BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

E-commerce Accounting Software 🔢  

Where sales make cents

Available Domain: Cartcount.io

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: Another Black Friday has come and gone. And here’s hoping you managed to get yourself some good deals.

But spare a thought for all the e-commerce businesses out there trying to keep track of all of their Black Friday sales. Most of them use generic accounting software like Quickbooks or Netsuite, but these platforms are not designed for certain areas of e-commerce, like nexus rules for paying sales tax. I predict a rise in verticalized accounting software over the coming years, where providers build bespoke accounting software for different verticals. So let’s build one for e-commerce.

Market Size: The global e-commerce software market was valued at US$4.3bn in 2023

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A verticalized accounting platform designed specifically for e-commerce businesses

How it Works:

• An e-commerce store signs up to the platform and connects up their bank accounts and e-commerce stores (Shopify, Amazon, WooCommerce etc). This data is used to create a chart of accounts for the business with rolling monthly financial statements being created (profit and loss and balance sheet)

• The platform can also be used to generate invoices and bill customers, making reconciliations much easier

• This data is also used to create projections and understand cash flow and cash burn all for financial planning

• The platform also tracks inventory and manages “nexus” tax requirements, where e-commerce businesses must pay sales tax in different States once their revenue in that State goes above a certain threshold

Go-to-market: Sell directly to smaller e-commerce businesses in the first instance, then build from there

Business Model: Monthly subscription fee

Startup Costs: You’ll need to do a raise here given how complex such a software build will be

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: Sell to one of the large accounting software providers like Quickbooks (Intuit) or Netsuite (Oracle)

Exit Multiple: SaaS companies in the fintech space are selling for around 6-8x ARR in the current market

TOGETHER WITH OMNISEND

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Avocado Juice

Seriously, how isn’t this a thing already?

Tropicana…call us if you want to make some bank.

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Glass Straws

In a world more divided than ever before, there’s still one thing that unites us all…our shared hatred of paper straws. Don’t get me wrong I want to save the baby turtles too, but we have to do better than paper straws. Using something which dissolves in liquids to drink liquids is…to put it mildly…dumb. It’s no wonder then that glass straws have become more popular in recent years. And we think there are some pretty big opportunities in this market.

Business Ideas:

• Hemp Straw Business: Create straws from hemp which are much stronger and still environmentally friendly for hotels, bars and restaurants to use

• Glass Straw Replacements for Stanley Cups: Stanley cups are everywhere these days, but they all come with a plastic straw. Why not sell replacement glass straws for them? Better for the environment and no microplastics either

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THE MONEYSHOT

How 3 Pivots Led to a $10m ARR Business

They say that patience is a virtue. But for founders, patience is a requirement.

Take this founder who had to pivot 3 times over 3 years before he got to $10m ARR.

This is his story.

Maxime Barbier has had a wild career.

The French founder, who hails from Paris, spent 7 years working in nightlife, until he decided he wanted to get more out of life. It was the late 2000s and social media was starting to take off in a big way, so much so that Maxime thought he could build a business in the space.

So in 2010 he founded Vertical Station, a media group focused on social media content. At the height of its popularity the site had 18 million subscribers, generated 250 million video views per month and produced around 5,000 videos annually.

Maxime built the company for 7 years until 2017 when the TF1 Group (a French TV Network) took a majority stake in the company for an undisclosed price. They probably paid a few million euro for the business, so it was a great outcome for Maxime. From there Maxime spent another 2 years leading the business until October 2019 when he officially left his company. His earnout was over.

The day after Maxime left the business he expected to feel elated, like a weight had been lifted from his shoulder. But instead Maxime felt a void, an emptiness he couldn’t shake. So he decided to devote some time to figuring out what he wanted to do next.

He began by embarking on a personal challenge to have 100 coffees with 100 strangers. And during this experience he noticed a commonality almost everyone he spoke to shared. They all spoke to Maxime about what their dreams were, but they weren’t pursuing them. They all believed they’d have time to pursue them in the future.

This led Maxime to create a list of 100 dreams he wanted to accomplish and in 2019 he travelled to Australia to start ticking off items on his bucket list. But covid quickly put a stop to his plan. Not only that but Maxime saw the impact that lockdowns had on his friends in France. Like all of the strangers he met for coffees, Maxime too felt he was running out of time to pursue his own dreams. So he set out to create a product to connect people who share similar dreams.

He founded Timeleft.

The initial version of Timeleft launched in April 2020, attracting 5000 shared dreams in just one week. Maxime raised $2m in funding from top VCs and partnered with Adrien de Oliveira who came on as a co-founder to help grow the business. But after some time the early traction started to fizzle away. The product just wasn’t working. So the team embarked on their first pivot.

In 2021 they transformed the site into a dating app based on common dreams. This didn’t work either so they pivoted once again to an experience-based dating platform based in Lisbon. By 2022 and after this second pivot the business had still yet to make even €1 of revenue. But the team refused to give up. They had once last chance make this work, so they tried one last pivot.

In 2022 the team turned Timeleft into a service which matched groups of 5 people together to go to dinners together. A users signs up and every Wednesday dinners are arranged for these strangers to meet and get to know each other. This was Timeleft’s final form.

It began on May 3rd 2022 in Lisbon with 24 participants. But form there this concept quickly gained popularity, expanding to other cities like Porto, Paris, and Marseille. Finally they were getting meaningful traction.

7 months after they pivoted they reach €1m in ARR and in October 2024 they hit a €10m ARR run rate. How big can this business get? Only time will tell. But at least they don’t have to pivot again…

All of which goes to show that in business (like in many areas of life), good things come to those who wait.

It took Timeleft 3 years and multiple pivots to make just €1 in revenue. The key was they never gave up. Sure they changed direction multiple times but they never gave up on their dreams. They kept trying until something worked, which is the attitude you need to have.

So keep trying. You’ll eventually get the results.

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