BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Roadmap Leak Detection Platform 🛣️  

Leaks speak

Available Domain: Metamole.ai

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: The whole tech world is talking about the Deel vs Rippling lawsuit right now. The story has everything. Corporate espionage, phones getting flushed down toilets…there’s probably sex in there somewhere too. And we’re all hooked on it…

It’s an incredible story, and while the details are compelling, there’s a bigger lesson here to take away. Businesses will go to extreme lengths to learn more about their competitors. So why not build a platform for them to do so legally? Here’s what we have in mind.

Market Size: The global market for competitive intelligence tools was estimated at $53.2bn in 2023

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A SaaS tool that automatically monitors competitors' digital breadcrumbs to gain competitive intelligence on their roadmap

How it Works:

• A company goes to the website and selects what competitors they want to track

• A crawling engine then continuously scrapes competitors’ websites, subdomains, job listings, robots.txt files, changelogs, sitemaps, and meta tags. Similarly a GitHub Intelligence Layer tracks repos, branches, commit messages, package changes, and forks with keyword-based alerts and finally a job intelligence engine scans job listings for specific roles, teams, or technologies

• All of this information is pulled together and summarized for each competitor which is shared via a real-time dashboard

Go-to-market: Target mid-market and enterprise SaaS companies in highly competitive industries, HR software may be a good place to start based on recent events?

Business Model: Monthly subscription based on how many competitors you track

Startup Costs: This will be a complex build and you’ll need some decent resources behind you to get it built

Competitors: While there are plenty of competitive intelligence platforms out there, none of them cover multi-source roadmap leak detection.

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: Get acquired by a competitive intelligence platform like Crayon or Klue

Exit Multiple: Standard competitive intelligence tools exit for around 5–10x ARR

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Whisky Flavored Toothpicks

• Craving the taste of whisky without the awkward HR meeting? Want to look rugged without carrying a tumbler to your morning standup?

• Well now you can with these Whisky Flavored Toothpicks. Infused with the essence of aged barrel whisky, each toothpick delivers a smoky, smooth, rebellious kick straight to your taste buds

• Get the rich flavor of whisky, minus the judgmental stares from coworkers

• Wine and beer flavors coming soon

Vote

• ✅ Yes this actually exists

• ❌ Nope you totally made this up

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: AI Headshots

• If you’ve been on LinkedIn recently then firstly, I’m sorry you had to be. But secondly you may have noticed that everyone on LinkedIn seems to look…better now?

• That’s because of AI headshots, where people are using platforms to turn random pictures of themselves into flawless headshots.

• AI headshots are a great way to give your profile pic perfect lighting, flawless skin, and just the right amount of jawline enhancement (so I’ve heard…)

• This is a booming business which you could apply to business-people., college graduates and tonnes of other markets.

Business Ideas

• Headshots-as-a-Service for Remote Teams: B2B SaaS for companies to generate consistent, branded team headshots

• LinkedIn Profile Makeover Service: Combine AI headshots, LinkedIn banner design and LinkedIn profile rewriting into one service

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THE MONEYSHOT

The Hidden Lesson in a $3.5m Exit

Selling your company for $3.5m is a great outcome, right? Maybe not.

Because this founder sold his business for $3.5m, but that same company went on to make billions.

This is his story.

Back in 2013 Alon Matas had a stressful life.

At the time he was running a startup called MediaBoost, and as any founder will tell you, running a startup is stressful. So Alon decided to speak to a counsellor to help him to work through this phase of his life. But there was a problem.

Although he had health insurance and financial means, Alon found it extremely difficult to access quality therapy. He found the whole process of finding a counselor expensive, inconvenient, opaque and antiquated. Which is why he decided to do something about it.

So after he sold MediaBoost Alon teamed up with Danny Bragonier and together they decided to build a platform for users to avail of therapy online. By September 2013 they were ready to launch.

They founded Betterhelp.

Back when BetterHelp first launched it looked quite different to how it looks today. BetterHelp initially offered e-counseling via email believe it or not, a far cry from where the platform is today.

However the platform gained traction because it removed many of the traditional barriers to therapy, mainly cost, convenience, and stigma. In fact it gained so much traction that in 2015, just two years after launch, BetterHelp was acquired by Teladoc Health, a major player in virtual healthcare, for $3.5m in cash and a $1m promissory note.

But why did the founders sell so early you ask? Well Teladoc was the dominant player in the space and the founders believed that teaming up with them was BetterHelp’s best option for succeeding in the market. And you know what? They were right.

By June 2016, BetterHelp had over 800 licensed counsellors and over 200,000 users and it has barely slowed down since then. Today it is one of the largest online therapy platforms in the world, with thousands of licensed therapists and millions of users.

In 2023 alone BetterHelp generated over $1bn of revenue and more than $130m of Adjusted EBITDA for Teladoc, making it the most successful B2C online marketplace ever to be built in healthcare.

Which brings us back to the original question…did Alon sell too early? You might look at this and say of course he did. But here’s the thing, by teaming up with Teladoc BetterHelp reached its full potential, something most companies never do. Teladoc’s resources allowed BetterHelp to thrive, with Alon and Danny staying on with the business for many years post-acquisition.

He did what we all need to do…thought about what decision would help the most people, and did that.

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