BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

TikTok for Book Summaries 📖

A novel approach

Available Domain: Storyshorts.io

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: The TikTokification of everything is occurring. Every app from YouTube to Spotify has introduced a “TikTok style” vertical video feed. Apparently even LinkedIn has, although I can’t confirm since I try to avoid the site for obvious reasons…

This is all driven by our dwindling attention spans. Most people these days find it impossible to watch a full movie or read a book (remember those?). But people still want to take the key learnings from books, just in a more modern way. Here’s what we have in mind.

Market Size: The global audiobooks market size was estimated at $6.8 billion in 2023, which is a good proxy for the size of this market

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A mobile-first platform delivering short video summaries of non-fiction books

How it Works:

• A user signs up to the platform and can browse for what book summaries are available on the platform

• When a user clicks into a book they are met with a series of 60 second long vertical videos which breakdown the key learnings from the book. These are broken down by chapter

• The process is gamified with progress bars and streaks to ensure that users create a habit out of using the app

Go-to-market: Start by uploading summaries directly to TikTok, engaging with the “Booktok” community for feedback then build the site

Business Model: Freemium model where users have access to one book per week but need to pay a subscription for full access

Startup Costs: The big initial costs here will be the app and content creation, so you may need to bring on some co-founders to split the work and the cost

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: You could exit to a similar book summary like Blinkist (who themselves were acquired by Go1)

Exit Multiple: Based on recent edtech and content platform exits you could probably sell this for 6-10x revenue in a few years

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Symptom Checker

Ever been sick and started Googling your symptoms? Me too, and it’s a harrowing experience. Tell Google you have the sniffles and a headache and it diagnoses you with something Dr House has never even heard of, like Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Disorder (which is real disease apparently).

Well the Diagknosis app fixes this. You give the app your symptoms and it gives you a reassuringly benign diagnosis that won’t make you worry, even if it’s completely wrong.

So long Dr Google.

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Running Socks

With running becoming more and more popular the running accessories market is booming right now. Take a look at the search volumes for running socks which have increased a lot in recent months. So let’s come up with some ideas in the running socks market.

Business Ideas

• Personalized Running Sock Service: Create a service which takes a highly accurate measurement of your foot and sends you personalized, perfectly fitting socks

• Running Sock Subscription Service: Subscription service delivering socks optimized for different training phases for a marathon prep

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THE MONEYSHOT

How a Travel App Became a $45bn Bank

Small, seemingly simple business ideas often have billion dollar potential hidden inside them.

Take this founder who started a travel app only to have it turn into a $45bn bank.

This is his story.

Nikolay Storonsky is one of the great founders of our time.

He was born in Russia in 1984 and excelled academically as a child. He went on to study physics at Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, earning a Master’s degree. He basically has the resumé of a Bond villain.

In 2004, seeking opportunities in finance, Nik decided to move to London. He began his career as a trader at Lehman Brothers and later worked for Credit Suisse, both of which collapsed after Nik left. Coincidence? I think not.

During his banking career Nik travelled a lot and the more he travelled the more he noticed something. Exchanging currencies was really expensive, mainly because of all of these hidden fees that he was being charged. He wondered if you could create a prepaid card and app which would allow users to convert currencies at interbank rates, therefore not incurring the high fees typical of traditional banks.

He began working on this idea in 2014, investing approximately £300,000 of his own savings into the idea. He also brought Vlad Yatsenko on board as his CTO. Vlad was an accomplished software engineer who worked at UBS, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse. He was the perfect technical partner for Nik. Nik offered Vlad 20% of the company to join him, which he agreed to.

They got to work and by early 2015 they had built a prototype of their product.

They founded Revolut.

By July 2015 they fully launched the app, which quickly gained traction. Over 2,000 users registered within the first few days of launch.

Around this time the pair decided to raise money, since they knew there was huge potential in their idea. So they went out and raised a £1.5m seed round led by Balderton Capital, using this exact pitch deck (the formatting doesn’t hold up that well, sorry Nik).

By early 2016 Revolut had around 300,000 users, primarily driven by word-of-mouth, so to keep up with growth in they raised £6.5 million that year. From there Revolut started rapidly adding features, such as bank transfers, launching a cryptocurrency exchange, stock trading, and countless other features to improve the app. Slowly but surely Revolut turned into Europe’s leading banking app.

In 2017 Revolut passed 1m users and raised a further $66m to fuel further growth and by 2018 they had achieved unicorn status after raising $250 million at a $1.7bn valuation. They went from an idea to a unicorn in 4 years. Unbelievable.

And since then nothing has been able to stop Revolut’s momentum. In 2021 and 2022 the company raised over £1bn in funding as it scaled. And through this growth the company has managed to maintain its intense corporate culture, with Nik reportedly spending 99.5% of his time focused on work-related activities.

In 2023 the company posted its best ever year of performance, generating £1.8 billion in revenue with a net profit of $428m. A secondary share sale that year valued the company at $45bn making it Europe’s most valuable private startup.

And the customers keep on coming. Just this week Revolut passed 50m users, but the company has much loftier goals. Revolut's ambitious plan is to reach 100m daily users, become a top 3 bank in 100 countries, and achieve $100bn in revenue, all by building the best all-in-one finance app on the market. And I for one wouldn’t bet against Nik achieving this goal.

All of which goes to show that ideas, over time, evolve. Revolut began as a pretty simple idea to exchange currencies more cheaply. But over time it has transformed into a behemoth of the tech world, taking on traditional banks in dozens of markets across the world.

In the end you never know how much potential your business idea has. Which is why the only way to find out is to start it.

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