BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Test Maxxing App 💪  

T’s the season

Available Domain: Testmaxx.com

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: In yesterday’s edition of Half Baked we talked about “testosterone maxxing”, a practice that many men are going through to maximize their testosterone output. Although we want to be careful that people don’t start doing this too young.

But as more and more people think about their T levels we think you could build a great app to capture this market Here’s what we have in mind.

Market Size: The global testosterone testing market is projected to reach $1.7 billion by 2025

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A gamified app which combines blood testing and data to help users to maximize their testosterone levels

How it Works:

• A user downloads the app and enters in details about themselves

• They then receive an at-home testosterone testing kit where they take a saliva or blood sample which is sent off to a lab for testing. The results are shared in the app once they become available.

• The user is then given a testosterone maxxing protocol to follow which includes diet, sleep, training supplements and other protocols. They can connect to fitness wearables to track much of this activity, such as their WHOOP or wearable device

• After 90 days following the protocol the user receives another testing kit and their levels are retested with the results shared

Go-to-market: Transformation based content will be the key here. Offer to pay people to follow this exact process and share their journeys in short videos

Business Model: Monthly subscription service and users pay for the test kits too

Startup Costs: You could create an MVP cheaply by partnering with an at-home testosterone testing company and creating checklists/trackers for users to follow. Then once you prove out the concept build the app and over time build out your own testing infrastructure

Competitors: There are plenty of testosterone apps but combining the testing and protocols into one experience, combined with some great content, means you could crush the compaetition here

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: You could exit here to a large player in the telehealth market, like Hims, or a big health app developer like Flo

Exit Multiple: Healthtech companies typically trade at 6-15x revenue so you could expect an exit in that range

TOGETHER WITH CHOOSE YOUR HORIZON

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

My First Zyn

As of 2024 the global nicotine pouches market is estimated at $3.95 billion. But ehat major demographic are all of the major players (Zyn, Lucy etc.) overlooking in this market. Kids of course.

Well Zyn for kids unlocks this market for these companies, giving them access to a fast growing segment of the market (literally fast growing, have you seen how fast kids grow?). Sure the substance is addictive and the side effects could be harmful, but we think kids and especially their parents will love this.

What could possibly go wrong?

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Ginger Shots

It’s hard to keep up with all of the different health and wellness trends that emerge every few months. Take cold plunge and saunce. No one was talking about these health interventions a few years ago, now some people’s entire personalities revolve around them. But one of the latest health trends doing the rounds (pun very much intended) is taking ginger shots. These highly concentrated ginger juice drinks appear to help with inflammation, aid digestion and overall provide more energy. And these ginger shots and other varieties of drinks are becoming more and more popular these days, meaning there’s plenty of opportunity in this space.

Business Ideas

• Frozen Ginger Shot Cubes: Create a product of frozen ginger shot cubes which customers simply add water to then drink

• Personalized Wellness Shot Service: Create customized blends based on individual health goals

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THE MONEYSHOT

How a Company Named After a Dog Became a $13bn Business

Great business names can be hard to come by.

But this founder kept it simple, naming his business after his dog before it went on to become a $13bn giant.

This is his story.

Mark Pincus is a legendary entrepreneur.

He grew up in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood, showing early entrepreneurial spirit by trading baseball cards and comic books as a kid.

He graduated from Wharton in 1988 summa cum laude (with highest honors) with a degree in economics and got his MBA from Harvard in 1993. Andafter his MBA Mark went on a legendary run of starting businesses. Strap in for this.

He founded FreeLoader, Inc. (a web-based push technology) in 1995, which sold to Individual Inc. for $38m in 1996. He then founded Support.com (tech support software) in 1997 and took it public in 2000. And we’re not done yet. In 2003 he founded Tribe Networks (a website that hosted an online community, or tribe of friends) which was partially acquired by Cisco Systems in 2007. Oh and for good measure during this time Mark was an early investor in Facebook, Napster, Snapchat, Twitter, and other tech companies. But like any great Silicon Valley company Mark was only getting started.

In May of 2007 Facebook opened up to third party developers, allowing anyone to build games for the site. So Mark, mainly as a fun side project, decided to launch a social poker game on the Facebook platform.

With his new idea he hired some developers to create the product and by July 1, 2007 they were ready to launch. The last thing they needed was a name.

So Mark turned to his dog, Zinga, which was a shortened form of the word Enzinga, Swahili for “warrior princess.” He deiced name his company after her.

He founded Zynga.

When Zynga Poker launched it was the first social online poker game, featuring real people with their pictures. It quickly became one of the largest free poker games in the world.

With the success of Zynga poker and the advent of social gaming Mark realised that Zynga could build multiple games. They closed their first round of outside funding in November 2007, raising $10m and then raised a further $32m in 2008. From there the team worked on building different games, but it took them just 6 weeks to build their biggest hit.

In early 2009 a team of nine people inside Zynga over the course of 6 weeks built a farming simulator game for Facebook. That game was called Farmville. It launched on June 19, 2009 and became an immediate viral hit, reaching 1 million DAUs by the end of its first week. It peaked at 32 million DAU.

From there the company built numerous other games including CityVille, FrontierVille, CastleVille, YoVille (I’m noticing a trend here), Cafe World and Mafia Wars. Five of these games surpassed $1 million per day in bookings, and Zynga became the most successful game developer on Facebook’s platform.

In fact Zynga grew its player network to 300 million monthly active users and at its peak on Facebook represented an estimated 20% of Facebook page views, and 19% of Facebook’s 2011 revenue.

Zynga was one of the fastest-growing consumer internet companies in Silicon Valley history, reaching $1 billion in annual bookings, 1 billion installs and 3,000 employees in just four years. So in December 2011 the company went public at a $7bn valuation.

But it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. In May 2012, Facebook changed its homepage navigation to favor newly installed apps. As a result of these changes, Zynga lost a significant amount of its players, which marked the beginning of a long decline in web gaming on Facebook. So Zynga moved its focus to developing and growing its mobile gaming business.

From 2012 to 2015 the company struggled but through a series of acquisitions, bringing in a world-class management team and doubling down on “forever franchises” Zynga became one of the fastest growing public gaming companies over the next few years.

Eventually in 2022 Take-two acquired Zynga for $12.7bn, enough money for Mark to buy Zinga as many dog treats as she could ever want.

Mark’s story is incredible, but I think the big takeaway is that a business is not a lifelong commitment. Many would-be entrepreneurs tie themselves up in knots waiting to start the perfect business at the perfect time with an idea they can work on for decades. But Mark started three companies before Zynga and while all of them were very successful they ended up being basically a footnote in his story.

So remember this. Your first business doesn’t have to be world-changing. It just needs to start you on the path to being a founder, and who knows where that will take you.

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