BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Stealth Startup Investment Platform 🕵️ 

Stealth x wealth

Available Domain: Quietcapital.io

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: If you’ve ever come up with a killer business idea, your first thought was probably “how do I make sure no one steals this.” Well for this exact reason many founders choose to build their startup in “stealth mode”, which can get confusing on LinkedIn…

But if you’re a stealth startup raising money can be tricky, since investors know nothing about you and your business. So why not build a platform which caters specifically to these startups who want to go out and raise money? This is what we have in mind.

Market Size: Global early-stage startup funding was $254bn in 2023. If you assume that 5% of startups were in stealth mode, your TAM is around $12.8bn

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A platform for stealth startups to engage with and raise money from investors in a confidential way

How it Works:

• A stealth startup signs up to the platform and provides information about their business, such as details about the product, industry, financials, traction etc. and the data is stored in a secure data room

• Investors sign up to the platform where, upon joining, they must sign an NDA. They can then view high level details about different startups they’re looking to invest in and reach out to founders they want to meet

• Founders choose which investors they want to engage with and can reveal more information to these investors as part of the due diligence process

• Investors can create and send term sheets to companies they want to fund on the platform

Go-to-market: Engage with a few stealth startups, help them to raise by outbounding investors on their behalf and if it’s useful productize this service in the form of this product

Business Model: Charge investors a subscription fee to use the platform + take a % of any amount raised on the platform (say 1%)

Startup Costs: You could validate this idea very cheaply but may need some investment to build out the full platform

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: You could exit to a business like Angellist or an investment network like Republic

Exit Multiple: SaaS companies in fintech typically exit at 8-12x revenue

TOGETHER WITH RYSE

Billion Dollar Exits & 20X Returns. Are Investors Sleeping on the Smart Home Space?

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

Push Up Alarm Clock

Do you struggle to get out of bed in the morning? Hit snooze too many times?

Well the Push Up Alarm Clock is here to solve that.

In order to turn the alarm off you have to get out of bed and record yourself doing 20 push-ups. What better way to start the day? Your family will be delighted that you’re getting fit (at the expense of their sleep).

Oh and no cheating, full push ups only!

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Cortisol Detox

Most of us are aware of “digital detoxing” as a concept. Well there’s a new kid on the block called “cortisol detoxing” that’s starting to pick up momentum. The idea is similar to a digital detox, where you take steps to proactively reduce your cortisol levels. But “cortisol detox” is something of a misnomer since your body naturally regulates cortisol levels i.e. there's no need to "detox" it. But as we know the marketers of the world won’t let facts or science get in the way of a good buzzword. So what businesses could you build on top of this trend?

Business Ideas

• Continuous Cortisol Monitors: Work on developing a continuous cortisol monitor (similar to continuous glucose monitors) which track cortisol levels all the time to understand what affects it

• Stress Management Consulting: Offer confidential, evidence-based stress reduction programs for employees at large corporations who are struggling to manage their stress levels

TOGETHER WITH ROKU

It’s Not Too Late to Drive Black Friday Sales

Black Friday marks the most streamed period of the year on Roku, and Roku Ads Manager makes it easy to reach your audience during this all-important kickoff to the holiday season. Roku’s self-serve platform lets you set up, optimize, and measure CTV campaigns in real-time so you can focus on driving results. Plus, innovative ad formats like Action Ads let viewers instantly engage with your brand and even shop directly on-screen with a click of their remote – perfect for holiday shopping.

Drive Black Friday Performance

THE MONEYSHOT

How a Snowboard Led to a $2.65bn Acquisition

Business idea inspiration can come from the most unlikely of places.

Take this founder who was inspired by his snowboard to build a $2.65bn business.

This is his story.

Bastian Lehmann’s childhood dreams never came true.

As a child growing up in Munich, Germany, Bastian dreamed of becoming a movie director. But life had other plans for him. Much bigger plans.

Bastian enrolled in the University of Munich but, like so many founders before him, he dropped out to start his first company (surprise surprise). It was 1999 and his first company was Seven a Day, an attempt at a flash sale site (where only 7 products were available per day in limited quantities), but ultimately the business failed.

For the next few years Bastian bounced around different jobs until 2009 when he had his next big idea, a real-time tweet curation platform that allowed users to collect & organize tweets. He called it Curated.by.

With this idea he managed to get into the AngelPad accelerator and even pitched legendary investor Naval Ravikant on the business. But Naval didn’t want to invest. He didn’t see the potential in this idea, but he saw the potential in Bastian, so he offered him a job at Angellist, which Bastian turned down.

By 2011 Curated.by was running on fumes and Bastian knew he would have to shut the business down soon. But he still felt entrepreneurship was the path for him, he just needed the right idea. Which is when the right idea hit him.

Bastian was an avid surfer and snowboarder and at one stage he was trying to ship his snowboard across Europe. He checked with UPS and FedEx who wanted to charge him a small fortune to do it. So he tried calling a few local courier companies who said they could do it, but that it would take months to deliver.

Bastian knew this was a solvable problem and wondered if you could build a network connecting people who need things delivered with those already making trips? Think ride-sharing, but for items.

He called up two friends he met at AngelPad, Sam Street and Sean Plaice, and the three of them set to work on this new idea.

They spent a few months developing their prototype and in May 2011 they were ready to launch their product.

They had founded Postmates.

With their prototype built the team knew they needed some money to get the business off the ground. A few months after launching they successfully secured $750,000 in funding from some of Uber’s early investors, a fact that would become pretty important nearly a decade later.

Pretty quickly users started downloading and using the app, but not in the way they intended. Despite having founded the business to ship all sorts of items most users were using it for one particular purpose…ordering food.

Initially, the team cancelled these orders, but soon they realized the billion-dollar opportunity staring them in the face so they pivoted to focussing on restaurant deliveries. It worked.

Postmates grew well in its early years. They started off delivering in San Francisco but quickly expanded to new cities like LA and New York. By March 2013, Postmates had delivered over 130,000 items and in February 2014 they raised a $16 million Series B of in a round led by Spark Capital.

By 2018, Postmates had expanded its service to over 550 cities in the United States and that same year they raised $300 million at $1.85 billion valuation. Around this time Postmates were starting to think about an IPO, but just like Bastian’s dreams of becoming a director, the world had other plans.

In 2020 Postmates was approached by Uber who wanted to acquire the business. They came in with an offer that was too good to turn down and in July 2020 Postmates was acquired by Uber for $2.65 billion in an all-stock deal. Here’s hoping the founder’s kept some of their Uber shares since they’ve doubled in value since 2020. What a deal.

All of which goes to show that truly great founders never give up. Sure they’ll shut down businesses, they’ll pivot, they’ll change directions, but they never give up.

Because most of the time success comes down to one thing…not giving up.

1 - 1 FOUNDER FEEDBACK

We Need Your Help

We're on a mission to become the world's #1 entrepreneurship newsletter, but to do that we need your help. Got feedback, ideas, or thoughts on what you’d love to see next? This is your chance to help shape Half Baked. Darragh (our Head Baker) is opening up his calendar just for you. Click here to book a 15 minute call.