BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Family Feud Wordle 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦  

Survey says…

Available Domain: Famfeudle.com

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: Everyone loves a good gameshow. And nothing out there beats Family Feud, particularly when you get moments like this…

And do you know what everyone loves too? Daily puzzle games. Think games like Wordle, Worldle and other games that end “dle“. And these games can be real money spinners. Wordle sold for a low-7-figure sum (rumored $3–5m) after just a few months with no monetization. So why not combine this daily game format with the best show out there? Here’s what we have in mind.

Market Size: The casual puzzle game market is estimated at c.$8bn globally

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A daily guessing game where you try to match the most popular answers from a crowd, Family Feud-style

How it Works:

• Each day, players are presented with a Family Feud-style prompt (e.g., “Name something people do when they wake up”).

• Players guess the most popular answers, based on survey-style logic, getting points based on how popular the answer was

• They win if they get above a certain number of points and can have up to 3 wrong guesses

• The answers to the questions are based on real player data that has been submitted previously

Go-to-market: Build a shareable, Wordle-style web app that anyone can use and share. Virality is key here.

Business Model: You could place banner ads on the site to generate some revenue, but getting acquired is the goal here

Startup Costs: You could build this for next to nothing

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: Sell to a daily puzzle company like the New York Times

Exit Multiple: Revenue doesn’t matter here, users do. Wordle was doing $0 yet got acquired for like $3m

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Dark Mode Toilet Paper

• Love dark mode? Do you wish more real life household items came in dark mode?

• Introducing Midnight Wipe™. Gone are the days of bland, white squares of mediocrity. Midnight Wipe™ is here to elevate your bathroom game in a color as dark as your sense of humor.

• Comes in two colors…black, and extra black. Order now!

Vote

• ✅ Yes this actually exists

• ❌ Nope you totally made this up

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Junk Journaling

• Junk journaling. It kinda sounds like the Victorian equivalent of sending a dick pic, but it’s something else entirely…

• At its core, junk journaling is the art of creating a personalized, hand-crafted journal using repurposed materials.

• People often make them from old book pages, magazine clippings, fabric scraps, ticket stubs, and anything else that might otherwise be considered “junk.” One man’s trash is another man’s treasure as they like to say…

Business Ideas

• Digital Junk Journal: A tool to create digital junk journals that mimic the look and feel of a physical junk journal

• Junk Journal Kits: A physical kit send to users to create their own junk journals

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THE MONEYSHOT

Bootstrapping from $0 to $2m ARR

We’ve all pooh-poohed business ideas before because someone out there built something similar. But that doesn’t mean you can’t build something yourself.

Take this duo who entered a highly competitive market, built their own platform and bootstrapped to $2m ARR.

This is their story.

Marie Martens and Filip Minev are not just business partners…they’re life partners.

And back in 2019 the couple, who both have startup and product experience, were working remotely and exploring different SaaS ideas. And one type of tool they used frequently at work were form builders.

Between companies like Google Forms and Typeform, this was a market that was very well-served. However Marie and Filip believed they could build something better. Most form builders were either restrictive or expensive, with companies locking useful features behind paywalls.

So in 2020 they went all in on building a lightweight, Notion-style form builder with a freemium-first model. They started developing the platform in mid-2020, bootstrapping the business from day one.

Finally by September 2020 they were ready to go live.

They launched Tally Forms.

With the platform built their next job was to acquire users.

So Marie and Filip started documenting and sharing their journey transparently on Twitter and their blog, which helped attract early adopters. They also gained traction through Product Hunt, Indie Hackers and word-of-mouth.

In 2021 revenue started growing steadily via optional Tally Pro plan (~$29/month) and they hit 10,000 users and over $10k in MRR.

Over time they added more and more features and Tally turned into a viable alternative to Typeform and Google Forms, businesses infinitely bigger than Tally. This was David taking on Goliath, with David getting in some early blows.

In 2023 Tally reached 100,000+ users and late last year the business hit $2m in ARR with a team of just 5 people. Zero outside investment, fully bootstrapped. Quite the achievement. And you can bet that like any SaaS business they’re only getting started.

Because here’s the thing…too many of us with startup ideas think that once a product exists, there’s no room for anyone else in that market, which simply isn’t true. Once you build a great product, there’s always room for new entrants.

So the next time you have an idea and find out someone’s already built it, think to yourself “how could I make this…but better”.

Because all you need is a tiny sliver of a market and you could be set for life.

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