BUSINESS IDEA | VENTURE STARTUP

Forward Phone 📞  

Phoning it in

Available Domain: Forwardphones.com

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: Humans have experienced many ages. The Stone Age. The Bronze Age. The Industrial Age. But surely future historians will call the current age we live in “The Smartphone Age”. And the fossils will back that up…

Ultimately we all know we need to reduce our smartphone usage. But we all have the same excuse as to why we can’t put our phones away. Walking away from our phones means cutting ourselves off from something we can’t miss. An emergency phone call. A critical message. It’s time to create a device to finally help us break free from the shackles of our phones. This is it.

Market Size: The minimalist phone market was worth c.$3bn globally in 2024

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A minimalist phone/device that lets you scan your main phone, digitally lock it, and automatically forwards emergency calls and texts to the device.

How it Works:

• A user pairs their smartphone to the Forward Phone using NFC or a QR code. When the phones pair the user’s main phone is digitally locked and cannot be used

• The Forward Phone then activates call forwarding for a whitelisted group of emergency contacts only. During this detox period, the user is only reachable via the Forward Phone (an eSIM mirrors your main phone number in your Forward Phone)

• After a set time or by pairing the phones again, the user regains access to their primary device.

Go-to-market: Set up a landing page and get people to pre-order the phone for a small deposit

Business Model: Sell the hardware for $49 - $59

Startup Costs: You’ll need to do a raise here ($100k+) to prototype the phone and do a production run

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: Get acquired by a consumer electronics brand like the Light Phone

Exit Multiple: Consumer hardware brands typically sell at 2x–5x revenue

TOGETHER WITH SNAPCHAT

The Growth Lever Most Businesses Haven’t Pulled Yet

Every founder knows the feeling. Performance drops. Acquisition costs creep up. You’ve optimized every creative and squeezed every audience.

Snapchat gives you a completely different play.

Most of your competitors are skipping it. But the audience is there. 80% of Snapchatters are over 18. This isn’t just a Gen Z playground anymore. It is a discovery engine. 85% percent of Snapchatters find new products through ads. And they love to shop.

If your brand is already spending big on other platforms and you’re looking for your next big unlock, this is where to look.

Learn more.

DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Potty Car Seat

• Do you have kids? Have they ever turned your car into a urinal because “they couldn’t hold it”?

• Well say goodbye to those backseat disasters and hello to The Rearlief™, the world’s first car seat-potty hybrid.

• Hidden beneath a plush, toddler-friendly cushion lies a discreet, removable potty bowl engineered for those “uh-oh” moments that wait for exactly the wrong time.

• Bottom’s up.

Vote

• ✅ Shut up and take my money

• ❌ It’s a no from me dawg

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Quiet Luxury

• As a wise (and probably rich) man once said, “money talks but wealth whispers”. This is where “quiet luxury” comes in.

• Quiet luxury is a fashion and lifestyle approach that emphasizes understated elegance and high-quality materials over flashy displays of wealth.

• This isn’t new. The ultra-rich have been dressing this way for decades. But it re-entered the spotlight recently as the pendulum swung away from flashy influencer culture.

Business Ideas

• Invite-Only Quiet Luxury Marketplace: Gated community for the 1% who want to shop privately

• The Legacy Wardrobe Builder: A personal shopping service for the children of billionaires.

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It’s everything your go-to-market team needs, without the usual time sink.

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THE MONEYSHOT

From $0 to a $300m Exit in 1 Year

Imagine starting a company and getting acquired for $300m just a year later.

Well that’s exactly what this guy did.

This is his story.

Josh Kopelman is a Silicon Valley icon that you may not know.

And back in 1992, while a sophomore at Wharton studying Entrepreneurial Management and Marketing, he co-founded Infonautics, an “early online information services company” (I have no clue what that means either). But whatever they did they did it really well and Infonautics IPO’d in 1996 when he was still in his early 20s.

By 1998 Josh decided to leave Infonautics, wanting to dive into a newly emerging, fast-growing industry. E-commerce. And while exploring the market Josh noticed that a huge number of college students and book buyers were looking to buy used items online, but that there was no centralized place to list used goods at fixed prices. Sure they could go to eBay, but that relied on auction models which were slow and unpredictable.

What if, Josh thought, there was a marketplace for used books, CDs, and movies where prices were already set. No bidding. And for good measure everything was at least 50% off retail?

He initially bootstrapped the idea while putting together a prototype and a business plan but quickly raised $2 million in seed funding from friends, family, and angel investors.

He founded Half.com. (named for the 50% discount on everything)

Early traction was strong. Within a few months of launch in late 1999, Half.com had over 500,000 SKUs listed and tens of thousands of users. Josh built on this early momentum, raising $4 million in a Series A led by Vanguard Ventures and others.

The business model was very simple. Sellers listed their used items on the platform and shipped them directly to buyers. No holding inventory. Half.com then handled payments and customer support, taking a 15% commission on every sale. But while growth was strong it was nothing compared to the growth after one viral marketing stunt.

In January 2000 Half.com paid the town of Halfway, Oregon $100,000 in cash to officially rename itself “Half.com, Oregon” for one year. The stunt landed them front-page coverage in The Wall Street Journal and a flood of free media attention. It became one of the most iconic dot-com marketing stunts ever.

By June 2000, eBay had seen enough and saw Half.com as a major threat to their business since its fixed-price format was gaining so much traction. So eBay stepped in and acquired Half.com for approximately $300 million in stock, which paved the way for the launch of eBay’s “Buy It Now” feature.

Was the acquisition a little rash? Maybe, since this was around the time of the dot com bubble, but Josh saw his opportunity and took it, netting an amazing deal after just a year of trading.

Are we in a similar AI bubble at the moment? Who knows. But while the pessimists and the optimists fight over that, us opportunists need to be building.

Because there’s never been a better time in history to be a builder than right now.

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