BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Side Project Tracker ⚒️ 

Less hassle, more hustle

Available Domain: Sidebuilds.com

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: Entrepreneurs have an addiction. And no it’s not the usual addictions we’re all aware of. It’s something far more sinister. Side projects.

The second a founder/builder starts one side project, they almost immediately have another great idea, which inevitably turns into a new side project. And this happens again and again, which creates problems. For one thing even keeping track of these projects is hard, but the worst part is that so many of these projects go unfinished and don’t live up to their full potential. So like Etsy unlocked the value of handmade crafts and Airbnb unlocked the value of unused bedrooms, we need a platform that unlocks the value hidden inside unfinished ideas. Here’s what we’re thinking.

Market Size: It’s safe to assume there are at least 5–10 million active side project builders worldwide who would need this tooling

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A lightweight platform where builders can track, organize, and share their side projects, with the option of selling them in the future

How it Works:

• A user signs up and creates a dashboard to track their side projects.

• Projects are tracked by idea stage, MVP build, domain ownership, revenue, user growth, etc.

• Projects can be kept private or shared with the wider community so users can collaborate with each other on side projects if they choose to

• If a user decides they want to sell a project they can list the product for sale with a single click and the product is put on a marketplace where buyers can browse listed side projects for sale

Go-to-market: Launch via Product Hunt, Indie Hackers and Twitter/X to get in with the build-in-public community

Business Model: Free to track up to 2 projects, paid plans ($8–$20/month) for unlimited projects and ability to list your site for sale. You take a commission on each sale through the platform too.

Startup Costs: You could knock together pretty basic quite cheaply, but as you scale and introduce the marketplace element you’ll likely need to raise

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: Get acquired by a company like Acquire.com (how meta)

Exit Multiple: A SaaS + active marketplace with transaction fees should sell for 6x - 10x revenue

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

The Couch Catcher

• Are you constantly losing things down the back of your couch? Does it forever remain a black hole for keys, coins, and anything else that falls out of your pocket?

• Introducing the Couch Catcher™, the world’s first under-cushion mesh tray engineered to catch your valuables before they’re lost forever.

• You simply place it under your cushions and slide it out whenever you feel like a mini treasure hunt. Amazing.

• The Couch Catcher™. It’s got your back. Kinda.

Vote

• ✅ Shut up and take my money

• ❌ It’s a no from me dawg

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Aging in Place

• The world’s population is “greying” (no matter how much hair dye George Clooney tries to use). And as members of families age a difficult decision has to be made about where that aging should take place.

• Surveys indicate that approximately 75–90% of adults aged 50 and older would prefer to stay in their homes as they age. But this comes at a huge cost.

• The median annual cost for a private room in a U.S. nursing home is around $108,000, whereas 24-hour in-home care can cost approximately $290,000 annually. Both expensive options, but there’s a clear winner, and it’s not the option people want

• As population demographics shift this will become a bigger and bigger issue, and we need founders to step up to solve problems in this space

Business Ideas

• Emergency Response Wearables: Build stylish, discreet wearables (bracelet, necklace, or clip-on) with fall detection, SOS buttons, and GPS tracking for seniors.

• Meal Delivery Service for Specialized Diets: Ready-to-eat meals designed for common senior health conditions, diabetes, hypertension, low-sodium, soft foods, etc.

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THE MONEYSHOT

Landing an 8-Figure Exit at 22

Some founder stories sound completely made up.

Like this guy…who found his co-founder on Tinder, made six figures without building a product, and sold his company for 8 figures at just 22 years old.

This is his story.

Bolun Li is a mega entrepreneur.

He arrived in the US from China at age 13 with barely any english to his name. This made his early years tough, but over time Bolun found his place in the world, developing a passion for entrepreneurship at a young age.

He went on to study economics at Duke which is where Bolun’s hustler spirit started to emerge. While there, like any college student, Bolun was a little light on cash. But he noticed that there were tonnes of pitch competitions happening around the college, most of which came with cash prizes. So he started entering them and it turns out Bolun was pretty good at pitching, so much so that he won multiple competitions and took home $60k in the process. Genius.

By his sophomore year though he decided to actually build the product he had been pitching, an app to help parents and kids manage allowance payments. But there was a problem…Bolun couldn’t code. So he struck up a deal where he gave up 8% of the business for 3,000 development hours with a former Duke student.

A few weeks later he finally he had his product, but when we went out to banks to pitch them with a product in hand…they didn’t want it. This is where the company nearly died. Until Scott Ogle came to the rescue.

Scott, a successful entrepreneur, agreed to give Bolun $100k to keep the business going. Around this time Bolun also decided to pivot, moving to a Duolingo-like platform that rewarded people with "pineapples" for completing financial literacy lessons that could be redeemed for gift cards.

It was 2019 and this was the idea for Zogo.

Having been burned by building a product too early before, Bolun decided to sell the product before a single line of code was written.

He quickly pulled together a Figma prototype of the app and went out to sell the idea to banks. The result? Within three months, Bolun had signed pilot contracts with 12 banks and made $100k+, before building anything.

With the idea validated Bolun decided it was time to build. So he approached someone in his computer science class (Simran Singh) to come on as a co-founder. He then found his second co-founder (Simon Komlos) on…Tinder of all places, where during a date Simon agreed to come and work with Bolun.

The company grew incredibly quickly from there, mainly because of the company’s business model. Since the product integrated with banks they paid for everything…the marketing, the gift cards, any referral scheme bonuses…the lot.

So it’s no surprise that by 2021 Zogo was snapped up by Peak6 in an all-cash, mid 8 figure deal. Bolun was 22 at the time. And no, we’re not jealous at all…

But the thing that Bolun’s story proves is that entrepreneurship is not academic. You can have the best pitch in the world and win all the plaudits and pitch competitions out there. But that doesn’t matter one bit. The only thing that matters is building something that customers actually want.

So whatever you do don’t be an academic entrepreneur. Get out there into the world and play the game on the field.

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