BUSINESS IDEA #1 | STARTUP

BetterHelp for Aerophobia 🛫

Winging it

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

Flying is magical. You sit in a giant metal tube which sits above the clouds which can transport you to anywhere in the world through incredibly sophisticated technology…and a little duct tape. (I’m guessing this is a Boeing technician)

But for many out there flying is a truly terrifying ordeal. Around 25m adults in the USA suffer from a clinical fear of flying which they never get over, meaning they never get to experience the wonders of the world out there that one can only experience through travel.

So let’s build a platform to help.

2. Solution ✅

Here’s the idea…create a platform to help those with a fear of flying to overcome their fear.

Users sign up to the platform and answer a questionnaire to ascertain the cause of and severity of their fear. They are then matched with a licensed therapist who is trained in aerophobia who they can do sessions with. These therapists can do pre-arranged sessions with users or are available on demand to talk, such as in the airport before a flight.

The platform also contains education materials on the science of flying, data on how safe flying is and so on in order to educate users on how safe flying really is.

Finally, for those with particularly severe aerophobia, they can arrange and attend in person sessions where they use VR to simulate the experience of flying. As the platform gets bigger this equipment can become more and more advanced to better help (see what I did there) those with a fear of flying to overcome it.

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: Start in forums and subreddits where people openly discuss this fear

Monetisation: Monthly subscription fee + upsells for in-person courses

Startup Costs: Getting v1 of this business going would be low cost, but if you’re going to do in person sessions with equipment it will get more expensive

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

This concept of a verticalized mental health solution is likely to be acquired by a bigger, more general player in the market like BetterHelp or Talkspace who wil need to go deeper into certain verticals in order to differentiate their offerings

BUSINESS IDEA #2 | CASH FLOW BUSINESS

HEIC Photo Converter 🌉

A picture perfect idea

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

Elon Musk famously referred to Twitter as a “window into humanity's collective consciousness.”

I guess that’s one way of describing it.

But we always say that Twitter is an incredible source of business ideas. And in particular Steph Smith’s twitter is an amazing source of inspiration.

Take this tweet from the other day…

Like so many of the 1.5bn iPhone users out there Steph simply wants photos taken on her phone in a HEIC format to be converted to a usable file type on her laptop without her having to change them manually.

Sure thing Steph!

2. Solution ✅

Here’s the idea…create an app which automatically transfers photos from an iPhone to your laptop and converts them into PNG files.

Here’s how it works. The user downloads the iPhone app which gets permission to look at the user’s photo albums. The user also pairs the app to their laptop. Then whenever the user takes a photo on their iPhone it is automatically read by the app and transferred to the user’s laptop in a usable format, such as PNG or JPGs.

For people and professionals who constantly need to send and manipulate photos from their phones to their laptops, like creators and influencers, this would be a huge time saver!

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: start by selling the tool in a communities which will benefit most from this product, like creators or photographers, and go from there

Monetisation: charge a single one-time fee to use the product

Startup Costs: Tiny. This is a simple software build

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

This won’t be a venture-backed, massive business but it could be a small but very profitable cash flowing business for whoever starts it

DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Accountability Alarm

Do you constantly hit the snooze button on your alarm?

Well not anymore with AccountabilityAlarm. AccountabilityAlarm will ring everyone in your contacts if you hit the snooze button more than once.

Coming soon to an app store near you.

BIG DECK ENERGY

DoorDash’s $2.4m Seed Pitch (Video)

Year: 2013

Stage: Seed

Amount: $2.4m

Today Doordash, the online food ordering and delivery platform, is a publicly listed company worth more than $50bn.

But back in August 2013, Tony Xu, CEO and co-founder at DoorDash, presented to a room full of investors at YC’s Demo Day in the hopes of securing $1m - $2m of investment.

You can watch the pitch he gave right here on YouTube.

THE MONEYSHOT

Making +$10m Selling Land in Space

With a net worth of $215bn Bernard Arnault, chairman of LVMH, is currently the richest man in the world.

But if you ask Dennis Hope, he'll tell you he's the richest man on Earth, since he’s worth more than $100 trillion. In fact, he'll say he's the richest man in the Solar System. Why? Because, as far as he's concerned, he owns most of it.

In the early 1980s, Hope remembered a tidbit from a political science course he took in college…that the 1967 United Nations Outer Space Treaty said no country could own the moon, but it says nothing about individuals.

He wrote a letter to the United Nations saying the moon was his and asked the group to come up with a legal reason why an individual could not claim ownership of the moon.

He never heard back.

So he started selling plots of land on the moon. Individual, one-acre lots sell for $19.95 ($36.50 after a "lunar tax" and shipping and handling of the deed) and there are discounts for larger plots. He once sold a country-sized plot of land (2.66 million acres) for $250,000.

But Hope’s real estate empire isn’t just limited to just the moon. In fact, Hope owns around 7 trillion acres of land on other planets. For context, the earth is 36.8 billion acres.

Hope has made bank from his real estate empire. Per an article from 2019 he estimated he’s earned around $12m from selling deeds to plots on the moon and other celestial bodies.

What a legend!