s making +$100m/yr.

This is their story.

Evan Mendelsohn (right) and Nicklaus Morton (left…if you weren’t sure) are not your typical founders.

The pair met while studying at the University of California, San Diego, but were on very different career paths. Evan studied political science and later pursued a law degree at the University of San Diego School of Law, while Nick studied biology before going on to dental school.

After college Nick became a dental surgeon, while Evan became an associate at a major firm. But pretty quickly the guys ran into a problem. Their jobs were super boring.

Evan hated his job so much that he threw himself into different side projects. He started building websites which were highly optimized for SEO like Day-Finder.com and How-Tall-Celeb.com. Pretty soon these sites started bringing in some decent money, so he decided to apply his SEO skills to something bigger.

Ugly Christmas sweaters.

Evan noticed that interest in the keyword “ugly Christmas sweaters” was rising incredibly quickly, doubling between 2010 and 2011. During his college years Evan had been to plenty of themed parties where costumes were central to the fun. He attended many of these parties with Nick so he called him up and asked him if he wanted to build the business too.

After a single phone call Nick was in.

The pair initially invested $70k each to launch the company. How two recent grads each had $70k to pump into a new business idea still remains a mystery to us. They used these funds to set up their website, create sweater designs using photoshop and worked with manufacturers in China to create their first 5,000 sweaters.

They had founded Tipsy Elves.

Why the name? Well they joked the sweaters were made by Santa's elves after having a few drinks, not unlike how we write these newsletters.

The brand’s launch was a huge success. Their SEO-first approach meant they sold out their entire inventory of 5,000 sweaters in a week and a half. In fact Tipsy Elves sold their first 50,000 sweaters just through SEO.

Now you might be thinking that, like most founder stories, the guys went all-in on their big idea, quit their jobs and risked it all on this idea. But this isn’t that kind of story.

In fact the guys ran it as a side hustle for a long time to ensure the risk was minimized for them.

In the first year of sales the company sold over one thousand sweaters reaching about $370,000 in total web sales, and in the following year it reached nearly $1 million in sales. The business was chugging along nicely but in 2013 everything changed when they appeared on ABC's "Shark Tank," where they secured a $100,000 investment from Robert Herjavec in exchange for 10% of the company after rejecting a classic Kevin O’Leary royalty deal (give it a rest Kev).

The company went on to do $3m of sales in 2013.

And from there the business kept on growing up to $10m in revenue in 2015. The brand expanded beyond just Christmas sweaters to other holidays and by 2019 the business was doing well over $100m in revenue per year, all without raising any additional equity financing. Not bad for some ugly sweaters.

Evan and Nick are ballers and prove that for some people, high paying, high status jobs will never be enough. They had that desire, that hunger to work for themselves and to build something more.

And if you have a similar desire then you owe it to yourself to give it your best shot to go and build something for yourself.

So get to work.

INFLUENCER IDEAS

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