BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Kindle Learning App

Rekindle your memory

Available Domain: Rekindles.io

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: On average people tend to remember just 10% of what they read, which is a pretty shocking statistic. Mainly because I remember approximately 0% of what I read in a book after I finish it.

Amazon’s Kindle product has tried to solve this problem by allowing users to highlight key passages they wish to remember. But since users aren’t reviewing their highlights regularly, it doesn’t help with retention. But what is we created a product to help Kindle readers to revisit their highlights in a fun and engaging way? Here’s how it works. (P.S Shoutout to Nirmal Nahak for sending us the idea. OG subscribers will remember Nirmal from sending us ideas back in the day).

Market Size: Amazon is thought to have sold over 500m Kindles since it was launched, so this is a huge market

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: An AI tool that transforms your Kindle highlights into personalized learning materials to help you actually remember what you read

How it Works:

• A user connects their Kindle account to the app and syncs their highlights

• AI analyzes the highlights and reading patterns and creates custom flashcards, quizzes, and mind maps to test the user on what they learned

• Users are scored based on their performance and revise any areas they have forgotten

• The app also sends smart reminders to review key ideas to ensure they get committed to long term memory based on Ebbinghaus' forgetting curve research

Go-to-market: Partner with book clubs, online courses, and professional development platforms to target knowledge workers and lifelong learners who already read extensively on Kindle.

Business Model: $20/month subscription for unlimited learning materials

Startup Costs: Initial MVP could be built with ~$50k to cover AI development and Kindle integration

Competitors: Readwise does highlight syncing but lacks active learning features. Traditional note-taking apps don't specifically target reading retention.

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: Acquisition by Amazon to enhance Kindle's ecosystem or by learning platforms like Coursera/Udemy

Exit Multiple: Education tech companies typically exit at 4-8x revenue. With strong user engagement and retention metrics, this could be higher.

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Dumb Water

Smartwater is an incredible business. They literally took something we all have access to, slapped a label on it and sold the business to Coca Cola for $4.1bn in 2007. And if Smartwater is a thing then there’s obviously an opportunity to build another type of water.

Which is why we’re introducing Dumb Water, the water brand that’s accessible to people who shouldn’t really buy Smartwater (like me). Smartwater has added electrolytes, Dumb Water has added lead to give it an extra kick.

Expect Coca Cola to acquire this business too.

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Pilates

Believe it or not pilates has been around for nearly 100 years. It was developed in the early 20th century by a guy (that’s right, a guy invented pilates) named Joseph Pilates (and it’s named after him? Who knew). Pilates exercises focus on strengthening the core, improving posture, flexibility, and balance through controlled movements and breathing techniques. And despite being around for so long it’s seen a recent surge in popularity. Check out the skyrocketing demand for pilates socks!

Business Ideas

• Peloton for Pilates: Develop a high-end, smart-pilates machine to sell to high net worth individuals and high-end pilates gyms

• Pilates Socks Business: Start a pilates socks business selling colorful, unique pilates socks

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THE MONEYSHOT

How a Tibetan Monk Founded a +$3bn Business

A Buddhist monk and a burnt-out advertising executive meet. This may sound like the setup to a terrible joke, but it’s not.

It’s actually the beginning of the tale of how these two founders met and went on to build a +$3bn business.

This is their story.

Andy Puddicombe (right) is far from your typical startup founder.

The UK-native went to college at De Montfort University in Leicester, England to study Sports Science, but halfway through his degree he decided to make a radical change to his life. Andy, age 22 at the time, decided to leave university and went to the Himalayas to become a Tibetan Buddhist monk, something he spent ten years doing.

After returning to the UK, Andy established a small private practice in London, teaching meditation to burnt-out professionals. Which is when he met Richard Pierson.

Richard was working in the advertising industry in London, quickly rising through the ranks in his company. But by 2005 he was struggling with work-related stress and anxiety, so he decided to book in an appointment with Andy for meditation training. Meditation changed Rickard’s life. He believed everyone should be meditating.

So in 2010 the pair decided to team up and started a meditation events business, selling tickets to live meditation events. And while the events were effective the pair felt they could have more impact through delivering meditation through a different medium.

So in 2012 they pivoted away from live events and created a mobile app so that people could develop a regular meditation practice. The pair raised initial funding of £50,000 from Richard's father to launch the first version of the app.

They founded Headspace.

Between Andy's growing profile as a meditation guru and he live meditation events Headspace was able to attract initial customers. In fact Headspace’s signature voice that we’ve all heard is actually Andy’s real voice.

The company raised some small outside investment in 2013 and 2014 to help support early growth and to compete with a newly launched meditation app called Calm.

Headspace employed many different growth strategies to grow and compete against Calm. They created high-quality, SEO-optimized content which drove organic traffic to their website and downloads to the app. They also partnered with large corporations to offer the app to their employees and did big brand partnerships with companies like Spotify and Snapchat. And these growth tactics worked.

In 2015 Headspace raised $30m in their Series A round and in 2017 they raised a further $36m to support their growth. By 2017 Headspace had been downloaded more than 11 million times and the app had over 400,000 paying subscribers.

In 2020 the company raised $93 million in a Series C round, which included $53 million in equity and $40 million in debt. This was the last capital raised by the business before the business went through a huge change.

In 2021 Headspace merged with Ginger, a telehealth platform, in a $3bn deal. The merger allowed the creation of a more holistic mental health offering, combining Headspace's meditation and mindfulness content with Ginger's teletherapy, coaching, and psychiatric services. This would help Andy and Richard to realize their dream of introducing meditation to as many people as possible.

Today the business is still thriving and is estimated to do over $200m in revenue per year, which must make Andy the richest monk in the world? Maybe Jay Shetty would have something to say about that.

But the key takeaway here is that there’s no one path to become a successful founder. Andy didn’t go to Stanford, study computer science and start a billion dollar business from his dorm room.

He forged his own completely unique path to success. Which is exactly what you need to do.

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