IDEA #1 | STARTUP

Boring Business Brokerage 🈺

Less Wall Street, more main street

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

In recent years boring businesses have become sexy.

Think laundromats, car washes or landscaping businesses.

Take Codie Sanchez, the “Queen of Boring Businesses” or Nick Huber and his sweaty startup community…they’re part of a growing movement of founders who are foregoing the tech/venture capital scene in favour of building or buying boring, cash flowing businesses.

And today is the best time in history to source, own and operate a boring business. Why?

Because Baby Boomers are getting older. And now, they’re looking to reap the benefits of their financial success. There’s around $30 trillion dollars that will change hands from Baby Boomers to Millennials and Gen Z over the next few years, and by God we need that wealth to get transferred.

This presents an incredible opportunity to build a business in this space (and a boring business at that).

2. Solution ✅

Here’s the idea…create a brokerage which specialises in sourcing and selling boring businesses.

Here’s how it works. Buyers looking to acquire a business simply sign up for the platform and give some criteria for what business they want to buy. The platform uses custom AI agents to help buyers to find, engage with and do initial due diligence with hundreds of prospects each week on behalf of the customer. Sarah Moore, who famously bought eggcartons.com, spent over a year prospecting different businesses before she find the right fit for her. This platform shortens this cycle from months or even years into days or weeks. Buyers pay a subscription fee for access to the platform.

On the other side sellers can list their businesses for sale simply by signing up to the platform and creating a listing for the business. The platform guides the seller through all stages of the sale, from the initial LOI (letter on intent) all the way through to the closing of the deal. The platform charges a fee on any successful sales through the platform.

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: start by focusing on a single niche which people are rolling up, such as laundromats, then expand from there

Monetisation: subscription fee for buyers for access to the platform and success fee from sellers

Startup Costs: low startup costs here, just need to built v1 of the platform then go from there

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit to an acquisitions marketplace such as Acquire.com. You should have a good idea on how to exit after running the platform!

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IDEA #2 | VENTURE STARTUP

Y Combinator for Creators 📹

Y? Because creators are the future

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

You may have noticed the Half Baked team are pretty bullish on creators and creator businesses. Why?

Because being a creator with loyal fans is the ultimate unfair advantage in business. You can sell products to your audience where your cost to acquire a customer is $0. It’s incredible.

I believe Gandhi said it best:

So we thought why not combine two of our favourite things in the world…creators and startup investing, by taking cues from a Silicon Valley institution. Y Combinator.

Stripe. Airbnb. Reddit. Instacart. Coinbase. Dropbox. Some of the most iconic businesses in the Valley were forged in the fires of Y Combinator, giving companies on the program a lot of hype.

Their model is surprisingly simple. Invest a small amount of money in a huge number of startups and see what works. A lot will go to zero, but a few become huge successes.

So why not create the same program for up-and-coming creators who need some funding and a network to get off the ground?

2. Solution ✅

Here’s the idea…create an accelerator for creators which provides them with advice, a community and a small amount of seed funding for them to pursue their career as a creator.

Here’s how it works. Small creators looking to further their career can apply to the program from anywhere in the world. The program is then run twice per year in batches, where a small number of creators are selected to participate for the 3 month accelerator. During the accelerator creators attend workshops to learn from veteran creators, can network with other creators, learn best practices on how to run their business and get access to discounts on software and tooling to help them make the best content possible.

Creators also get an injection of funding, say $50k, which they can use for their business and in exchange for this the accelerator gets ownership in their future earnings, say 5%. Like in Y Combinator most creators won’t earn much, but a few will do incredibly well, making the accelerator a success (in theory anyway…gotta find the best up-and-coming talent).

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: start by working with a tiny number of creators with small capital injections and go from there

Monetisation: Taking ownership in the creator’s future earnings

Startup Costs: You would need to get some funding here to get going given the capital requirements to invest in creators.

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

This feels like a hold forever business rather than an exit opportunity. Why? Because if you have a program with access to creators and their audiences the power of that network would be incredible.

UNHINGED BUSINESS IDEA

Airline Abuse App

We’ve all experienced the devastation of having an airline inexplicably cancel your flight last minute for no apparent reason.

Well now you can get your own back by downloading our airline abuse app.

If your flight gets delayed simply press the button and the app will automatically send angry messages to the airline on your behalf.

BIG DECK ENERGY

SpaceX’s $450m Deck

Year: 2017

Stage: Late Stage

Amount: $450m

SpaceX (officially Space Exploration Technologies Corp.) was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the mission to revolutionize space technology and eventually enable humanity to become a multi-planetary species.

In 2017 the company raised $450m (originally $350m but the added on an extra $100m to the round, no big deal) and around the same time released this pitch deck outlining the company’s vision. Check it out!

THE MONEYSHOT

Accidentally Bootstrapping to $1m ARR

Most founders spend their whole lives trying to build a multi-million dollar business. But very few people in their lives experience this kind of luck, apart from maybe this guy…

That is unless you’re AJ.

AJ is the founder of Carrd, a website builder that enables people or businesses to build one-page landing pages, profiles, portfolios, forms or websites.

He launched the website back in 2016 as a side project with no expectations, but by 2021 the platform had grown to over 3.3m sites and was generating over $1m in ARR. The business was also profitable, had only two full time employees and spent no money on paid advertising, growing completely organically. One of the few examples of “build it and they will come” working in entrepreneurship.

Today the platform is still doing really well, and although we don’t have hard figures it’s certainly grown over the last 3 years.

As far as mistakes go, it’s a pretty good one.

You can read more about AJ’s experience growing the business from an AMA he did on Reddit a few years back.