BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Yelp for HOAs 🏘️

HOA ‘bout that

Available Domain: Ratemyhoa.io

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: America is the home of many great things. Freedom. The NBA. The KFC Cheetos sandwich of course. The list goes on. But for all its magnificence, America has its pitfalls…like Homeowners Associations. For those who are unfamiliar Homeowners Associations (HOAs) are organizations that govern a housing community and sets rules for its residents. Or to put it another way…

Being stuck with a terrible HOA can be awful. So let’s create a platform to prevent that from happening.

Market Size: There are 351,000 HOAs in the United States and 40 million households within HOAs

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A review platform specifically designed for Homeowners Associations (HOAs) that allows residents to rate and review their HOA's performance

How it Works:

• Residents sign up for the platform and provide proof that they belong to that HOA

• They can leave reviews on the HOA on the site, choosing if they want to remain anonymous or not

• HOAs can claim and manage their pages if they wish to interact with them

• Prospective buyers can use the reviews to research HOAs before purchasing a property in an area or joining a HOA

Go-to-market: Launch in top 5 HOA-dense markets (Florida, California, Texas, Arizona, Nevada) and expand from there based on user adoption

Business Model: Charge HOAs who want to claim their pages a fee to do so

Startup Costs: You could start this very cheaply, building review websites is super straight-forward let’s be real

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: You could get acquired by Redfin, CoStar Group or a similar business

Exit Multiple: Based on comparable PropTech acquisitions you’re looking at a 6-8x revenue multiple here

TOGETHER WITH RYSE

The Smart Home Company to Watch

Best Buy has a knack for picking the up-and-coming tech products that go on to dominate the market. Their early bets on household items like Ring (acquired by Amazon for $1.2B) and Nest (acquired by Google for $3.2B) have a proven record of paying off. 

Now Best Buy is lifting the curtain on their latest find, launching RYSE’s SmartShades in over 120 retail stores. RYSE has already hit $9M+ in lifetime revenue with over 60,000 units sold, and the numbers are rising (along with the window shades). 

RYSE shareholders have seen their value increase 40% year-over-year, with strong upside remaining as they scale into retail and high-volume B2B channels. 

Invest in RYSE at just $1.75/share before it becomes a household name.

DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Fish Stroller

The pet fish lives quite a sad life when you think about. 70% of the earth’s surface is water, yet your fish is confined to a tiny bowl (that you should probably clean more often) for all its life.

But now, with the fish stroller, you can inject some excitement into your pet fishes life. Take them around the neighbourhood to see what lies beyond the bowl.

We are so back.

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Faceless YouTube Channels

Faceless YouTube channels are hardly new, but they’ve exploded in popularity in line with the boom in AI. Faceless YouTube channels are simply channels where the creator remains anonymous, opting not to appear visually or sometimes even reveal their identity in any videos. And with new advances in AI it’s easier than ever to create a faceless YouTube channel.

Business Ideas

• Faceless Channel Marketplace: A site for buying and selling Faceless YouTube channels

• Faceless Channel for Existing Creators: Create a service where you work with already famous creators to create faceless channels to diversify their income

THE MONEYSHOT

How a Funeral Led to a +$1bn Business

Business idea inspiration can strike anywhere, anytime.

But for one guy an experience at a funeral (of all places) gave him and his friends a +$1bn business idea.

This is their story.

Steven Galanis has had quite the career.

While he went to Duke to study economics Steve was more interested in starting businesses. His first was called Spartan Entertainment, a company which hosted weekly parties near campus which grew as large as 10,000 people. He used Spartan to build a network and launch other businesses including a DJ-booking venture, a hot dog stand, and a moving company.

After college though, in 2010, Steve decided it was time to secure the bag, so he began working as an options trader, which he did for 5 years. On the side he worked in TV production but eventually left trading to become a sales account executive at LinkedIn. Like I said, quite the career.

But in 2016 Steve’s grandmother sadly passed away and one person who attended the funeral was Martin Blencowe. Martin was trying to make it as an NFL agent and at the time had one client…Cassius Marsh. Cassius had made a video congratulating a friend of Martin’s on the birth of a son, and Steve recognized the potential to monetize that kind of content.

They hit up Devon Townsend, who had previously been introduced Steve by a mutual VC friend, since Devon could help build the platform.

In 2017 Steven left his job at LinkedIn to start the business.

They founded Cameo.

The first order of business was raising some money. Luckily for Steven his boss at LinkedIn was not only a big fan of his but also had deep pockets, so he led Cameo’s $500K seed round. They started with just a few NFL players and the early platform was built as a basic MVP using React Native.

But early traction was strong and so too were the economics of the business, with Cameo taking a 25% cut of all the earnings on the platform.

Building on its early traction the company did two raises in quick success, raising $3.2 million in February 2018 and then $12.5 million in a Series A in November 2018.

User numbers continued to grow, as did revenues and in 2019 the company raised a $50 million Series B at $300 million valuation after doing approximately $22.2 million in gross revenue.

When covid struck in 2020 revenue exploded to $100m and the following year the company raised a $100 million Series C at a valuation north of $1 billion.

Since then though things have not been as rosy for Cameo. They’ve had a few rounds of layoffs and were recently in the news for not being able to afford to pay a $600k find. But I for one hope that Cameo can persevere through this difficult spell. But it does go to prove that in business nothing is guaranteed. Even raising hundreds of millions of dollars is no guarantee of success.

It’s important to stay humble, listen to your customers and keep moving forward.

That’s how you win.

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