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Business Ideas #267: Bedtime Stories, Renting...

Plus From $0 to +$10m in Revenue in 3 Years

Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up business ideas more exciting than every single announcement at CES combined (we wish) šŸ˜† 

Hereā€™s what weā€™ve got for you today:

  1. Business IdeašŸ’”: A business idea related to sleepā€¦thatā€™s super exciting

  2. Drunk Business Idea šŸ»: A product to help us reach our health goals in January

  3. Just The Tip šŸ“ˆ: Taking the other side of a well-known trend

  4. The Moneyshot šŸ¤‘: From $0 to +$10m in revenue in 3 years

P.S: If you want to read any previous editions of Half Baked you can on our website and if you were forwarded this email you can subscribe here.

P.P.S: Half Baked is free. Half Baked will always be free. Thatā€™s thanks to the support of our sponsors. Weā€™d love if you could take a moment to check them out.

Letā€™s get into it.

BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Kids Bedtime Story App šŸŒ  

Catching some ZZZ $$$s

Available Domain: Snoozesagas.com

šŸ’” TLDR: An AI-powered, interactive platform for parents to create and share bedtime stories with their kids

1. Problem/Opportunityā“

The Problem/Opportunity: Bedtime stories are an integral part of childhood. Although sometimes parents can let their imaginations run away with them if they decide to make them up.

But we think itā€™s time for bedtime stories to level up and with the power of AI we can build the ultimate bedtime storytelling experience for kids (and parents too of course). Letā€™s do it.

Market Size: In 2023, the children's book market was valued at approximately $12.3 billion

2. Solution āœ…

The Idea: An AI-powered, interactive platform for parents to create and share bedtime stories with their kids

How it Works:

  • Parents and kids ask the platform to create a story for them. They can choose the plot, characters, themes and and so on. Stories can also incorporate real life characters including the child, parents, friends or other family members

  • The stories are then generated, along with accompanying illustrations, and can be read to the child or AI voices can read the story, including using real peopleā€™s voices as generated by AI

  • Parents and children can also co-create stories with their friends too and share them with others on the platform if they choose to do so

  • Stories generated on the platform can also be turned into physical books

Go-to-market: v1 of this could be a GPT wrapper and sold into crĆØches as an interactive tool to help with bedtimes

Business Model: Monthly subscription fee

Startup Costs: You could get this going very cheaply by building a simple product on top of OpenAI, proving out the idea, then expanding the features from there

Competitors: Thereā€™s lots of competition in this space, but leveraging personalization, AI and network effects you could crush the competition here

3. How Youā€™ll Get Rich šŸ’°

Exit Strategy: The goal here would be to exit to a publishing business who could grow the physical book side of the business through their economies of scale

Exit Multiple: You could likely sell here for 6x - 8x revenue

TOGETHER WITH BEEHIIV

We Love Newsletter Businesses

Newsletters are an incredible way to build a tight-knit community of people just like you. Plus whether youā€™re sending a newsletter to 10 people or 1,000,000, the effort is the same, making them incredibly high-margin businesses.

And because our job is to spark ideas, weā€™ve got three killer newsletter concepts you could launch (seriously, theyā€™re up for grabs, maybe itā€™s your time to shine?):

šŸ’” Droids Daily - Morning Brew for robotics. A niche audience thatā€™s ready to geek out and pay up. High-value, untapped potential.

šŸ˜‚ The Meme Times - All the dayā€™s major headlines, told through memes. Broad appeal, viral-worthy, and a totally fresh twist on news.

šŸŽ™ļø The Employee # Newsletter - Interviews with the OG unicorn employees. Packed with insider insights from the earliest employees of billion-dollar startups.

If youā€™re starting one of these (or your own brilliant idea), beehiiv is the platform to grow your newsletter from Day 1.

Start your free trial today and use this link for 20% OFF your first 3 months.

DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Pint Locks

After consuming copious amounts of food and beer over the holidays many of us are trying our best to have a healthy January. Which is why so many people opt to drink less or even no alcohol in January. But as an Irish guy giving up the booze is tantamount to treason in this country, so we need innovative solutions for this to work.

Which is why weā€™re introducing the Pint Lock. This innovative lock covers your pint and whenever you want to take a drink you enter the code to unlock your drink. For extra fun you can place the lock on a friendā€™s drink and not tell them the combination.

Oh and as a general rule if you get so drunk that you canā€™t remember the combinationā€¦take that as a sign to stop drinking.

Truly a drunk business idea.

JUST THE TIP

Trend šŸ“ˆ: Renter Friendly Businesses

Weā€™re all aware of how difficult it is to buy a home these days. Between high house prices and inflation eating away at our savings itā€™s tough out there. But rather than lamenting how difficult it is to buy a house these days instead why not build products and services to serve the all the renters out there? Approximately 34% of the U.S population is currently renting so why not create businesses to support them. Hereā€™s a few we have in mind.

Business Ideas

  • Renter-friendly Decor Business: Create an online store which sells renter friendly wallpaper and other decor so renters can make their properties more homely

  • Rental Community Marketplace: Build a platform where renters in the same building or complex can connect to share purchases of maintenance supplies or bulk items, borrow tools when needed etc

TOGETHER WITH CONFLUENCE VC

Get your news where Silicon Valley gets its news šŸ“°

The best investors need the information that matters, fast.

Thatā€™s why a lot of them (including investors from a16z, Bessemer, Founders Fund, and Sequoia) trust this free newsletter.

Itā€™s a five minute-read every morning, and it gives readers the information they need ASAP so they can spend less time scrolling and more time doing.

THE MONEYSHOT

From $0 to +$10m in Revenue in 3 Years

Incredible businesses can emerge from the simplest of ideas.

Take these college graduates who created a +$10m business by taking an existing product and making it taste better. Itā€™s that simple.

This is their story.

Ben Zaver and Hannah Perez make a great team.

They both attended Minnesota State University, with Ben studying mechanical engineering and Hannah studying marketing. But despite going to the same college the pair didnā€™t actually meet in college. They actually met through work.

The pair both worked for Social Butterfly where Hannah was a full-time employee and Ben was an intern for about three months. They worked together for this brief period in 2019, but then lost touch. Then of courseā€¦Covid hit.

Ben decided to try and make the most of Covid and started working on an idea he had been thinking about. As an active guy Ben was a fan of working out, but he wasnā€™t a fan of protein shakes. He hated the lumpy consistency and the chalky aftertaste. So Ben decided to build something better.

He started experimenting with creating a fruity, more enjoyable protein shake. He started reaching out to manufacturers to create such a product, a process he thought would take a few weeks. In fact it took a full year of reaching out to hundreds of manufacturers until he finally found one that made a product he enjoyed. He spent countless hours researching, conducting blind taste tests with family and friends, and working with food scientists to perfect the product.

Then in the fall of 2020 Ben visited Hannah in Minneapolis with samples of his protein powder for her to try. She loved it and immediately came on board as Benā€™s co-founder. They kept working for another year and finally on October 16, 2021 they were ready to launch.

They founded SEEQ.

They initially launched with just two flavors, Strawberry Splash and Mango Pineapple (which both sound delicious). They set up their HQ in Benā€™s parentā€™s basement where they could store their first shipment of over 4,000 bottles. It wouldnā€™t be a great startup story without a basement would it?

Prior to launch, the pair knew TikTok would be a major key to their marketing strategy. And they were right. They got their first viral video by filming live reactions of people trying their protein drink on the streets of Minneapolis. By staying consistent with their TikTok strategy, they were able to sell out of the first 4,000 units in just one month. In fact Mark Cubanā€™s son discovered SEEQ on TikTok. Small world.

After just 7 months of trading they hit seven figures in sales and moved operations from Ben's parents' basement to an industrial park in Plymouth, Minnesota. Scaling that fast came with challenges though, particularly around inventory management. But of all the problems you could have in business, too much demand is pretty much the best one there is.

In 2023 the brand did >$10m in sales and could scale to 10x that size in the coming years. This is a huge market so the brand has room to grow.

All of which goes to prove that great ideas can be incredibly simple. For Ben all he wanted was to create a better tasting, fruity protein shake. And that simple idea changed his and Hannahā€™s lives forever.

So keep your eyes peeled for everyday items that you want to change, and get to work improving them. Because rememberā€¦nothing tastes better than the taste of success.

1 - 1 FOUNDER FEEDBACK

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