IDEA #1 | STARTUP

MoviePass for Meals

All you can eat, but not quite a buffet

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The story of Moviepass is legendary in Silicon Valley.

For a $9.95 monthly subscription Moviepass would allow users to see up to one movie per day, which went a little something like this:

Since Moviepass was paying full price for tickets at the height of their popularity Moviepass were burning $21.7m per month and eventually in 2020 filed for bankruptcy, though the company has since been relaunched.

While the MoviePass concept clearly resonated with customers, their execution we less great.

So let’s take this concept and apply it to another vertical…the $997bn restaurant industry.

2. Solution ✅

Here’s the idea…create a monthly subscription service for consumers to dine at a discount in local restaurants.

Here’s how it works - local restaurants sign up to the platform where they offer discounts on meals to subscribers of the platform to help them get more customers in the door, similar to how they do on Groupon or other coupon sites.

Users then select from different subscription plans which allows them to go to a certain number of restaurants each month and since they’re availing of discounts at every restaurants provided by the restaurants through the platform they get all of the meals at a discount which is covered by their subscription, allowing the platform to make margin, unlike Moviepass.

For example, say a customer gets a $100 monthly plan they could go to 3 - 4 restaurants in the month, saving 30% - 45% through the discounts provided by the restaurants and allowing the platform to make money.

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: Approach restaurants in your local area about signing up (pay full price for meals if you have to) then find out what other restaurants they like to go to. Sign up these restaurants and these customers to kickstart your marketplace

Monetisation: Subscription fee

Startup Costs: minimal startup costs

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

If the company reached sufficient scale the path here would be to exit to a company with distribution in the restaurant business, like Opentable. Failing that this could be an incredible cash flow business.

IDEA #2 | STARTUP

Personal Car Ride Hailing 🚕 

Dude, here’s my car

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

Ride hailing services like Uber and Lyft are great, for the most part anyway.

But they have one major shortcoming…the price.

Surge pricing and increased take rates from ride hailing companies mean that fares have increased markedly in recent years.

But ride hailing apps are actually doubly expensive. Why? Because they often involve two trips, one from your house to your destination then another trip back from the destination to your house.

Wouldn’t it be so much better if you could drive your own car somewhere, have a few drinks then have someone drive your car home with you in it, thereby halving the price?

Let’s do exactly that.

2. Solution ✅

Here’s the idea…create a ride hailing platform where drivers can drive customer’s own cars to or from a destination.

Here’s how it works - a customer travels to their destination in their own car, parks and enjoys their evening. Then when they want to go home after a few too many drinks they log on to the app and put out a request for a driver to come to that location. A driver then drives to the destination on a small, fold up electric bike, motorbike or scooter, something like this:

The bike, motorbike or scooter is then folded and placed in the trunk of the car (or the “boot” as the Brits call it) and the driver drives the passengers home in their own car.

Once the journey is completed payment is made through the app and the driver can respond to the next request, while the customer is back home with their own car having saved themselves a small fortune (that they probably already spent at the bar, but anyway…)

A simple concept that could have huge potential.

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: start out small by testing in an urban location and go from there.

Monetisation: take a fee on every ride

Startup Costs: you won’t need much money to build an MVP here, but if you want to scale there will be venture capital funding required

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

The ultimate goal here would be to exit to a smaller player in the ride sharing space who are looking to increase their market share.

NO BRAINER IDEA

Ex-avoider App

No one wants to run into their ex.

Well you never have to again by downloading the ex-avoider app. This will alert in real time if you’re in danger of running into your ex so you can avoid them.

Stay safe out there.

BIG DECK ENERGY

Loom’s $3m Seed Deck

Year: 2017

Stage: Seed

Amount: $3m

Loom is a video messaging tool that helps users to get their messages across through instantly shareable videos. Last year loom was acquired by Atlassian in a deal worth $975bn. Here’s the pitch deck they used to raise $3m in 2017.

JUST THE TIP

Silicon Valley’s Most Iconic MVP

Founders with great ideas often cite their inability to code as the biggest barrier they face to getting their startup off the ground.

Well back in 2007 this didn’t stop Drew Houston, the founder of Dropbox.

Drew had the idea to create a cloud based file sharing platform, but rather than spending thousands of dollars he didn’t have on building a functioning product he decided to gauge interest by creating a video demo to show off how the product would work.

This is that exact demo:

The video went viral! It drove hundreds of thousands of potential customers to the Dropbox website, and their beta waiting list jumped from 5,000 to 75,000 overnight.

The “product” found product-market fit overnight, despite the fact it wasn’t even a working product. It was just a video.

Since that humble MVP dropbox has turned down an Apple acquisition, have over 700 million users, and are now valued at around $12 billion.

So what’s the lesson here?