BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

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1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: The election is finally over, meaning we can all breathe a sigh of relief (finally). And if it feels like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders don’t worry, you’re not the only one.

But one of the few bright spots in the election was all of the election ads. Some of them were pretty good, others were cringe af. But arguably the best ads and content came from people outside the campaigns making ads and content for fun. Which got us thinking. Could you create a system to incentivize creators to make ads for brands and get paid in exchange for their work? We think so. Here’s how.

Market Size: In 2023 digital ad spend worldwide was estimated at $602 billion dollars

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A platform where brands put up bounties for creators to make ads and pay for the ads they use

How it Works:

• Creators and brands separately sign up for the platform

• Brands create specs for the ads or content they want created and how much they’re willing to pay for the ads

• Different creators submit their work and the brand can then decide what ad or piece of content they want to use. Brands can also share different submissions on their social media platforms to get fans to vote for the best one

• Once the brand decides what ad they want to use the rights are transferred from the creator to the brand and the payment moves from escrow to the creator

Go-to-market: There are creators on social media who make ads for different brands as content. Get a few of them together to do a contest for just one brand and build from there

Business Model: Platform fee - take 10% of each transaction through the platform

Startup Costs: If you start with a single contest you could prove out this idea by spending $0, then once you’ve validated the idea you can go and build the platform

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: You could exit here to a company that operates at the intersection of creators and big brands, like Creator.co

Exit Multiple: Your exit multiple here is likely to be in the 4x - 10x revenue range based on similar companies in the space

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Butter Stick

Butter is delicious. In fact it’s so delicious that the vault inside Ireland’s Federal Reserve is full of butter, not gold. Fun fact.

But spreading butter on toast can be a real pain. Which is where the butter stick comes in. An improved delivery mechanism for this delicious food.

Think butter, but better.

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Dog Anxiety

Did you know that c.3m dogs in America are on anti-anxiety medication? I certainly didn’t. But it turns out the market for anxiety products for dogs and their owners is huge and there are lots of opportunities which stem from helping anxious pets (and their owners) to manage their mental health.

Business Ideas

• Doggy Daycare for Anxious Dogs: Create a doggy daycare chain specifically for anxious dogs (smaller groups, calmer environment)

• Calm for Dogs: Create an app where dog owners can play different calming sounds specifically for dogs

THE MONEYSHOT

How Two Teen Prodigies Built a $12bn Business

Sometimes, in order to make it big, you have to break a few rules.

Take this duo went from cloning games and hacking iPhones to building a $12bn business.

This is their story.

Henrique Dubugras (L) is a learning machine.

At 12, Henrique started downloading college textbooks and other materials on pso he could learn to program. At age 14 to test his coding skills he hacked together his own version of a popular Korean online roll playing game called Ragnarok. And after a few months he was making “tens of thousands of dollars” from in game purchases. But it all came crashingafter he started getting legal notices about copyright infringement, so his parents made him shut down the game. Killjoys.

But Henrique put the money he earned to good use. He took the money he’d made from the game and launched his first start-up…an app that would help Brazilian teens to navigate the U.S. college application process. It was Henrique’s dream to go to Stanford, so he was solving his own problem. Though the app managed to attract roughly 800,000 users, he was never able to monetize it properly, so he shut it down.

But around this time Henrique met another self-taught Brazilian coding prodigy, Pedro Franceschi, through social media. Pedro had gained some notoriety in Brazil when he was 11 years-old for hacking the iPhone’s software to get Siri to understand Portuguese. In fact his exploits landed him a software engineer job at a Brazilian start-up while still in high school.

The pair met on Twitter, where their early interactions were a little hostile, since they were fighting over which software tools and IDEs were for better for coding. They ended up taking their fight to Skype (remember Skype?) and from there they became best friends. Shortly after they decided to start a company together.

That first start-up they founded was Pagar.me, a Brazilian paymenta company (similar to Stripe). They launched in 2013 and after a few years the company had grown to the point where it had 150 employees and processed over $1.5 billion in transactions. In 2016 they sold the business for “tens of millions” of dollars. But they were just getting started.

Shortly after selling their business both Henrique and Pedro were accepted to Stanford, a lifelong dream for both of them. But pretty quickly they realised it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. They found it hard to go from “adult life” and running a big company to being back to college life.

So after only eight months at Stanford they both dropped out and landed a spot at Y Combinator with plans to launch a new company focused on virtual reality. But pretty quickly they noticed something. They realised that a lot of early stage start-ups were having trouble getting corporate credit cards, despite the fact they had raised huge amounts of VC dollars. So they decided to pivot.

It was January 2017 and the then 20 year-old founders were ready to launch their company.

They founded Brex.

In 2017 they raised around $7.5m to start building their platform.

The company built its entire credit card processing infrastructure from scratch, allowing for greater flexibility and control over the user experience. Brex distinguished itself from other providers by offering higher credit limits without requiring personal guarantees from founders, which was a significant pain point for many entrepreneurs.

In April 2018, before even launching their product, the pair raised a further $47m. They clearly meant business.

After launching Brex publicly in June 2018, the company experienced rapid growth. Within 18 months of its launch, Brex reached $100 million in revenue, an incredible feat for any startup, let alone achieving it in such a short period of time.

From there the company went from strength-to-strength and between October 2018 and May 2022 Brex has raised around $950m to support the growth of the platform, with the most recent valuation of the company sitting around $12.3bn. They’re one of the market leaders today in a highly competitive market, with an estimated 25% of US startups use Brex today.

All of which goes to show that sometimes, particularly while you’re young, you may need to break a few rules to get your early wins (just don’t end up in jail…pro tip).

From there if you find a group of customers with a specific pain point, and fix it, you’ll be well on your way to success.

You’ll achieve the success, and credit, you deserve.

INFLUENCER IDEAS

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