BUSINESS IDEA | VENTURE STARTUP

E-commerce Acquisition Platform 🛍️

Success store-ies

Available Domain: Ecommacquire.io

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: E-commerce is in an interesting spot right now. Competition is intensifying, advertising costs are increasing and many of the large DTC brands have had their valuations tumble, with Allbirds down 97% from its peak and Figs down 91% from their peak valuation. And even smaller e-comm businesses seem to be in trouble based on what Sean Frank (CEO of Ridge Wallet) is saying…

Against this backdrop it’s looking like more and more e-commerce brands will go up for sale in the coming months. So why not build the best platform for doing exactly this? Let’s do it.

Market Size: As of 2024, the global e-commerce market is valued at over $6 trillion.

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A tech-enabled marketplace for buying and selling e-commerce businesses

How it Works:

• An e-commerce store owner signs up to the site and links up their Shopify/Amazon/Woocommerce etc. store data to the platform as well as their banking data, marketing data and accounting data to the platform.

• The platform uses all of this data to perform due diligence on the brand and gives the brand a valuation. The seller can then publish their listing for their store

• Potential buyers sign up to the platform and can browse listings they may want to buy. All of the connected data is available for them to browse so buyers can see how the business is performing

• For a brand they want to acquire they can send LOIs (letters of intent) to brands they want to acquire and enter into a sale process, all of which can be managed on the platform

Go-to-market: Reach out to e-comm brands looking to sell and e-comm rollups looking to acquire brands and get this market going

Business Model: Charge a transaction fee for deals closing

Startup Costs: In order to build the tech you’ll need to do a raise here, probably a few hundred thousand dollars

Competitors: Acquire.com and Flippa are the main competitors in this market, but neither are optimized for e-commerce stores

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: The path to riches here would be to sell to a competitor, like Acquire.com, or even better a platform like Shopify

Exit Multiple: Exit multiples for successful online marketplaces and fintech companies typically range from 5x to 15x annual revenue or 20x to 40x EBITDA

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Pasta Recycler

The world is full of mysteries. What’s the meaning of life? Where are the aliens? Who killed JFK? But I think we can all agree the biggest mystery in life is figuring out the correct amount of pasta in any given situation. You either cook too little, leaving you starving, or you overcorrect and end up cooking enough to feed a small village, wasting food.

Well not anymore.

With this pasta recycler you can take your used spaghetti and make it like new! We can confirm that millions of Italians use this very product everyday (just don’t ask them about it).

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Raw Milk

Raw milk has emerged as a recent health trend. Raw milk advocates claim that unpasteurized milk packs more protein, vitamins, and minerals than heat-treated milk. Health experts however say that drinking raw milk can be dangerous, potentially exposing consumers to salmonella or listeria. So if you do pursue an idea in this space make sure you do so safely to protect your customers!

Business Ideas

• Raw Milk Chocolate Brand: Create a chocolate brand using raw milk as the primary input.

• Food Safety Aggregation Site: Create a site which aggregates the opinions of different experts on the safety of different food products and ingredients (raw milk, seed oils etc.) since most sources are very one-sided.

• Raw Milk Certification Program: Develop a quality assurance certification for raw milk producers who meet specific standards and test their product for pathogens.

THE MONEYSHOT

How Being Kind Led to a $5bn Exit

In business we’re often told to be ruthless. To be sharks. To do whatever it takes to win.

But this founder’s ethos of being kind, instilled in him by his father, allowed him to build a $5bn business.

This is his story.

To understand Daniel Lubetzky, you first need to understand his father, Roman.

Roman, a Lithuanian Ashkenazi Jew, grew up in Europe in the 1930s. But as the Nazis came to power, Roman and his family were sent to live in a Jewish ghetto. Roman was 9 at the time.

Two years later, Roman and his family were then transferred to Dachau, the first concentration camp the Nazis ever built. He remained there with his father until he was nearly 16 and the camp was finally liberated by American soldiers.

When Daniel was a boy Roman would tell him stories of his experiences during the Holocaust. But one story from Roman’s unimaginably horrific childhood stood out.

During his time in Dachau Roman became more and more malnourished, almost to the point of death. One day a German soldier walked by. Glancing at him, the soldier tossed half a rotten potato at Roman’s feet. This was a small gesture, but hardly an empty one. The soldier could have been shot for this. Roman credited the morsel of food and the kindness behind it with saving his life.

This story stuck with Daniel and he vowed that whatever he did in life, kindness would be at the forefront of it.

The family moved to the US when Daniel was a teenager and he went on to study economics at Stanford.

After school, Daniel briefly worked at Sullivan & Cromwell and McKinsey until 1994 when Daniel founded PeaceWorks Inc., a company aimed at fostering cooperation among communities in conflict zones, particularly between Israelis and Palestinians, something incredibly relevant 30 years on.

After a decade running the business however Daniel turned his attention to a new area…health. He became increasingly concerned about the prevalence of unhealthy snacking choices and rising obesity and diabetes rates in America. Again, prescient.

So in 2004 Daniel decided to create a snack brand which was “kind to your body, your taste buds and your world” as their slogan said.

He founded Kind Snacks.

As with all startups the early days were scrappy. Daniel was the founder, salesman, box-packer, deliveryman, and collections officer all at once in the early days. But the company still managed to generated around $1m in revenue in its first year of trading, a testament to Daniel’s grit.

From there the brand grew Until Daniel reached a pivotal point in the business. In 2008 Kind needed to raise money to support its growth ambitions, so they raised $16 million from VMG Partners, a private equity firm. But there was a catch.

The deal meant that Daniel had to sell the company within five years. Daniel agreed but after 4 years, he still thought he was the best person to run the business. So he decided to buy shares of the company back from VMG. But in order to do this Daniel had to assemble $220 million for the deal, taking on a mountain of debt to reach the amount. It was expensive, risky and if it went wrong Daniel could have lost everything. But he made it happen, another testament to his grit.

By 2012 Kind was bringing in $120m in revenue per year and by 2014 they were selling more than 58 million bars and granola pouches per year. The business was a giant, so much so that Mars wanted in.

In 2017 Mars acquired a minority stake in Kind for c.$4 billion and in 2020 they announced full ownership of Kind in a deal valued at $5 billion.

I think Daniel’s story proves that you don’t have to adopt a particular set of values to be a successful founder. You don’t have to be a shark (although ironically Daniel is now a shark on Shark Tank…). You can just be you. And for Daniel that meant being kind so he could honour his father’s legacy.

Daniel chose to be kind. What will you choose?

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