BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Conference Attendance-as-a-Service 🤝  

Seat happens

Available Domain: Altendee.com

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: Conferences are a cornerstone of modern business. They’re where customers are met, deals get done and alliances are forged. And of course they’re strictly business, so it’s just a coincidence that so many conferences happen in Vegas…

Coincidentally we’re looking at attending a conference in Vegas next month, but it’s tricky for us to get to it. Which got us thinking. Why couldn’t we just hire someone locally to attend the conference on our behalf? It’s a time and a money saver for us, and whoever goes gets paid and all the perks that come with conference life. It’s a win-win situation. Here’s how we envisage it.

Market Size: The global corporate event and conference market was valued at $325 billion in 2023

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A service that allows businesses to hire people to attend conferences on their behalf

How it Works:

• The company or client goes to the platform and selects what conferences they need people to attend on their behalf

• They are then matched with local, vetted professionals who can attend these conferences in-person on their behalf

• Before the event the company speaks to the delegate and they discuss exactly what they need to do, ranging from note-taking to networking (lead capture & getting meetings booked) or even full representation

• After the event the client receives a post-event report package with all of the delegate’s findings and the delegate gets paid

Go-to-market: Start with specific B2B industries like SaaS, Web3, Fintech etc. where conferences are hugely popular

Business Model: Customers pay per conference and the delegate gets a cut

Startup Costs: You could launch a scrappy MVP for a few thousand dollars here

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: Acquisition by a tech event platform like Hopin

Exit Multiple: A platform like this could probably sell for 4x–7x revenue

TOGETHER WITH RYSE

Mr Wonderful Lost Out on $400m

Imagine passing on Ring before it got bought for $1.2 billion by Amazon.

That’s exactly what happened to the Sharks, a 67,765% return gone.

Now, there’s another smart home startup making waves, and investors have a chance to get in before the next big potential buyout.

🏠 Meet RYSE, the company revolutionizing smart shades with patented retrofit technology that installs in minutes, controllable via your smartphone or voice.

Here’s why we like it:

🔹 $10M+ in revenue and 200% year-over-year growth

🔹 In 127 Best Buy locations, with Home Depot expansion coming in 2025

🔹 10+ patents protecting its industry-leading technology

🔹 The smart home market is booming, growing at 23% annually

🫴 RYSE’s public offering is now live at just $1.90/share. If you missed out on Ring, this could be your second chance.

DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Monster Decaf

• Monster Energy, we’re here to help. Because despite the $57bn valuation and $7bn revenue per year, you’re clearly leaving billions on the table here…

• Introducing Monster Decaf, the great taste of Monster, but without any of the actual benefits. It’s an energy drink, without the energy. The perfect drink for thrill-seekers who also value a solid 8 hours of sleep.

• Expecting a check in the mail from Monster any day now when they launch this.

Vote

• I need this in my life

• What were you guys smoking when you came up with that?

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Rebrands

• It feels like every few days a huge brand announces a rebrand. Some of them are highly successful, others not so much (I’m looking at you X and Jaguar)

• But rebrands are super interesting, particularly from marketers, who can learn a lot from other company’s rebrands, which is why we think building products in this space could be great

Business Ideas

• Brand Consistency Tracker: A software solution that scans and analyzes a brand’s digital and print materials to verify brand consistency after a large rebrand (from edition #16)

• Rebrands Newsletter: Create a weekly newsletter which shares case studies on the most successful (or unsuccessful) rebrands of all time

TOGETHER WITH KIXIE

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THE MONEYSHOT

Turning 35 Chemicals into a $65m Exit

Sometimes in entrepreneurship, weird wins.

Take this founder who mixed a concoction of 35 chemicals in his kitchen which turned into a $65m exit.

This is his story.

Back in 2012, Rob Rhinehart was living the typical startup founder life.

He was living in a groggy apartment in San Francisco working on a wireless networking startup with his housemates Matt Cauble, John Coogan, and David Renteln. And like all early-stage startups, the founders were short on time and money. So Rob decided to do something pretty drastic…

Rob realised that a massive drain on his time and finances came from food. Buying it. Preparing it. Eating it. Washing up. He wondered if there was another way.

So he started researching human nutrition obsessively. He read biochemistry textbooks, scientific literature and anything else he could find, coming to the conclusion that he only needed to consume around 35 chemical ingredients to live.

So he purchased these raw ingredients, including potassium gluconate, calcium carbonate and maltodextrin, and got them shipped to his apartment. And while the apartment looked more like a meth lab, in fact Rob was cooking up a homemade nutrition shake.

Once he had the recipe down he decided to consume nothing but his new shakes for 30 days to test out how good they were, and the results were shocking. During his experiment he felt alert and energetic, and for good measure his food bill came down from $470 to $155 per month.

Rob blogged about his experiment in the brilliantly titled “How I Stopped Eating Food”, which was shared across forums like Hacker News, and eventually got picked up by the media.

This led to a crowdfunding campaign on CrowdTilt in May 2013 that raised about $1.5 million in preorders, encouraging the four friends to go all-in on this new idea.

They founded Soylent.

Why the name? Rob named it after a food from an old sci-fi novel which was adapted into a movie you’ve probably heard of…Soylent Green. But unlike the movie, Soylent doesn’t contain human remains (as confirmed by Rob).

This groundswell allowed the team to raise a $1.5 million seed round from Andreessen Horowitz in 2013 to start mass producing the product.

Early signs were promising, with the brand developing a cult following of hackers who used the product for the same reasons Rob invented it.

In January 2015, Soylent received $20 million in a Series A funding round, allowing the business to expand beyond just powders to ready-to-drink bottles.

Despite its cult following though, Soylent faced some setbacks and controversies, including customer illness complaints in 2016 and scrutiny from the FDA. Despite these issues though in 2017 the company raised another $50 million in venture funding, the same year Rob stepped down as CEO.

After Rob left the brand shifted its position from a “hacker fuel” to a plant-based, functional beverage brand and started to expand into stores like Target, Kroger, and Walmart. But over time more competitors entered the market like Huel and Ka’Chava which, for lack of a better term, ate Soylent’s lunch.

This eventually led to Soylent getting acquired by Starco Foods in 2023 in a $65m all share deal, maybe not the outcome the founders wanted, but the brand still lives on today. Rob’s crazy experiment worked.

Which goes to prove that oftentimes in startups…weird wins. If you’re willing to push the boat out with crazy ideas and experiments, sometimes they can pay off amazingly well.

So get out there and start experimenting. You never know where it could lead.

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