BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Startup Benefits Tracker 💰️  

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1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: Starting a company is super hard. 30% of startups fail within three years. 50% don't make it past five years. 70% close down in 10 years. Which is why the life of a founder is not for the faint of heart…

But here’s the thing. There are countless schemes, benefits and incentives out there to help startups succeed. From large companies offering huge discounts on their products to incredibly lucrative tax breaks like QSBS (which most founders have never even heard of), there are all kinds of grants and other supports available to fledgling startups. The problem? They’re incredibly hard to find and time consuming to apply for. So let’s build some software to solve this.

Market Size: There are around 100,000 startups in the US alone (depending on your definition of what constitutes a startup of course). Bottom line is this is a gigantic market!

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A platform which tracks grants, tax incentives and other benefits available to startups based on their location and size

How it Works:

• The startup signs up for the platform and gives details about where they’re based, the type of business, details on the founder, what stage they’re at and so on

• The platform then serves up details on different grants, tax incentives and other benefits they can take advantage of

• It also tracks any new or emerging benefits and notifies the founder if their business is eligible for them

• Over time the platform will evolve to automatically apply for these grants on the startups behalf, saving time and earning them money at the same time

Go-to-market: You could validate this idea by picking a market (say the US) and compiling all of this research and sharing it on Twitter or Reddit. Once you have a following you can then turn it into a SaaS tool.

Business Model: Subscription model

Startup Costs: Assuming you follow the above GTM strategy you could get started here for $0

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: Sell to one of the large accelerators like Techstars

Exit Multiple: You exit multiple here is your classic SaaS business multiple, so 6x - 10x revenue

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Doggy Mouthwash

Dogs are amazing creatures. They’re loving, loyal and a source of comfort in even the darkest times. But for all of the great things about dogs…let’s be honest…they all have terribly bad breath.

Which is where this Doggy Mouthwash comes in. This is the only product on the market that guarantees minty fresh dog breath after only one use.

Not suitable for humans…

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: AI Agents

We’re calling it now. AI Agents, which are programs that automatically perform tasks with limited human input, will be the biggest trend for the next 3 - 5 years. Let’s take an example, like booking flights. You simply tell the AI agent what you want and it goes and books them for you without any direction needed. You know the way everyone says today “there’s an app for that”? Well in the future everyone will say “there’s an AI agent for that”. We’re betting on it.

Business Ideas

• Upwork for AI Agents: A platform to discover, connect with and hire AI agents to perform tasks to help out businesses (from edition #237)

• Stripe for AI Agents: A platform which provides AI Agents with the ability to make payments as part of them executing workflows

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THE MONEYSHOT

How a Newsletter Turned into a $75m Exit

Many people believe that the only way to make serious bank is to build a software business. Not true.

Take these guys who started a simple newsletter which turned into a $75m exit.

This is their story.

Alex Lieberman has always loved business.

His father was a successful businessman, which undoubtedly sparked Alex’s interest in the field. He went on to study business at the University of Michigan, but during his studies Alex had a realisation.

He realised that, while business and finance were exciting fields, traditional business news sources were super boring. They were designed for old school business guys. Dudes with grey hair who wore suits to the office every day. There was no business news source out there that appealed to Alex and his classmates.

So in 2014, during his senior year, Alex decided to do something about it. He began crafting a simple newsletter that summarized key business news, initially titled ”Market Corner”. The newsletter was written in a casual, fun style which resonated with a younger audience. And it particularly resonated with one of its earliest readers…Austin Rief.

Austin was two years below Alex in college and reached out to Alex, offering to help develop the newsletter further.

After a few months word spread about the newsletter and the subscribers started to come in. Slowly but surely the pair realised they were onto something.

So together they decided to rebrand and relaunch the newsletter in March 2015.

They launched Morning Brew.

From there the subscribers kept rolling in. The pair did whatever they could to inform people about the newsletter, like shouting out their newsletter after college classes and getting people to write down their email addresses on sheets of paper.

But despite their early success Morning Brew remained a side hustle for both Alex and Austin. Alex went to work for Morgan Stanley after he graduated and Austin stayed in college. But eventually the momentum became too great and they decided to go all in.

In September 2016 Alex decided to leave his position at Morgan Stanley to focus on Morning Brew full-time. The newsletter had around 45,000 subscribers at the time.

They were building an audience but needed money to fuel their growth. So they went out and raised $750,000 from a group of 28 individual investors to fund the business. They hired two more employees (including Tyler Denk who went on to found beehiiv) and from there growth skyrocketed.

They shot past 100,000 subscribers in 2017 and Austin decided to join the company full-time too (thanks to a fortune cookie believe it or not).

From there they started pumping money into ads which supercharged their growth. In 2018 their list size grew 10x and they passed the sacred 1m subscriber mark. Goals.

From there they started launching more newsletters in other verticals, like Emerging Tech Brew and Retail Brew, leveraging their existing audience to kickstart these brands.

By March 2020 Morning Brew turned 5 years old and passed the 2m subscriber mark. They were killing it, so much so that a big media players wanted a piece of the Morning Brew pie. Insider.

In 2020 Insider Inc, the parent company to Business Insider, approached the founders with an offer to buy a majority stake in Morning Brew. They accepted and closed an all-cash deal that valued the business at $75m. All from a newsletter written by a kid in college.

Since the acquisition Morning Brew has gone from strength-to-strength. The flagship newsletter has over 4m subscribers and they’ve expanded beyond newsletters to become a fully fledged media company encompassing podcasts, merch, games and more.

All of which goes to show that great businesses don’t always require groundbreaking innovation. Business news was hardly a new vertical when Morning Brew started, but a fresh perspective on an old industry was enough to build a killer business.

The business began as a simple side hustle, but blossomed into a media powerhouse.

So if you’re not working on your side hustle right now…trust us…you should be.

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