IDEA #1 | CASH FLOW BUSINESS

Creator Camp 🚸

Serious business, no kidding around

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

Astronaut. Firefighter. Nurse.

As kids, when asked what we wanted to be when we grew up, there were a few classic answers we all gave. Some were a little more creative.

But in 2023, kids don’t want to be astronauts or firefighters…they want to be creators.

Nearly 30% of kids ages 8 - 12 listed “YouTuber” as their top career choice in a survey conducted in 2019 by The Harris Poll and Lego.

So what’s the opportunity here? Summer camps.

Every year 26 million children attend roughly 15,000 day and overnight summer camps across the United States.

Kids love going to camp, once they get over having to leave their computer behind.

There’s a massive opportunity here hiding in plain sight.

2. Solution ✅

Here’s the idea…create a summer camp designed to help kids to learn how to become creators.

The camps would be designed for kids and teenagers, with the content changing depending on how old the kids are.

For a few weeks in the summer kids would come from far and wide to learn the ins and outs of different social media platforms, how they work, what content performs best on each one etc.

The curriculum would be practical, with kids getting hands on and actually making videos that they can show to their friends and family. If kids’ drawings are anything to go by their videos could be very interesting.

Depending on their age kids could learn everything from how to research video ideas to storyboarding, scripting, video editing, camera set up and more.

The camp could also feature case studies of famous creators and guest appearances all to inspire the next generation of creators.

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: While kids are your end customer, Mum and Dad will be footing the bill. The strategy here should be to create 1 camp in 1 location and build excitement in the area. Once you’ve created a strong brand and have a few flagship locations where you run the camp, then franchise this baby out to others who can run camps all over the world.

Monetisation: Charge parents a fee for the camp.

Startup Costs: There will be some startup costs to get this going but here’s the move…get parents to prepay for the camp, get yourself some cash flow up front and use that to pay for any startup costs.

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

This could be an amazing cash flow business. It doesn’t feel like it’s a venture scale startup but nonetheless this could be a hugely profitable business.

IDEA #2 | STARTUP

AI Assistant for Onboarding 🧑‍💻

Another Day, another AI assistant

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

About one in three working Americans switched jobs over the past two years.

And if you’ve ever started a new job you know how it goes.

The anticipation of starting. The excitement of meeting new people. Suddenly realising you know literally nothing. Asking dumb questions while getting huge volumes of information thrown at you.

It’s quite the experience.

But that’s ok, because comprehensive, well thought out onboarding programmes come to the rescue to solve this problem, right?

Wrong.

Onboarding is generally an overwhelming experience and takes far longer than it should. It also takes up a considerable amount of the existing team’s time to get new employees up to speed.

Well we think there’s a huge opportunity to solve this problem , like every other problem in 2023, with AI.

You gotta raise money somehow, right?

2. Solution ✅

Here’s the idea… create AI powered virtual assistants to improve onboarding for employees joining new companies.

The AI would be trained on the company’s own data, processes and procedures. This means it could answer any question the new employee may have, even down to how to use the photocopier, or more important, how to fix it.

It could provide highly specific training to the employee’s role, reducing their ramp time. Employees would also be prompted to complete any mandatory training, with the AI monitoring if an employee is just skipping through the training, even though no one would ever do such a thing…

The AI could also get the employee signed up to the company’s various benefits programs, such as enrolling them in the company’s pension scheme or changing their health insurance plan.

The possibilities here are endless to build a product which would not only improve the onboarding experience, but save companies thousands of hours of training time.

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: This is a big idea, but you need to start small. Build as assistant to improve onboarding for one type of business in one industry, then expand from there.

Monetisation: Charge a fee for every employee onboarded

Startup Costs: Do you know a great AI engineer? Great, then you’re pretty much good to go! If not, you may need to do a bit of networking to find one and get this business going.

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

This is an exit play. This tooling would complement the software packages of lots of big players in the HR software space, such as Workday or Personio. The goal should be to sell to a company like that in the future. Today HR software is fetching 10x - 15x EBITDA multiples.

IDEA #3 | STARTUP

College Essay Platform 🎧

No more varsity blues

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

Every year around 16m wide-eyed students go through the roller coaster experience that is the US college admissions process.

The lows of multiple rejections eventually dissipate when that acceptance letter from your dream school comes through in the mail. Hopefully.

The endless rejection, the joy of finding the one…college applications are a lot like dating, and just like in dating having money certainly helps. Just ask these two ladies.

But of all of the components that comprise the college application process none strikes more fear into the heart of applicants than the essay. It can be the difference between someone getting their dream school, or being forced to go to Rutgers. So their essay needs to be great, which isn’t always the case.

Students could learn a lot from the essays that got others into their dreams schools. Which is why someone needs to build a platform which offers exactly this.

2. Solution ✅

Here’s the idea…create a platform where college students sell the essays they wrote to successfully get into college to students who are applying to colleges.

You would simply reach out to college students looking for a bit of extra cash (what college student isn’t) and offer to buy their essays from them. This would then go into a database which students could query and buy access to read their essay.

Imagine a student looking to get into Stanford CS being able to read essays from students who got into Stanford CS previously. This would be an invaluable resource for them, something they’d be willing to pay for.

Over time you would build up a database of essays from students in different colleges doing different majors, making the platform more and more valuable over time. You could even use this data to power a chatbot to help with the admission process.

There may be some plagiarism issues to contend with if students decide to directly copy essays, but that could be worked out.

For students who don’t want to share their essays, or who want to earn a little extra cash, they could sell their time as “advisors” and give students 1:1 help on their essays.

Everybody wins.

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: Start hitting up college students to build up your essay database. Go to frat parties if you need to, whatever it takes to get those early sign ups. Once you have some essays on the platform start going to students looking to apply to college

Monetisation: Charge students for each essay they download or view. You can pay college students for their essays upfront or give them a cut of each time someone downloads their essay. Break out excel and see which makes more sense. Just remember to save as you go.

Startup Costs: You don’t need much to get this off the ground. Spin up a landing page, maybe a proper website if you’re feeling fancy, and you can get going on this idea.

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

This may not be a venture scale startup, but you could likely get a good exit here to an Edtech company, where exit multiples are in the 15x - 20x EBITDA range. Failing that this should be a high margin, profitable, cash flow business.

JUST THE TIP

Failing 5,126 times to $10 billion

Vacuum cleaner technology went largely unchanged for decades since it was invented in the 20th century.

Until Dyson came along.

Dyson was founded in 1991 by engineer and part-time Waldo impersonator James Dyson.

Dyson revolutionised the industry with the invention of the world's first bagless vacuum cleaner. Since then, the company’s continued to push the boundaries in vacuum cleaner and other consumer products tech.

Here’s the thing though…Dyson went through 5,126 failed prototypes and 15 years of savings to create the first Dyson. On the 5,127th try he finally got it right, and today, he’s worth $10bn.

That level of persistence and self-belief is something we can all learn from.

So what’s the takeaway from Dyson’s story? Don’t give up.

If you’ve had failures in your past remember…you may have just finished your 5,126th prototype and success could be right around the corner.

Keep going.