BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Upwork for AI Agents 🤖  

AI knew you were trouble (when you walked in)

Available Domain: Axisofagents.ai

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: AI is slowly making its way into the workforce. Although there are some things AI can’t do as well as us humans.

AI agents are already starting to takeover our jobs. For the uninitiated an AI agent is a program that autonomously performs specific tasks or achieves defined goals on behalf of users with minimal human intervention. So if we can’t beat AI agents, why not hire them? Or help others to hire them? In a fast changing world we need to be ahead of the curve.

Market Size: The total addressable market (TAM) for AI agents and automation tools is projected to reach $390 billion by 2030, with a CAGR of 38%.

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A platform to discover, connect with and hire AI agents to perform tasks to help out businesses

How it Works:

• AI Agent builders join the platform and list the AI agents they have built, giving a detailed description of what they can do

• Users can then search for agents based on their capabilities, reviews and performance metrics

• These users can then engage the AI agent by using pre-built integrations with common business tools. Over time you could also build out a custom workflow builder (when you have some cash to play with)

• Once a task is completed by the AI agent the customer pays for their services and leaves a review

Go-to-market: Focus on specific vertical (e.g. digital marketing agencies) and partner with 10-20 high-quality AI agent developers to develop agents for them specifically

Business Model: Take a % of each transaction through the platform

Startup Costs: As long as you can find some AI agent developers you can start this relatively cheaply, prove out the concept then raise and build a platform

Competitors: Incumbents like UpWork and Fiverr will struggle to leverage AI agents, since it would cannibalize their existing users (which they wouldn’t like)

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: Exit to a business process automation company like UIPath 

Exit Multiple: A strategic acquirer would be willing to pay 10-15x ARR for this business (or maybe more if current inflated AI multiples hold up)

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Wedding Invite Quizzes

Weddings are magical experiences. Magical, expensive experiences. Which is why you want to keep your guest list as tight as possible. But how do you decide who makes the cut?

Well with the Earn the Invite app you can figure out who deserves to be there on your big day. Get all your guests to complete a quiz about you and your partner and the highest scorers get to attend.

Simple.

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: eSIMs

Ever tried to turn on your phone data in a foreign country only to be hit with crazy high roaming fees? Us too. Which is why eSIMs are becoming more and more popular. An eSIM (embedded SIM) is a digital version of the traditional physical SIM card that's built directly into your device. eSIMs are great since they are convenient and make it far cheaper to use the internet when you’re abroad since you can use local carrier networks instead of crazy roaming charges. So why not build a business in this promising space?

Business Ideas

• Corporate eSIM Management Platform: Create a service that helps companies manage multiple eSIM subscriptions for their traveling employees

• Digital Nomad eSIM Package Service: Build a platform offering curated eSIM packages specifically for digital nomads

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THE MONEYSHOT

From the Brink of Bankruptcy to an IPO in 2 Years

In business pivoting can sometimes be the difference between bankruptcy and making billions of dollars.

Take this founder who, by pivoting, took his business from near-bankruptcy to IPO in just 2 years.

This is his story.

Some founders get lucky, but Andrew Mason created his own luck.

He attended Northwestern University, where he graduated with a degree in music in 2003. And you’re probably thinking “wow”, a successful entrepreneur who didn’t drop out of college? Hold that thought…

In 2007 Andrew decided to get his Master’s degree in Public Policy at the University of Chicago, but after a few months he dropped out (there it is). Why? Because a billionaire made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

In 2006 Andrew had interned at a company called InnerWorkings which was founded by Eric Lefkofsky. The pair struck up a friendship and discussed many different business ideas. Clearly Eric saw something in Andrew because in 2007, with Andrew just a few months into his graduate studies, Eric offered to give him $1m to drop out and start a business. Andrew agreed.

They brainstormed different ideas Andrew could work on and eventually they founded The Point. It was a social action platform that let anyone organize a campaign asking others to give money or take action as a group. But there was a catch. Only once a "tipping point" of people agreed to participate would the action be taken. Andrew launched the site in November 2007, but almost from day one the platform struggled.

The Point wasn't a focused enough idea. Some people were on the site trying to raise money for homeless shelters, others wanted to get a discount on their New York Times subscriptions. With limited users and no business model to speak of The Point was destined for failure. After a year Andrew began the process of giving Eric back his money, until he noticed something.

He noticed that the most effective campaigns on The Point were group purchasing campaigns. So Mason pulled together a list of daily deals and started sharing them on his blog and with his 500 person email list.

The first first deal took place in October 2008, offering two pizzas for the price of one at a local restaurant in Chicago. Twenty people bought the deal.

This was the first ever Groupon.

Mason saw the potential and went all in on the Groupon idea. He began calling hundreds of vendors per day to create daily deals. To get vendors to agree to the deals, Mason set tipping points where the deal would only go through if a certain amount of people bought the Groupon. This was the key insight.

From there Groupon scaled like crazy, mainly through word-of-mouth. By the end of 2009, Groupon had approximately 1.5 million active customers and in 2010 raised $140m over 3 separate funding rounds to fuel their growth, in the process becoming the fastest company to ever hit unicorn status (at the time at least).

Groupon had taken the tech world by storm. So much so that at the end of 2010, Google offered to buyout Groupon for a whopping $6 billion. Groupon's answer? "No thanks."

Instead Groupon decided to go public a year later in November 2011 at a $17.8 billion market cap, marking one of the largest tech IPOs since Google. But from there the company struggled. Big time.

Groupon started entering international markets aggressively, acquiring imitators, and rebranding them. This rapid growth led to operational challenges they weren't prepared for, like accounting challenges that led Groupon had to restate their financials multiple times which is unforgivable for a public company.

The company was burning cash, missing sales numbers and the Board left the blame at Andrew’s door. Which is why in February 2013 Groupon’s employees received this email:

"After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I've decided that I'd like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding - I was fired today. If you're wondering why... you haven't been paying attention."

Quite the swan song.

Since then the company has continued its decline and today the company is valued at just $307m, a far cry from its glory days.

But here’s the thing, without Andrew’s early pivot, he would have achieved none of this. Sure the company has had a fall from grace, but building a billion dollar business is still something very few people have achieved.

So if you’re working on or in a business that you know in your heart of hearts isn’t working, don’t be afraid to think about pivoting.

It could be the best thing you’ll ever do.

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