BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Morning Brew for Robotics 🤖 

Byte-sized news

Available Domain: Droidsdaily.com

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: It feels like everyone and their Mom has a newsletter these days. And we’ve lost count of the number of AI newsletters that have popped up in the last 12 months or so.

But here’s the thing. While AI is booming robotics is going through a similar golden age, with innovations from the likes of Figure and Boston Dynamics coming out everyday. So in order to keep our eventual robot overlords happy it makes sense for someone to create a badass, daily robotics newsletter.

Market Size: The market for robotics newsletters is gonna be tiny, but that doesn’t matter. We’re not looking to build a billion dollar business here

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A daily newsletter which breaks down all the news in robotics each day

How it Works:

• Set up your newsletter on Beehiiv or Substack

• Design a daily format that readers will enjoy and engage with

• Post newsletters each day (5 - 6 days per week)

• Sell ads to robotics or AI companies in the newsletter to monetize

Go-to-market: start by sharing interesting robotics news on X, Reddit and other socials and push traffic to the newsletter to gain early subs.

Business Model: Advertising model

Startup Costs: A few hundred bucks for a newsletter platform subscription. That’s it.

Competitors: Skillbotics were doing a daily newsletter but shut down in Dec-23

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: Sell to and AI newsletter business, like The Rundown AI, where robotics is a natural adjacency for them

Exit Multiple: Newsletters tend to sell on a per subscriber basis, from $5 - $10 per subscriber or even higher amounts

DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Binge Watching Prevention App

Do you find yourself binging tv shows all too often? Losing out on previous time in front of the tv?

Well not anymore. With our new, innovative app it monitors your viewing habits on Netflix, Prime Video, Disney Plus and so on and stops you mid binge with an ultimatum.

Happy viewing!

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Hyrox is the Newest Fitness Fad

Hyrox has exploded in popularity in recent months. It began in Germany in 2017 but has taken off in recent months and is among the fastest growing sports in the world. It’s a global fitness race which involves running & functional workout stations, where participants run 1km, followed by 1 functional workout station, repeated eight times.

The explosion in its popularity points to the larger megatrend of people looking for different ways to train and stay fit.

Business Ideas:

• The lazy man’s hyrox - a hyrox like challenge but switch out running for drinking beer and functional workouts with easier activities, like mini golf or darts

• Hyrox training app - develop a mobile app that provides Hyrox-specific workout routines, tracking, and performance analysis.

• Hyrox training camps - week long training camps to help people prep for Hyrox

THE MONEYSHOT

How Chess.com went from Bankruptcy to +$100m in Revenue

Chess.com was founded back in 2005 by Erik Allebest and Jay Severson. But this wasn’t Erik’s first rodeo. It was actually his third….

Before starting Chess.com Erik founded a chess-teaching business where he hired college students to teach kids how to play chess. He also started a business which sold chess equipment online called Wholesale Chess.

But Erik wanted more. He wanted to build the MySpace of Chess.

So in 2005 he sold Wholesale Chess for $2.5m to an AOL executive and bought Chess.com out of bankruptcy for $55,000. Erik considered the acquisition a no-brainer investment due to the significance of the domain name. He reached out to his college buddy Jay Severson (right) and they started building the business.

As they built out the product many users requested the ability to play chess online, so they added that feature to the platform. But they really achieved product-market fit after launching the learning product, Chess Mentor, which allowed users to access learning materials by subscription.

By 2010 they hit 1m users, mainly growing through SEO and users simply typing Chess.com into their browsers. The domain was a huge factor in their success.

The business kept growing and by 2017 they hit 20m members. But then, in 2020, a combination of the Queen’s Gambit and Covid led their userbase to 5x almost overnight. They hit 100m users in 2020. And they achieved all of this without a single cent of venture investment.

In 2022 the company received its first outside investment from General Atlantic but the company managed to cross the $100m revenue per year barrier without raising any investment.

An amazing story of some amazing founders building an incredible company!

SATURDAY SHOUTOUTS

Shoutouts of the Week

Shoutout to all of our loyal referrers who have referred at least 5 readers! We salute you 🫡

• Kenny Dorman - Kenny is a 17 year old founder of an emerging Agtech startup. Go get ‘em Kenny!

• Moosa Fayaz - Moosa is cooking up something. “Get ready to taste a great dish” is her message.