IDEA #1 | VENTURE STARTUP

Earnings Call Analyzer 📈

Tis the season to make money

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The first earnings season of 2024 is just around the corner.

Analysts will work even more overtime than usual. News networks will decide on the big winners and losers while executives sweat whether they’ll hit the Street’s estimates.

One of the most interesting aspect of earnings season are the earnings calls.

Public companies have an earnings call each quarter. These quarterly calls are where companies share important information about the company like how they’re adopting AI and less important information like revenue, profit, losses etc.

Earnings calls are not restricted to the bankers and the big investors, they can be listened to by anyone.

Earnings calls are a treasure trove of information about a company’s performance, and their share prices can rip or sink based on how an earnings call goes.

But with around 4,000 public companies in the US alone there’s simply too much information for firms to digest.

So let’s build a platform to do just this.

2. Solution ✅

Here’s the idea…create a tool which analyzes earnings call transcripts for insights into the company’s performance and future prospects.

The tool would extract all of the major statistics shared by the company, such as revenue growth, margins, earnings per share and so on which could be summarised and compared to analyst expectations.

Transcripts could also be analysed for the use of certain keywords, both positive and negative.

Sentiment analysis could also be performed on every earnings call in a quarter to give an indication of market sentiment.

As well as being used by analysts the tool could be used by executives as well. The analyzer could be trained on historical earnings calls data, seeing how stock prices reacted to what was said on calls. This data could be used to train executives on how they should frame different data points when sharing them on calls.

This would be an incredibly powerful tool for whoever had access to it.

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: once you’ve built an early prototype work look to smaller financial institutions as your early adopters

Monetisation: charge institutions per seat

Startup Costs: you’d likely need to do a small seed round to raise enough funds to attract the engineering talent needed to create this product and build enough credibility to work with large institutions on Wall Street

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

This could be sold to Bloomberg or another financial data firm. This company would be at the intersection of data, finance and AI meaning you could get a strong exit multiple here.

IDEA #2 | CASH FLOW BUSINESS

Accountability as a Service ✅

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

We all have inspiring dreams. Turning a hobby into a startup, training to run a marathon, getting our hands on pictures of Spiderman.

But unfortunately only a select few actually manage to achieve their goals and dreams. A famous University of Scranton study found that only 8% of people who set goals manage to achieve them.

Loss of motivation, distractions and issues in life means that progress can quickly turn into procrastination.

Too often we struggle to set a clear goal, to design a smart plan, and to stay committed to the daily work that’s required to achieve our goals.

So let’s build a service that keeps people accountable…for money of course.

2. Solution ✅

Here’s the idea…create a cohort-based program which provides frameworks, best practices, coworking time and peer accountability to help people set meaningful goals and achieve them.

The program would take place each quarter and cohorts would be limited to a small number of people, 15 or 20 max, to create a small sense of community and artificial scarcity to drive higher prices.

The program would start with exercises to help participants to set audacious goals for themselves and design smart action plans to achieve them. These actions would be broken down into quarterly, weekly and daily deliverables that feed into one another.

Each cohort would be broken out into smaller sub teams of 3 or 4 people. These would be the accountability teams. These teams would meet once per week to keep everyone honest and would celebrate any big wins, help solve any problems and inspire each other to do better.

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: Spend your time in productivity forums or on Twitter to find people who are goal oriented to get your first cohort.

Monetisation: You could likely charge users between $250 - $750 for the course.

Startup Costs: Startup costs would be tiny. You would use a platform to create the course, like Teachfloor or Disco

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

This could be an incredible cash flow business, with 10s or even hundreds of cohorts each quarter making millions each year.

JUST THE TIP

The Unluckiest Company in History

Yahoo, a company that needs no introduction, will likely go down as one of the unluckiest companies of all time.

Here’s a quick highlight reel:

• 1994: Yahoo founded

• 1996: Yahoo IPOs valued at $848 million

• 1998: Google offers to sell the company to Yahoo for $1m. Yahoo rejects.

• 2000: Yahoo becomes the most valuable company in the world at $128bn

• 2002: Yahoo tries to buy Google for $3bn, Google wants $5bn, Yahoo rejects.

• 2006: Yahoo attempts to buy Facebook for $1bn. At $1.1bn the Board likely would have forced Mark to sell. Yahoo doesn’t increase their bid.

• 2008: Yahoo rejects Microsoft’s $44.6 billion takeover bid.

• 2016: Yahoo sells to Verizon for $4.6bn

Yahoo were in the mix when so many world changing technologies were about to explode, such as search and social media, but through poor decision making they missed the boat on all of them.

So what’s the lesson here?