IDEA #1 | STARTUP

Marketplace for Newsletters 📰

Out with the old, in with the new…sletters

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

Instagram has 500m daily active users. Tiktok has 780m. Facebook? They have 2 billion daily users.

The scale of these platforms is vast, but what if I told you there’s a platform which has more daily users than all of these social media giants combined?

There is…email.

There are 4 billion daily email users around the world, which explains all the spam in our inboxes.

But with increasing costs to advertise on social media platforms, coupled with reduced effectiveness due to updates like iOS 14, newsletters have started to make a comeback.

Recently large corporations have started acquiring email newsletters to build out the media arms of their businesses. For example in 2021 Hubspot acquired The Hustle, a daily business newsletter. Just this week Robinhood acquired Chartr, a media company that specializes in creating newsletters, having already acquired a newsletter called MarketSnacks back in 2019.

Increased M&A activity in this space means there’s a massive opportunity here.

2. Solution ✅

Here’s the idea…create a marketplace for buying and selling newsletters. The marketplace would streamline the process for both buyers and sellers.

Sellers would list the newsletter(s) they want to sell on the platform, with metrics about the newsletter’s performance coming directly from newsletter platforms themselves through their APIs. Sellers would also have access to experts to help them through the listing and selling process.

Buyers on the platform could browse thousands of vetted newsletters to find one that fits their criteria and make offers to buy newsletters right on the platform. Similarly they would have access to experts to guide them through the due diligence and closing process.

Newsletters would be valued by the platform using a mixture of industry standard valuation methods, such as based on the number of subscribers or financial metrics, and/or comparable transactions on the platform.

You could offer potential sellers a free valuation of their newsletter to entice them to sign up to the platform. Who doesn’t want to know how much their business is worth?

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: Reach out to brands looking to acquire newsletters and act as their personal broker. Keep speaking to different potential buyers and sellers until you have enough users ready to launch the platform.

Monetisation: Sellers pay a transaction fee, say 3%, to sell their newsletter. You could also charge buyers a monthly subscription fee for access to the platform to view listings.

Startup Costs: Building the platform should be relatively inexpensive, but getting all of the processes and procedures in place to act as a broker will require some investment, probably a small seed round.

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

The plan here should be to exit to a buyer like acquire.com or to a large newsletter platform like mailchimp. This platform would be a great addition to their product portfolios where you could get a decent 5x - 7.5x revenue multiple.

IDEA #2 | STARTUP

Typeform for Waitlists ⏱️

Good things come to those who wait

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

Waitlists get a bad rap. Hospitals, the DMV, college admissions…all of them have waitlists you never want to be put on.

But in the SaaS world they’re a vital tool for founders.

In fact, the fastest and cheapest way to test demand for a product is to spin up a landing page, direct traffic to it and encourage people to sign up to a waiting list, before you’ve written a single line of code. More signups = more demand.

And startups often point to their waitlist numbers as a sign of early traction, even if some investors don’t see it that way.

Signing up for a waitlist on a website is usually a poor experience, you throw in your email and you may get a responses from the company in a few weeks, who knows?

This is similar to how input forms were on the web years ago, until Typeform came along. Typeform raised a $135m Series C in 2021 at a $935m valuation by creating a powerful software platform for building forms.

So let’s do the same for waiting lists.

2. Solution ✅

Here’s the idea…build a software platform which allows startups to build beautiful, custom waiting lists for their products.

Forms would be customisable, easy to build and could either be standalone or embedded in a website, whatever the founder’s preference is.

Waiting lists could be customised to collect more information than just an email address, giving the company much more granular data on their early adopters which is vital information to have.

Customers on the waitlist would know their position in the waitlist and would receive regular updates on the product up until the founder is ready to launch.

For customers looking to make their way up the waiting list there would gamification features for them them to achieve just that. They could get higher up the waiting list by either referring users to sign up to the waiting list or by simply buying their way up it.

These are just a few of the killer features you could build into this product.

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: Spend your time on Product Hunt or talking to early stage startups who are in the process of building their product. These will be your target customers.

Monetisation: Charge users a one-time fee based on how many users sign up to their waitlist. The fee increases the more users sign up to a waiting list.

Startup Costs: The main cost here will be building the tech stack, where you need to be technical or find yourself a technical cofounder.

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

This kind of product could produce a modest exit for whoever does it right, selling to a company like Typeform who are constantly looking for new revenue opportunities.

IDEA #3 | CASH FLOW BUSINESS

Morning Routine Site 🧘

Start as you mean to go on

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

In a world where productivity is so highly valued, as is the ability to show-off how productive you are, morning routines are sacred.

Most of us follow some sort of morning routine, however they can vary considerably from person to person.

Meanwhile, productivity gurus and celebrities seem hellbent on sharing their morning routines with us. Take Mark Wahlberg’s completely legit morning routine which includes waking up at 2:30am, a 90 minute shower and 30 minutes of golf apparently?

Having said that every single day morning routine videos garner hundreds of millions of views across social media, driven by a deep-seated belief that by copying the routines of the rich and famous we too can become just as successful.

This is a space that garners huge attention, so let’s build a business on the back of that attention.

2. Solution ✅

Here’s the idea…create the ultimate online destination (website/blog) for morning routine aficionados.

The core of the site would be detailed breakdowns of morning routines of the rich and famous, since people are endlessly curious about their morning routines.

Ideally you would produce proprietary content where you work directly with influencers and celebrities to interview them about their morning routines, or even better, film them completing their morning routines. You could then upload this content to your own site as well as YouTube, TikTok and Instagram to build your audience.

Naturally you would link to any products used in a morning routine video to get a slice of the action.

The site could also include a section where users can build their own morning routines, taking cues from the morning routines shared on the platforms and best practices in morning routines based on scientific research in the field.

There are a huge number of paths to monetising this business.

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: Start by creating content based on morning routines already out there. Then begin to outbound and work influencers to start getting proprietary content on their morning routines and go from there.

Monetisation: There are many ways you could monetise this business, including adsense on the website, affiliate links, YouTube ad revenue, selling courses and much, much more.

Startup Costs: Next to nothing, spin up a website cheaply and that’s all you need!

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

This could be a great money spinner. It’s unlikely you would get a huge exit here but this could be a highly profitable, low effort business paying a nice dividend each year.

JUST THE TIP

$20m Selling Egg Cartons

Sarah Moore’s story is like something out of a movie.

Think the Blind Side, but for business.

Sarah had a troubled childhood, not finding a home till she was 15, when she was adopted. She worked her ass off in school, got a degree in Criminal Justice and Psychology plus an MBA from Harvard, straight after which she bought a multi-million business without spending a single dollar of her own money.

How on earth did she do this?

Sarah and her ragtag team of interns spent 18 months going through 400,000+ local businesses until she finally found a business she wanted to buy: Eggcartons.com.

She bought the business for 75% debt financing and 25% seller financing.

Today the business is growing, profitable and counts companies like SpaceX, Boeing, Disney, Madison Square Garden, and Crayola among their clients.

P.S If you want to hear Sarah’s full story, which we highly recommend, you can listen to it here