BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

P2P Clothing Rental Platform 👗 

Swap ‘til you drop

Available Domain: Dormdrobe.com

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: College life can be tough. You’re trying to keep on top of classes, your social life and keep up with the latest fashion trends. But it’s not the easiest to do when you’re not exactly flush with cash…

Therefore many college students turn to Depop or other second hand clothes websites to buy clothes on the cheap, but what about if they only want an outfit for a particular night or occasion? We think P2P lending could solve this exact problem. Here’s how.

Market Size: The global online clothing rental market is expected to reach $3.2 billion by 2027 and there are over 19 million college students in the U.S. alone.

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A peer-to-peer (P2P) clothing rental platform for college students, allowing them to rent outfits from each other

How it Works:

• Students list clothes they are willing to rent out, set rental prices, and upload photos.

• Renters browse available clothing, categorized by size, occasion (formal, casual, party), and price.

• Peer-to-peer transactions happen through the app, with built-in secure payments & deposits.

• Users agree on pickup/drop-off, or campus delivery lockers are used.

• Damage protection & ratings ensure trust and reliability in the community.

Go-to-market: Pilot at 3-5 colleges with high fashion-conscious student populations.

Business Model: Commission model where the company takes 15-20% per transaction.

Startup Costs: You could build an app here for a few thousand dollars. The hard part will be figuring out how to manage returns/damage to items

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: Sell to a company in this space like Depop or Poshmark

Exit Multiple: Similar P2P marketplaces exit at 5x - 10x revenue

TOGETHER WITH RYSE

This smart home company grew 200% year-over-year…

No, it’s not Ring or Nest—it’s RYSE, a leader in smart shade automation, and you can invest for just $1.90 per share.

RYSE’s innovative SmartShades have already transformed how people control their window coverings, bringing automation to homes without the need for expensive replacements. With 10 fully granted patents and a game-changing Amazon court judgment protecting their tech, RYSE is building a moat in a market projected to grow 23% annually.

This year alone, RYSE has seen revenue grow by 200% year over year and expanded into 127 Best Buy stores, with international markets on the horizon. Plus, with partnerships with major retailers like Home Depot and Lowe’s already in the works, they’re just getting started.

Now is your chance to invest in the company disrupting home automation—before they hit their next phase of explosive growth. But don’t wait; this opportunity won’t last long.

Invest today at $1.90 per share

DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Floating Toaster

• Do you enjoy the occasional bath? Looking to make it an even more enjoyable experience?

• Well now you can with this Floating Toaster. Combine your scented candles, bubbles and a glass of wine with a few slices of toast while you soak in your tub

• Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “throwing a toaster in a bathtub”…

Vote

• ✅ Shut up and take my money

• ❌ It’s a no from me dawg

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Content Rewards

• Individuals and businesses are constantly looking for new ways to build their audiences. And a new way that’s emerged to do this is something called “content rewards.”

• Content rewards are very simple. An influencer or brand, through a platform like VidBounty, tell their fans to post short videos across different social platforms and they pay the fan per 1,000 views they generate.

• Take Stake, the online gambling company. You can’t avoid videos on X without a Stake watermark since they pay creators $.05 for every 1,000 views they get on any video with a Stake logo on it on the platform. Super interesting concept

Business Ideas

• Content Rewards for Local Businesses: A VidBounty-style model, but focused on local businesses instead of large brands.

• Short-Form Video as a Service for Startups: A done-for-you service that creates viral, performance-based short-form videos for startups, SaaS companies, and DTC brands that struggle with video content.

TOGETHER WITH THE RUNDOWN AI

Learn AI in 5 minutes a day

What’s the secret to staying ahead of the curve in the world of AI? Information. Luckily, you can join 1,000,000+ early adopters reading The Rundown AI — the free newsletter that makes you smarter on AI with just a 5-minute read per day.

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THE MONEYSHOT

How an Internal Tool Became a $4bn Business

Facebook’s early founding story is the stuff of Silicon Valley (and Hollywood) legend. But while everyone knows what happened to Mark, few people know what happened to the rest of his early team.

Take Facebook’s original CTO who left Facebook to turn an internal tool he built inside the business into a $4bn business.

This is his story.

Dustin Moskovitz is a name you’ve probably heard before.

Dustin studied economics at Harvard University but dropped out in 2004 to work full-time on this little, fledgling startup called Facebook.

At the time Dustin, along with Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, and Chris Hughes, were building Facebook in their Harvard dorm room. Not a bad room to have been put in.

As the site grew Dustin became Facebook’s first CTO and later its VP of Engineering, playing a crucial role in scaling the company’s infrastructure. As the company scaled though Dustin noticed something. As Facebook grew internal communication and project management became increasingly chaotic. So he decided to do something about it.

He worked with Justin Rosenstein, an early Facebook engineer, on the problem, with the pair working together to develop an internal project management tool called Tasks, which helped teams track work more efficiently. Seeing its success, they realized that other companies could benefit from a similar tool.

So in 2008, Dustin and Justin (which is so fun to say) left Facebook to start their new business.

They founded Asana.

Asana started in stealth mode, with a small team refining the concept. They secured a $1.2m seed round in 2009 from Benchmark Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and angel investors like Peter Thiel, Sean Parker, and Ron Conway.

A little while later, before the platform was even live, they secured a Series A of $9m from Benchmark and Andreessen Horowitz.

Finally, in 2011, Asana officially launched to the public with early users including Dropbox, Airbnb, Foursquare, and Uber…not a bad roster of early customers.

In 2013 the business raised a $28M Series B round, led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, to support its ongoing growth.

From there the business kept growing each year. By 2016 the business reached $50m in annual recurring revenue and secured a further $50m in funding that same year.

By 2019 the business surpassed 1m paying customers, including major brands like NASA, Spotify, and Google.

Finally in 2020 Asana went public via direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) at a valuation of $5.5 billion. Today the business is worth around $4.2bn, so while things have slowed a little, it’s still no mean feat to have built a multi-billion dollar business.

For me Dustin’s story proves that sometimes the best way to start a company…isn’t to start a company. Being an early employee at Facebook set Dustin up to become a great founder and it was through his experiences there that he had his big idea.

So if you don’t have that killer business idea just yet, maybe the best thing to do is to join a fast growing startup.

Because your big idea might just emerge from that.

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