IDEA #1 | VENTURE STARTUP

Wearable & Health Data Platform 🏃

You can’t manage what you don’t measure

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

Cold plunge. Sauna. Meditation. Digital detoxing.

You name a health and wellness trend, we’ve tried and failed to adopt it. We just try to get the basics right.

Having said that today people are much more health conscious than ever before, and no market has benefitted from this more than the wearable devices market.

In 2015, just 12% of consumers in the US/UK owned a smartwatch or smart wristband. In 2023, 37% do, with the market for wearables is sitting at a cool $138bn.

Many fitness fanatics use multiple devices for - a whoop to track their sleep, a chest strap to measure their heart rate during exercise and an Apple watch to show how much money they make.

Here’s the problem though…all of these devices and health apps are producing a huge amount of data, but they don’t interact one another, which means key insights about user’s health are being lost.

What if these different data sources could be combined to gain an even better understanding of someone’s health?

2. Solution ✅

Here’s the idea…create a platform which combines health and fitness data from different wearables and apps to create a unified view of your health. The app would act like a health assistant providing unparalleled insights into a person’s health.

The user would download the app then sync any wearable devices or fitness apps they use, such as Strava, MyFitnessPal, Whoop, Garmin, Oura, Fitbits or their Apple Watch. Almost all wearable devices have an API, meaning the data can be pulled from the device.

Once all of the data syncs the app would then analyse sleep, nutrition, workouts, heart rate variability and any other available data to give deeper insights into a person’s health, getting to the why of the metrics rather than just giving the metrics themselves.

For example, the app could recognise how your deep sleep levels (from Whoop) were impacted by the sugar levels in your meal before bed (measured in MyFitnessPal) or the level of effort in your workout that evening (measured by your heart rate monitor). It could tie everything together for the user.

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: Your early adopters here will be high performance athletes and health fanatics. You’ll find these users in online communities, such as longevity subreddits, and they should be targeted to get your early customers.

Monetisation: charge users a monthly subscription fee to use the app.

Startup Costs: you’ll need to raise some funding to get this idea going. You’ll need to build out a technology platform and work with experts in health to make sense of the data and draw insights or correlations between the data, all of which will require funding to achieve.

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

The strength of the product, its defensibility and your ability to exit here all depends on how good the technology is. If you can create a product which provides compelling health insights you could get a great exit to a medtech company or a wearable device manufacturer. Mention that you use AI somewhere to increase that exit multiple…

IDEA #2 | VENTURE STARTUP

AI Podcast Cohosts 🎙️

Pull that sh*t up AI Jamie

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

In a world more divided than ever, there’s one thing we can all agree on…podcasts are awesome.

Today there are around 3 million active podcasts worldwide including “The Pen Addict”, “Just the Zoo of Us” and “Denzel Washington Is The Greatest Actor Of All Time Period” to name a few classics of the format.

But no podcast on earth is more popular than the Joe Rogan Experience, which brings in an estimated 11m listeners per episode.

And right by Joe’s side in every episode is Jamie; producer, cohost and the king of pulling sh*t up.

In fact many successful podcasts have a strong supporting cast in the form of cohosts who can tee up questions, act as fact checkers and can bounce ideas off.

Solo podcasts are fundamentally more monologuey and less interesting to listen to, but not everyone knows someone who can be their perfect cohost.

But what if everyone could have one? That’s the opportunity here.

2. Solution ✅

Here’s the idea…create a platform which generates AI cohosts for podcasters.

Podcasters could build their ideal AI cohost, from what they want them to do on the podcast to what they sound like, even down to how funny or sarcastic they are. Similar to how the robots in Interstellar could have their characteristics reprogrammed whenever needed.

The cohost could act as a full cohost in a podcast, asking questions and giving input, or could just be used for fact checking purposes, whatever works best in the context of the show. The bots could be trained on existing podcast data to understand the style and humour of the podcast.

Beyond this the capabilities of the AI could be expanded to help with off air duties too, where the AI could research upcoming guests and suggest interesting questions to ask based on what hasn’t been asked of them on previous podcast experiences.

This idea falls at the intersection of two hot spaces, AI and podcasting, so we think the window for this opportunity could close pretty soon.

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: Reach out to podcasters to find out if they would be interested in working with an AI cohost and for those who are offer them a free test to ensure your software platform is up to scratch

Monetisation: charge podcasters a monthly subscription fee for using the platform

Startup Costs: you’ll need a solid engineering background or team to get this off the ground, since the AI cohosts need to be very performant before they could be widely used, and you’ll need expertise, time and money to get there.

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Your best bet here would be to exit to a podcast hosting platform, like Podbean or Acast, all of which will be dying to add AI to their product suites. Investors and acquirers are placing a high premium on AI companies, so build fast and exit fast while the market’s still hot.

IDEA #3 | CASH FLOW BUSINESS

Supplement Sample Store 🏋️

Try before you buy

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

2024 is just around the corner and for the coming weeks we’ll all have to deal with hearing and seeing a certain phrase wherever we go…

“New Year, New Me.”

New Years resolutions are a tried and tested way for us to set goals for the year that we won’t achieve, but think we will, every year.

Most people set health or fitness goals which makes them immediately reach for their credit cards. Why? To buy supplements.

Protein powders, pre-workouts, meal replacement shakes…they all get bought in service of our fitness goals. No wonder the supplements market is worth $164bn.

Veteran gym goers do this too, buying all kinds of supplements to help them get more swole. In fact your average gym bro has tried at least 10 different protein shakes, and endured the side effects.

Here’s the problem though…consumers usually buy these products without sampling them first.

So inevitably people end up with tubs and packets of unused supplements because they buy ones that they either don’t like or that don’t agree with their gut, leading to a huge amount of wasted product.

Here’s how we can build a business to solve this.

2. Solution ✅

Here’s the idea…create an eCommerce store where customers can buy sample packs of different brand’s supplements to compare them and find the products that work best for them.

Say a gym goer is looking for a chocolate flavoured protein powder. They could buy a set of 5 - 10 sample packs of different chocolate flavoured protein brands - Optimum Nutrition’s, Legion’s, Ghost’s, whatever brands they want to sample. The customer then tries each of these and buys whatever one they like the most, through an affiliate link of course. Gotta make those monetary gains.

The business would buy different products in bulk cheaply then package them into smaller sample packs to sell individually or as a part of a larger bundle.

Brands themselves like Optimum Nutrition or Myprotein can’t do this because they won’t sell their rival’s product. To make this work a third party needs to step in and do it.

This could also work as a subscription service where customers receive a surprise box of supplements to sample each month. This would be perfect for the gym bro or gal looking to add a bit of variety into their life, as well as generating recurring revenue for the business.

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: the plan here should be to focus on one supplement first, say protein powders, and one vertical, like gym bros, to prove the viability of the business before trying other supplements and going all in on the idea.

Monetisation: charge for sample packs, whether individually, as part of bundles or as a recurring subscription

Startup Costs: costs to get started should be very low, just spin up a store on Shopfy, buy some different protein powders and go from there

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

This could be a great low input cash flow business once it gets off the ground, generating big profits every year. It’s hard to see a path to an exit here, but you never know…

JUST THE TIP

When David Beats Goliath

In 2011, Microsoft famously acquired Skype for $8.5bn.

At the time this was viewed as the end of the video conferencing market. The market leader had just been acquired for billions of dollars and with Microsoft behind them Skype would be unstoppable.

But something else interesting happened in 2011. This man decided to start his own video conferencing company.

And that company was called…drumroll please…SaaSbee. You were expecting it to be Zoom right?

It is. In 2012 SaaSbee changed their name to Zoom.

When Eric Yuan founded Zoom in 2011 Skype had a seemingly unassailable 10 year lead. But as we know, Zoom has been able to dominate this market against all the odds. How?

Through building an easy to use, stable platform and focussing on the core features their customers wanted, coupled with some missteps from Skype, they were able to take Skype’s market share and leave them in the dust.

Zoom built the best product, and the best product won.

So what’s the lesson here?