BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

AI Mortgage Advisor 🏠

He shoots, he credit scores

Available Domain: Mortgauge.ai

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: Buying a house is really tough right now. And if boomers are to be believed it has nothing to do with the state of the economy. No, our inability to afford a house is driven by our insatiable desire to buy expensive coffees and avocado toast. But even if you’re lucky enough to be able to afford a house in this economy, actually getting a mortgage is a whole other story. Let’s be honest, banks aren’t known for being particularly easy to deal with.

So let’s build an app to make this process a whole lot easier.

Market Size: There are 25m - 30m mortgage applications each year in the USA alone. Around 60% of these result in mortgage originations.

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: An AI-powered app which streamlines the mortgage approval process for homebuyers

How it Works:

• Users sign up and connect their bank accounts to the app via open banking

• The AI analyzes their income and calculates what mortgage they would qualify for

• The app uses AI to give recommendations on what expenses they should cut down on or flags any transactions that would affect their mortgage application

• Users would also have the chance to speak to an on demand mortgage advisor on the app if they decided to

Go-to-market: Search forums for people asking for mortgage advice. That’s your target demographic

Monetisation: Work on an affiliate basis where you share these leads with mortgage brokers or banks

Startup Costs: This is a pretty technical build, but with a few thousand dollars and a technical cofounder you should be able to get this off the ground

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: Many fintechs in the real estate space, like Zillow or Opendoor, would kill to get these customers and this data

Exit Multiple: You’d want to lean on the AI aspect of the business to get valued as a buzzy AI company rather than a fintech, who have struggled with valuations of late

DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Unicorn Founder App

Most founders dream of the moment their company gets valued at $1bn, but very few achieve this milestone.

Until now.

With the unicorn app simply sell us a tiny fraction of one of your company’s shares for $1 and you too can join the elite unicorn club.

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Kidults are the Big Players in the Toy Market

“Kidults” are one of the fastest growing customer segments out there.

In Q1-24 adults bought more toys for themselves than for any other age group for the first time ever, surpassing toys for even the historically-dominant preschooler market.

We’re in the early stages of a wider trend here and many people are gonna make bank from this market in the coming years.

Business Ideas

• 3D Printer for Toys: a product where adults can design and 3D print toys they want

• Kidult Podcast Network: A network of podcasts which cater to the kidult demographic focussed on different toy brands e.g. LEGO, Pokémon etc.

• Adult LEGO Clubs: Start clubs or communities where adults can gather to build and share LEGO creations, host competitions etc.

THE MONEYSHOT

$0 to a +$500m Exit in 4 years

Back in 2019 Alexis Barreyat was working for GoPro.

Meanwhile, Kévin Perreau was the Chief Project Officer at Opteamis.

But these two Frenchmen were growing more and more tired of how fake social media was…so they decided to do something about it.

How did they meet? Don’t know.

Who came up with the idea? No idea.

Why? Because they refuse to speak to the media, which is pretty baller if you ask me.

Regardless this duo decided to build their own, more authentic version of a social media platform.

This app was BeReal.

The app went live on the app store in January 2020 and was by no means an instant hit. By March 2021, a year after launching, the app had just 10,000 users.

Over the next few months though the app started to get some early traction among college students.

Seeing this early traction Andreessen Horowitz and Accel led a $30 million round in the company.

Growth spiked in early 2022 as young people started discussing the app on TikTok and they expanded to the US and UK.

They doubled down on the college market and launched an ambassador program, which turbocharged growth.

But the story doesn’t end there.

Just this week it was announced that BeReal was acquired for €500m by Voodoo, a mobile gaming company.

BeReal is the classic example of an overnight success, years in the making.

They smashed it!

HALF BAKED PICK

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