BUSINESS IDEA | VENTURE STARTUP

Digital Janitor Service 🧹 

Another one bytes the dust

Available Domain: Stacksweeps.com

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: Janitors are the unsung heroes of our modern world. They’re incredibly important to workplaces, hospitals and schools despite what your teacher may have told you about them…

But while janitors are great for cleaning physical spaces, what do we do about digital spaces? If you work in a big company, then you’ll know that shared digital workspaces are a complete nightmare. Between messy Google drives, forgotten Slack channels, endless Notion pages and everything else in between they’re a mess. So why not create a service to help businesses to address this digital clutter problem? Here’s what we have in mind.

Market Size: The global digital workplace cleanup & SaaS management market is worth around $10bn per year

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: An AI-enabled tool and people operations service that helps companies to clean up their digital workspaces

How it Works:

• A company signs up for the service and gets matched with an expert “digital janitors” to organise the cleanup of their system

• They are given access to the company’s systems and the platform uses AI to automatically audit the customer’s workspace (Google Drive, Slack, Notion, etc.) to identify clutter, unused files, outdated docs, broken links, and anything else that can be deleted

• The digital janitor then suggests or auto-executes cleanup tasks like archiving old files, deleting junk files, consolidating folders, and revoking unused permissions.

• This service is completed each quarter and over time you could develop a digital hygiene dashboard which provides an ongoing health score for a company’s digital workspace, with insights, trends, and actionable recommendations for companies

Go-to-market: Start with mid-cap tech companies who have scaled quickly and would likely have built up a lot of digital clutter as they scaled

Business Model: Charge per cleaning project completed

Startup Costs: Between the tooling and needing to hire and train digital janitors, you’ll need at least a few thousand dollars to get this going

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: Acquisition by a SaaS management company (like BetterCloud etc.) looking to expand into AI-powered cleanup.

Exit Multiple: A blended SaaS + human ops platform like this would likely sell for 4x–6x ARR

TOGETHER WITH DEEL

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Smart Toaster

• Are you tired of staring at a blank toaster while your bread browns? Do you find yourself wishing to be entertained during that agonizing two-minute wait?

• Introducing The ToastFlix™, the world's first smart toaster with an integrated HD screen built in.

• With this amazing product you can scroll TikTok or catch up on your favorite tv show (2 minutes of it at least) while you wait for your toast to brown. Because we all need more screens in our lives.

• Serving up sizzling entertainment with every slice.

Vote

• ✅ Yes this actually exists

• ❌ Nope you totally made this up

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Quiet Hiring

• Between hiring freezes, budget cuts and layoffs, companies aren’t hiring as much as they used to. But the work still needs to be done, and businesses still need people to do these jobs. Which is where “quiet hiring” comes in…

• Quiet Hiring is when companies fill talent gaps without hiring new full-time employees, instead opting for contractors, freelancers, or fractional experts.

• This allows organisations to get additional support without increasing headcount. Genius. An an area which presents huge opportunities for us.

Business Ideas

• Private Talent Marketplace: Invite-only platforms where companies can browse fractional/contract-based talent without posting jobs publicly.

• Anonymous Expert Networks: A Slack-like platform where execs and managers can post needs anonymously and get matched with ghost experts.

TOGETHER WITH RYSE

Mr. Wonderful Lost Out on $400 Million…Will You?

The Sharks passed on Ring before it sold for $1.2 billion to Amazon. Now, there’s another smart home company catching investors’ attention.

Meet RYSE, a leader in smart shade automation with $10M+ in revenue, 200% year-over-year growth, and distribution in 127 Best Buy stores (with Home Depot launching in 2025).

RYSE’s patented technology is making waves in a booming market…and you can invest at $1.90/share before their next growth phase.

Find Out More

THE MONEYSHOT

Turning $25k into $310m by Selling Pants

There are a million ways to make a million dollars. All you have to do is find one way that works for you.

Take these guys, who found their path to success by selling pants.

This is their story.

Andy Dunn and Brian Spaly are a great team.

The pair met while they were both pursuing their MBAs at Stanford Graduate School of Business in the mid-2000s, during which time Brian had a big problem in his life he was trying to solve…his pants.

Brian searched far and wide for a brand of pants that fit him well, but to no avail. So he took matters into his own hands and designed a better-fitting pair of men's pants using a more tailored cut and a curved waistband.

He worked on this as a side project during business school creating trousers for himself and his friends, one of which was Andy, who loved the concept. He knew this could be a huge business.

So in Spring 2007 they teamed up and set about starting their business, raising $25k in seed money from friends and family to get their idea off the ground.

They had just started Bonobos.

Initially the operation was small with the duo selling trousers exclusively online from Andy’s apartment in New York. That is until the business started growing…

The company used clever gorilla guerrilla marketing campaigns (get it…gorilla…Bonobos…anyway) as well as personal email outreach to grow, supported by some good old-fashioned word-of-mouth marketing too. And it worked, with the business pretty quickly outgrowing Andy’s apartment.

They decided to take on outside capital to fuel their growth, raising a $375k seed round from angel investors in 2008 and a $3 million Series A in 2009.

By 2010 the business was bringing in $10 million in revenue per year. But despite the rapid growth they knew they still had to solve a huge problem to take this business to the next level.

Many customers still wanted to try on Bonobos’ items before purchasing them, something which isn’t entirely practical for e-commerce businesses for obvious reasons. So they came up with an ingenious solution to the problem.

They started opening up “guideshops” around the US in major cities. These were retail spaces where customers could try on Bonobos’ clothes in a showroom and then the order was shipped to their home once they found the right size. They pioneered this idea and it truly brought the business to the next level.

In 2011 they raised $18.5 million in their Series C funding round and soon after this Nordstrom invested $16.4 million and began selling Bonobos in its stores. This was a rocketship built by a team flying by the seat of their pants.

By 2016 the brand had reached 30+ guideshops and was bringing in over $100 million annually. That’s a lot of pants getting sold around the world.

Finally in 2017, Walmart came forward and offered to acquire Bonobos for $310 million as part of its push to expand into e-commerce, an offer the founders gladly accepted. They had made it.

Now I can’t imagine that Brian thought his custom pants would make him millions, but that’s exactly what happened. This is why you should never underestimate the power of an idea, because in reality you have no idea how big it could get.

The only way to find out just how big an idea could be is to pursue it.

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