IDEA #1 | STARTUP

Angel Investment Tracking 💸

A match made in heaven

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

Angel investing can be stupidly lucrative.

Take Peter Thiel’s $500k angel investment in Facebook back in 2004. He got 10.2% of the company at the time. Today, 10.2% of Facebook would be worth $130bn.

It’s one reason why Thiel has more than $5bh in cash sitting in his Roth IRA.

But it can take years for these investments to amount to anything, making it difficult for angel investors to track their investments over time. The most they usually get is an update email every few weeks from the founders (which we think should be automated per a previous idea we had).

For the millions of angel investors around the world this is a big problem…so let’s create a solution for this.

2. Solution ✅

Create a platform which allows angel investors to track their portfolio’s performance automatically over time.

Here’s how it works. Investors sign up to the platform and input details about their investments such as the company name, amount invested etc.. The platform starts by going through the investor’s email inbox pulling out the key data points from updates they receive from investors. It also connects up to the startup’s banking data, accounting data and other software platform the founder wants to give access to in order to give incredibly detailed analytics on the performance of the business month over month.

All of this is data is combined to give the investor great visibility over the performance of the company meaning they can give meaningful feedback to the founder(s).

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: start by outbounding and working with syndicates of angel investors

Monetisation: monthly subscription fee

Startup Costs: You may need to do a small raise here to get the tech up and running.

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Any platform that works with investors and founders would kill to own this. Take AngelList for example.

IDEA #2 | CASH FLOW BUSINESS

Group Mentorship Platform 🕑

Teamwork makes the dream work

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

Bill Gates. Mark Zuckerberg. Warren Buffett. What do these three have in common?

If you said that between them they have more money than most countries do you’d be correct, but that’s not what we’re getting at…

Each of these titans of industry credit much of their success to mentors they had in their careers (Bill had Warren Buffett, Mark Zuckerberg was mentored by Steve Jobs and Buffett was mentored by Ben Graham.) The impact of a mentor in your career or life can be completely transformative.

This is why platforms like Intro or Mentorpass, which allow users to book 1:1 meetings with mentors, are so successful. But there’s a problem. Cost.

It can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a few minutes of someone’s time who you want to speak with. So let’s solve this problem.

2. Solution ✅

Create a platform which allows small groups of people to get mentored by someone successful.

Here’s how it works. Users sign up to the platform and request what mentors they want to do a session with and what they would like to get out of the session. The platform then algorithmically groups people looking to get mentorship from the same person together for similar reasons. These would be small groups of 5 - 10 people to ensure that everyone gets the most out of the session.

The mentor can then take up the offer and complete the call with the group. By charging 5 - 10 people instead of one person everyone pays far less than they would on other platforms, but the mentors get paid much more. It’s a win-win for everyone.

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: start by working with a cohort of mentors in one vertical to test out whether or not this would work, say e-commerce, then expand to more mentors and more verticals.

Monetisation: take a % fee on each session completed

Startup Costs: $0. You could start this business tomorrow.

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

You could potentially exit to a company like Intro but for the strength of the network it may make sense to keep this business.

UNHINGED BUSINESS IDEA

Richness Ranking App

Ever wondered how rich you are compared to your friends? Well wonder no more.

Introducing the richness ranking app. You and all of your friends connect up your bank accounts and see who has the most money and equally importantly…who has the least money.

The minute you find out your dumb friend is far richer than you you’ll work harder than you ever have before.

BIG DECK ENERGY

Trump Media’s SPAC Deck

Year: 2021

Stage: SPAC

Amount: TBC

Back in 2021 The Donald announced that Trump Media, and it’s flagship product Truth Social, was going public via a SPAC (where a private company merges with a publicly traded shell company to go public).

After years of delays just last Friday the shareholders of Digital World Acquisition Corp. approved the deal to merge with Trump’s media business.

Trump owns 58% of the business so will likely receive a windfall of between $2bn and $3bn, which would go some way to helping him with his legal cases.

Here’s the deck they presented back in 2021 as part of the merger here. It’s WILD.

THE MONEYSHOT

Inside Sam Atman’s Biggest Failure

Sam Altman is the it guy right now.

He runs OpenAI, he ran Y Combinator and when Reddit went public last week his 7.6% stake in the company increased by $200m in value.

He’s got a lot going for him, but his first foray into the startup world wasn’t quite as successful.

Back in 2005 the then 19 year old Sam founded Loopt, a service for smartphone users to share their location selectively with other people.

In fact, you can watch Sam pitch it here:

Loopt had more than 5m users and partnerships with every major U.S. mobile phone carrier, raising more than $30m over the years. Its valuation peaked at $175m but ultimately the company started to bleed users over time and in March 2012 the company was acquired by Green Dot Corporation for $43.4 million. Sam also may have committed fraud during his time there. But that’s a story for another day…

Despite this less than spectacular outcome things have turned out ok for him in the end.