BUSINESS IDEA #1 | STARTUP

AppSumo for E-commerce 🛍️

Wrestling with e-comm offers

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

Everyone loves a good deal. And cash-strapped founders especially love a good deal.

And back in 2010 Noah Kagan (not to be confused with Noah Kahan) decided to build a business around this. So over a weekend he built and launched AppSumo, a daily deals website for software products. That incredibly simple idea today does more than $80m in revenue per year.

Which got us thinking…

What’s another vertical that you could apply this model too? It’s simple: e-commerce.

Let’s break down what we’re thinking.

2. Solution ✅

The idea: create a platform where online shoppers can discover and buy new e-commerce products at a discount. Think of it as a cross between AppSumo and Product Hunt.

Here’s how it works. E-commerce business owners sign up for the platform and agree to sell a small amount of inventory for one of their products on the platform for a limited time at a significant discount. The platform could even store the inventory, but this would increase costs, so ideally wouldn’t.

Users sign up for the platform and browse these e-commerce products and buy what they want at a discount. They can rate products and leave reviews with the best products rising to the top of the platform’s daily charts. E-commerce founders could use this to get much needed early validation on new SKUs (products) they’re looking to launch or to clear out slower moving inventory.

There could also be a section where users pre-pay for products which are yet to be produced, giving the founders much needed cash upfront to produce the product. These campaigns would be vetted to ensure users don’t get ripped off by opportunistic companies however.

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: start by working with small e-commerce stores looking to shift slow moving stock and grow from there.

Monetisation: Take a commission on sales through the platform.

Startup Costs: You’ll need some dev skills to build a website but that’s about it. You could start this in a few weeks for minimal cost.

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit to a large daily deals platform, such as Groupon. This would fold nicely into their existing product offering.

BUSINESS IDEA #2 | CASH FLOW BUSINESS

Email Updates for Executives 👔

Giving executive summary a new meaning

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

C-suite and high ranking executives hold a special place in businesses. This becomes readily apparent whenever layoffs are conducted.

But being an executive is extremely challenging. Long hours, stress and having to decide what rolex you want to buy all make it an extremely challenging role.

But the toughest part for them is to stay up-to-date of what’s going on both in and outside their organisation.

So let’s create a business to solve this problem.

2. Solution ✅

The idea: create an agency which creates personalised daily update emails for executives in large companies.

Here’s how it works. Companies sign up to the platform and they decide what cadence they want to receive emails at, from daily to monthly. This email includes general news relevant to their business, any macroeconomic or regulatory news they need to be aware, news from their competitors such as new product launches or layoffs or anything else the C-suite need to be kept informed of.

Over time executives could request other areas they want covered in the newsletters and they could become even more personalized if this service was productized.

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: Pick a single company to write this for, add value and expand from there

Monetisation: Monthly subscription fee

Startup Costs: You’ll need a membership to a newsletter platform

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

This doesn’t feel like a business where you’re aiming for a big exit. This would be a highly profitable cash flow business that you should keep forever.

DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Gym Membership App

Summer is just around the corner so we’re all doing our best to get our summer bods ready. But staying motivated to go to the gym is really, really hard.

Well not anymore. Introducing the gym membership app which charges you more if you put on weight while you’re a member.

Sign up and watch the pounds disappear…or your money will.

Coming soon to a gym near you.

BIG DECK ENERGY

Half Baked’s $200k Pre-seed Deck

Year: 2024

Stage: Pre-seed

Amount: $200k

THAT’S RIGHT BABY!

Your boys at Half Baked have managed to raise some money. Sure it’s not exactly a lotto win, but it’s not a bad a start for a small newsletter business. How did we manage to raise the money? One word: growth.

Since we started this newsletter just 3 months ago we’ve gone from 0 → 6.5k subscribers. We’ve been chatting to a few investors who can see the magnitude of the opportunity here and wanted to get involved. So we let them. Oh…and we’re just getting started.

Click the link to see the deck we used to raise the $200k.

THE MONEYSHOT

Making Millions from a Blank Book

Writing a bestseller is the pinnacle of any writer’s career, a dream that most writers aspire to but never achieve.

It’s a long, difficult process and for Sheridan “Shed” Simove, the process was no different.

It took him 39 years of research, learning and observation before he was able to publish his life’s work “What Every Man Think About Apart From Sex”.

So what insights did the book provide into the male psyche? Nothing.

The book was blank. It was 200 blank pages.

The book went viral and people started buying it all over the world as a joke, which propelled the become a best seller.

And with reviews like this, it’s easy to see why.

What a legend.