BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Online Community Discovery Platform 💬 

Niche, please

Available Domain: Chatlas.com

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: The best places on the internet these days aren’t websites. They’re invite-only group chats and private communities. Discord servers for gamers. Telegram groups for crypto bros. Facebook groups for moms aggressively sharing parenting advice…

In general online communities have become the new hangouts, classrooms, co-working spaces, and confession booths of the digital age. But here’s the problem: they’re nearly impossible to find. These private, high-signal communities are scattered across the internet with no centralized way to discover them. So let’s create a way to do exactly that.

Market Size: Across Discord, Telegram and other platforms there are >100m people globally participating in niche communities daily

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A platform to discover and join the best niche communities across Discord, Telegram, Slack, and more

How it Works:

• Community owners submit details about their group to the platform such as the group name, number of members etc.

• Users can then search for different groups to join by niche (e.g., AI, indie hackers, fashion resale) by platform, free vs paid, number of members, etc. and read real reviews about these groups before joining them

• Users can then apply or join groups instantly through the site depending on the access rules for the group

Go-to-market: Start with 100–200 high-quality groups (manually onboarded or scraped) in a single niche, grow from there

Business Model: Listing model - basic listings are free, premium listings (boosted visibility) are paid

Startup Costs: You could easily build a simple web app here with some AI coding tool like Lovable

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: Get acquired by a marketplace like Product Hunt that want to expand more into the community discovery space

Exit Multiple: Likely in the 4x–8x revenue range

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Egg Shots

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Vote

• ✅ Yes this actually exists

• ❌ Nope you totally made this up

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Breast Pump Tech

• The breast pump market has seen huge innovation in recent times. It’s where hardware, femtech, consumer design, and digital health collide…and the momentum here is very real.

• Smart wearable breast pump devices, like those from Elvie and Willow, are changing the game for new moms out there giving them back time, privacy, control, and confidence.

• They’re not just devices, they’re part of a larger shift toward modern, mom-centric tech that empowers instead of punishes.

Business Ideas

• Breastfeeding Accountability Group Platform: Think “Noom for breastfeeding” - a social platform for daily check-ins and support in the breastfeeding process

• Breast Pump Comparison Tool: A platform which compares different products in this space (Wirecutter style) through user reviews to help new Moms find the best products for their needs

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THE MONEYSHOT

Turning $50k into a $30m/yr business

Sometimes you gotta go all-in to make your dreams come true.

Take this guy who pumped his life savings into his struggling company, only to transform it into a +$30m/yr business.

This is his story.

Nathan Barry doesn’t give up.

He studied marketing at Boise State University, after which he began his career as a freelance web and software designer, focusing mainly on app development.

And with his experience in app development, Nathan started writing and self-publishing eBooks on the subject, something that made him 6 figures a year. But Nathan wanted more. Something repeatable and with long term potential. So he decided to set himself a challenge...

The rules? Nathan would give himself 6 months and a $5k budget to create a $5k per month SaaS business. What was he going to build you ask? He had no idea. But pretty quickly inspiration struck…

Nathan was using Mailchimp at the time and was constantly frustrated. It was built for marketers, not for creators. He saw a gap in the market to build an email marketing tool for bloggers, which is exactly what he did.

And by January 1, 2013 his platform was ready.

He founded ConvertKit (now Kit).

The product attracted some early users, however it was hardly a blowout success. Six months in, he wasn’t at $5k MRR. He was at $2k. And from there revenue just wouldn’t budge. By the end of 2014, after two years in business, MRR had dropped to $1,330. Hardly the rocketship he was hoping for. All the while his eBooks were bringing in $200k+/year.

Nathan found himself at a crossroads. Which is when a friend gave him some sage wisdom that changed his life: “Either shut ConvertKit down or give it everything. What you’re doing now isn’t working.”

It took another 6 months but Nathan eventually decided that splitting his attention wasn’t working. So he shut his eBook business and went all-in on ConvertKit. He invested his entire savings of $50,000 into the company, hired a long-time collaborator as lead developer and a customer-support employee. It was go time.

A few months later though, little had changed.

By May 2015, the company had run out of money, and Nathan was in trouble. But failure wasn’t an option, so Nathan doubled down on direct sales, reaching out personally to potential customers, primarily professional bloggers, and showcasing how ConvertKit could meet their unique needs. And this hands-on approach paid off.

By focusing on a niche market and emphasizing product quality, ConvertKit's growth accelerated rapidly. Within a year, MRR skyrocketed from $2,000 to $100,000. The team expanded, and the platform evolved to what it is today, now called Kit, the email-first operating system for creators.

By 2022, ConvertKit achieved over $33.4 million in annual recurring revenue, solidifying its position in the market and today the platform is still thriving in an ever growing creator economy.

So in the end, while Nathan failed his $5k per month SaaS business challenge, he won in the long run. He lost the battle, but won the war. And that’s the thing about being a founder…it’s a constant battle. Against the market, competitors and even yourself at times.

Which begs the question…are you up to the challenge?

1 - 1 FOUNDER FEEDBACK

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