IDEA #1 | VENTURE STARTUP

AI Talent Agent for Creators 🤖

Note: “talent” may not apply to all creators

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

Influencers are impossible to escape today.

So too are their brand deals.

But for influencers, or “creators” as they preferred to be called, these brand deals don’t just materialise out of thin air.

No most big creators have so-called “Talent Managers”, although what talent some of these creators have still remains a mystery.

In exchange for sourcing brand deals Talent Managers will often take a cut (a pretty sizeable cut in some cases) to reward their efforts.

Let’s build an AI powered platform which can do the same work for a fraction of the cost.

2. Solution ✅

Here’s the idea…create an AI platform which acts as a Talent Manager for creators for a fraction of the cost.

Here’s how it works. The creator signs up for the platform and gets a dedicated email address specifically for brand deals, sponsorship enquiries and so on. The creator then places this email address in their bio which brands then use to contact them through and can redirect emails coming into other email addresses to this one.

When a brand reaches out about a potential deal or with the contract for a deal that needs to be signed the platform reads and summarises the email or contract details for the creator and generates a reply which they can then alter or approve either through an online portal or through an iMessage or WhatsApp integration.

It also links to their bank account and lets the creator know when they’ve been paid. You could even layer some invoice factoring into the product here too.

All of it is managed automatically by the platform with minimal input from the creator allowing them to do the only thing they really want to do: create.

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: start off by working as a Talent Manager for a creator briefly to understand the space, then build simple software to get started and build from there

Monetisation: Take a small % of each successful brand deal

Startup Costs: this is a relatively complex software build so you’ll likely need to do a small raise here to get the engineering talent to make this work

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

There are many big players in the influencer software space who would look to acquire this, like Upfluence

IDEA #2 | STARTUP

Omegle for Pitching 🗣️

Becoming pitch perfect

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

Video chat platforms have been a mainstay of the internet ever since people’s internet connections became fast enough to support live video chat in the mid to late 2010s. And around this time many platforms emerged which gave the option to randomly pair with strangers to chat, such as Chatroulette and Omegle.

Anyone who’e ever visited one of these sites knows the big challenge they face…content moderation.

In fact Omegle shut down in 2023 due to a lawsuit relating to their failures around content moderation.

So while these platforms leave a lot to be desired their fundamental premise of matching strangers online is a compelling one, it just needs to be executed better.

We believe this premise could be applied to a different market with much better results…pitching. For founders nailing their startup pitch is the first step on the road to success, so let’s build a platform to help give them as much pitch practice as possible. (check out that alliteration).

2. Solution ✅

Here’s the idea…build an online chat platform that pairs random founders with each other so they can practice pitching their startup.

Here’s how it works. Users sign up to the platform with their real details (for obvious reasons). They then give some background info about themselves and their startup and can even upload their pitch deck. They can then then jump in and get matched with other founders where each of them get a set amount of time to pitch their startup to each other and provide feedback to each other too.

The platform will have two modes, elevator pitch and full pitch. In elevator pitch mode users only have 60 seconds to pitch whereas in full pitch they can have up to 10 minutes to give a full pitch on their business.

The platform could also incorporate AI to give feedback to participants too, where the use of filler words or repetition is called out after their pitch.

3. Business Model 🏦

Go-to-market: start by testing the concept with startup accelerator cohorts manually on Zoom to test the idea, then build if you get good feedback from users

Monetisation: Selling ads and affiliate links to products on the platform

Startup Costs: This should be a pretty simple platform to build, the major cost would be hosting fees here given it’s a continuous live video streaming platform

4. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

This could be a nice acquisition for companies looking to work with early stage founders, such as AngelList

NO BRAINER IDEA

Breathalizer for your Phone

Ever woken up the morning after a few drinks and realised you sent someone a text you really shouldn’t have?

Well fear no longer…introducing the breathalizer phone app. Simply blow into the breathalizer and if you’re too drunk your phone will stop you from sending drunk texts.

Easily the next billion dollar startup idea, pre-seed round opening soon…

BIG DECK ENERGY

Ring’s $4m Series A Deck

Year: 2014

Stage: Series A

Amount: $4m

Ring (originally Doorbot) is an app and consumer IoT device that allows homeowners to see and speak to the person at the door through their smartphones, from anywhere. The company was acquired in 2018 by Amazon in a $1bn deal. Here’s the deck they used to raise their Series A in 2014.

JUST THE TIP

The 1 Stat that made Bezos a Billionaire

Founder origin stories, particularly when told by the media, often cite a moment where the founder has a moment of inspiration that leads to the idea that made them successful.

Not Jeff Bezos.

Jeff took a much more calculated approach to starting his business.

In 1994 Jeff read a statistic that blew his mind, which if South Park is anything to go by takes a lot.

Jeff had read that the internet was growing at an incredible 2300% per year. This single data point told him he needed to build an internet business.

He drew up a list of 20 potential products he thought might sell well via the internet, including software, CDs and books. After reviewing the list, books were the obvious choice, primarily because of the sheer number of titles in existence meant an online bookstore would be better than any physical bookstore.

He left his high-paying PE job at DE Shaw and moved from New York to Seattle with his wife and dog to start Amazon.com.

They sold their first book in 1995 and the rest, as they say, is history.

So what’s the lesson here?