IDEA #1 | VENTURE STARTUP

Competitive Intelligence Platform 🕵️

Keeping an eye on the competition

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

Comparison is the thief of joy, so they say.

But in business comparison is necessary.

In a competitive market it’s incredibly important to keep on top of competitor’s activities so you can adjust as necessary to make sure you can compete effectively. Also, it’s fun to watch them mess up.

But here’s the problem…competitor tracking is often done on an ad hoc basis using limited information.

What if we built a tool to take a more regular, structured approach to analysing competitor’s activities in real time? This would be an invaluable tool for so many businesses.

So let’s do it.

2. Solution ✅

Here’s the idea…create a platform which allows businesses to track the activities of their key competitors.

The platform would monitor many different aspects of a business including any changes in their website, changes to job listings, press releases, company reviews, social media posts, any corporate filings and more.

The platform would then filter through the noise and surface the most important updates to the company in the form of a daily report to key personnel.

Kompyte is the current leader in this space but there’s plenty of room for entrants to the market.

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: focus on a single vertical, say sales organisations, and create a tool which work best for them. As the company grows broaden your customer base.

Monetisation: charge per company tracked on a recurring basis

Startup Costs: You’d likely need to do a small raise here to build the platform and create the necessary integrations to make a great product

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

This is an exit play all day long. Kompyte was acquired by SEMrush for $10M on Mar 17, 2022 and many business intelligence platforms would be willing to acquire this business.

IDEA #2 | STARTUP

Neighborhood Skill Sharing

I am my neighbour’s teacher

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

We all have talents.

Some of us are incredible cooks, others can sing like angels, while some of us have skills which must be seen to be believed.

But today many of us lack the practical, everyday skills we need to thrive in modern life, even if we do try our best.

Today much learning is done online, but for many practical life skills online learning isn’t nearly as effective as IRL learning.

This is the problem we’re going to solve.

2. Solution ✅

Here’s the idea…create a peer to peer learning platform where people living close to one another can offer to teach a skill they have.

People would sign up to the platform and would offer to teach, either one to one or in larger groups, something they are particularly good at. Learners could then go on the platform and search for skills they can learn in the local area.

Imagine being able to learn to bake from your neighbor who makes the most delicious cakes, or how to play guitar from your neighbor who’s been playing for 20 years.

Not only would people learn these amazing skills but this would also have the benefit of bringing communities closer together.

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: Start off in your own neighborhood and see if people with particular skills would be willing to teach them to others in the area, for payment of course. Run some pilots and see what works and what doesn’t, then build the platform and go from there.

Monetisation: teachers on the platform would charge for lessons, you could take a % of each transaction or go the subscription route

Startup Costs: minimal, just need to spin up a relatively simple website here

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

This could at a minimum be a strong cash flow business, but if it takes off could be an acquisition target for an online learning platform looking to reach new customers.

JUST THE TIP

Cereal Entrepreneurship 🥣

This is not a picture of a boyband.

No, this is a picture of Joe Gebbia, Nathan Blecharczyk and Brian Chesky and they are the co-founders of Airbnb.

Today Airbnb is an $85bn powerhouse in the travel market, but the company may not be around today if it wasn’t for some scrappiness from the founders in the early days.

Back in 2008 the company had no users, no money, and the founders went into major credit card debt to fund the business.

They needed to do something, fast, to avoid going out of business. So they did the only logical thing…they start selling breakfast cereal.

That’s right, this travel company created election themed breakfast cereals for the 2008 election in order to make some money to keep them in business.

Don’t believe me? Here they are:

They made around $30k from this which kept the business afloat and today on Airbnb’s website one of their 4th core value is to “be a cereal entrepreneur.” Nice.

So what’s the lesson, here, pivot into selling cereal?

No. It’s this.