BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Bilingual Kids Learning Service 📦️  

Tongue ties

Available Domain: Babelbox.com

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: Being bilingual is a superpower. And I mean actually being bilingual, not the bilingual some of us claim on our resumés…

Per the Census Bureau 22% of U.S. families speak a language other than English at home. However for parents it can be difficult to watch their children gradually lose their connection to their native tongue as English dominates their daily lives. So why not build a product to support these parents who want to help their kids to stay connected to their native language? Here’s what we have in mind.

Market Size: There are millions of households across US actively seeking bilingual resources. Market size is not a constraint here.

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A monthly subscription service designed to help parents who want to raise their kids as bilingual

How it Works:

• A parent signs up to the platform and selects how many children they have, what ages they are and what language they want to learn

• Parents can then select from one of two options - the “Heritage Track”, which is for parents passing down their native language to their kids, or the “Learning Track”, which is for non-native speaking parents wanting to raise bilingual kids

• Each month the parent receives a box with age appropriate flashcards, reading materials, exercises and other trinkets for the parent and child to play with together, having fun while the child learns the language

• Learning can be tracked in an accompanying app to ensure that the child is meeting learning milestones

Go-to-market: Focus on a single language (e.g. parents wanting to teach their kids Spanish) and hang around in r/multilingualparenting to find your early customers

Business Model: Monthly subscription fee

Startup Costs: Pulling together early materials could be done relatively cheaply, but as you scale so too will your costs, so be prepared to do a raise here if you start getting traction

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: Get acquired by a similar subscription service like KiwiCo or a language learning platform like Duolingo

Exit Multiple: Based on parenting subscription and education company exits you’re probably getting acquired for 4x - 6x revenue

TOGETHER WITH OMNISEND

Ecommerce in 2025: Smarter, not Harder

In 2024, Omnisend learned a lot from data. And just as 2025 hit our calendars, they were already crunching the numbers on 24 billion emails, 230 million SMS messages, and 413 million push notifications sent in 2024 all to see what actually moved the needle.

Here’s a glimpse at what worked:

📈 Email campaign click-to-conversion rates jumped 27.6%

🛒 Automations (abandoned carts, welcome messages, browse abandonment) drove 87% of all automated orders

💰 1 in 3 people who click an automated message buy something, compared to 1 in 18 for scheduled messages

The main takeaway is that ecommerce in 2024 was less about reinventing the wheel and more about making sure the wheel works. Really, really well.

Want to see the data for yourself? The full report breaks it all down.👇

DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Pre-made Cereal

• Too busy to make your breakfast in the morning? Constantly skipping the so-called most important meal of the day (so we’re told).

• Introducing Milky Munch™ - the world's first pre-mixed cereal and milk combo in a convenient, room-temperature bag. Save yourself time every morning and never have to decide whether to pour the milk or the cereal first (although why people pour the milk first is beyond me)

• Available in three incredible flavors: Capn't Crunch, Special Decay and DesperatO's. Delicious!

• Get down to your local supermarket and secure the bag today.

Vote

• ✅ I legit need this in my life

• ❌ It’s a no from me dawg

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Coffee Alternatives

• Nearly 3 in 4 (73%) of Americans drink coffee every day, which is an incredibly surprising stat, since it means that 27% of Americans get through their day without drinking coffee (somehow)

• However many people want the energy boost of coffee, but don’t like the taste, meaning the market for coffee alternatives has been steadily growing

• Products like MUD\WTR and Neuro have come into the market to meet this need, and we think there are other opportunities in this space

Business Ideas

• Anxiety-friendly Energy Drink: An energy drink with lower caffeine content and added l-theanine to cater to customers who get jitters/caffeine crashes from coffee (from edition #114)

• Coffee Alternative Sampling Store: An e-commerce store where users can take sample servings of different coffee alternatives, trial them, then buy the products they want

THE MONEYSHOT

Turning a Student Loan into a $1.8bn Business

Some founders, despite building incredible companies, manage to fly under the radar.

Take this founder, who you’ve probably never heard of, who turned his student loan into a $1.8bn business that you’ve definitely heard of.

This is his story.

Peter Holten Mühlmann is something of an enigma.

But back in 2007 the Denmark-native was studying at Aarhus University, one of Denmark’s largest colleges. And like so many college students Peter had his own side hustle running a small e-commerce store, back in a time when Shopify had barely been invented.

And as Peter ran his e-commerce store he noticed there was a fundamental trust issue at the heart of his business. People simply didn’t trust his store so he struggled to convert potential buyers into customers. He realized how widespread this problem was when his Mom went to buy a product online, but similarly didn’t trust the merchant she wanted to buy from.

Over time the size of the problem became apparent to Peter so he decided to take on the problem himself.

He used his student loan to fund the business initially, envisioning building a toolbar for customers to install on their computers to see reviews of different e-commerce stores. Over time he moved away from the toolbar idea and settled on creating an online community that allowed customers to post reviews of products and services they have used. But in order to build it he needed more money.

So Peter went to his father’s cousin who agreed to invest 125k into the business, back when Peter had no product, users or revenue. All he had was an idea.

He built the website himself in less than a year and by 2008 he was ready to launch his business, focusing initially on Danish e-commerce businesses.

He founded Trustpilot.

This initial funding lasted for two years until 2009 when the business needed more cash. So in 2009 Peter raised c.$225k from a Danish seed investment fund called Seed Capital. With the business well capitalized Peter set about growing it.

He used the funds to create a paid business product and started selling Trustpilot’s services to business customers so businesses could manage their accounts. Features like feedback stickers helped their customers to collect more reviews directly from products, and the more reviews businesses got the stickier the product became.

Bit-by-bit the users started pouring in, particularly as Trustpilot expanded to wider Europe and eventually the USA.

Over the next few years, as the site continued to scale, The company raised a huge amount of money, from the $13m Series B in 2012 to the $73.5 Series D in 2014.

In total the business raised more than $160m to support its growth until 2021, when Trustpilot went public, listing on the London Stock Exchange. That’s right, that little review website we’ve all used at least once is a publicly traded business.

In 2023 Trustpilot recorded revenues of $176m with ARR growing 21% year-over-year. It’s a shockingly large business and a great example of a gigantic, lucrative business that’s hiding in plain sight.

Which is why it’s so important to be open to working on opportunities that may seem small in the beginning, but could grow into something much more over time.

1 - 1 FOUNDER FEEDBACK

We Need Your Help

We're on a mission to become the world's #1 entrepreneurship newsletter, but to do that we need your help. Got feedback, ideas, or thoughts on what you’d love to see next? This is your chance to help shape Half Baked. Darragh (our Head Baker) is opening up his calendar just for you. Click here to book a 15 minute call.