These 8 Business Ideas Were Pitched To Me. I Pick My Favorites.

What's up, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of Founders Journal. This is your host, Alex Lieberman, co-founder and executive chairman of Morning Brew. For those of you that are new to the podcast, Founders Journal is my personal diary made public for the world. Today on the show, I am going to be running through a bunch of business ideas that people shared with me on the internet. I posted a tweet and— or I can't even call it a tweet anymore. I posted an X post. That sounds horrible. And a LinkedIn post a few days ago. It said, What is a business idea that you think would crush? I'll give it a score of 1 to 10 and a little bit of feedback. And so I'm gonna just randomly pick out some of the ideas that were shared with me, walk through them, and my hope is that it helps you think through whether it's new business ideas or ideas that you have within an existing business. Hopefully you understand my process for vetting good and bad ideas. So without further ado, take a listen to the episode. Okay. We are going to run through some business ideas. Uh, this is totally unscripted, so I have no idea how many ideas we're going to run through, but I'll just go as long as it feels interesting and I feel like it'll be interesting for you. And again, my goal here is even if you aren't brainstorming a business to start tomorrow, I think the intellectual exercise of thinking through ideas Because I think very few ideas are inherently good or inherently bad. It's more about what are the tools you use to vet those ideas and what are the questions that you ask yourself that you need to answer in order to understand if these ideas are good or bad. That's what I'm hoping you get from this exercise. I almost look at it like a version of working out for the brain. Okay. We have one from Alex Cohen. Alex Cohen shared, when I was in high school and home for a summer in college, I used to do random tech jobs for old people in South Florida. For like $50 an hour. At one point I thought it would be dope to build it into a true services bundle and sell it into HOAs, homeowner associations, then offer a base tier and various packages to homeowners in each community. We would set up an onsite Geek Squad style shop. I think it would crush with boomers and retirees in South Florida. So I'm going to give this idea a 7 out of 10. I think First of all, what a throwback with Geek Squad, the tech guru group at Best Buy. It's funny, I think a franchise Geek Squad brand could do better than Best Buy as a retailer. So one of the ways I think about these ideas is like, what are trends that are either acting as tailwinds or headwinds for a given business? And so for this business, a few things come to mind. One is that boomers are retiring, right? Right? You have an entire generation of people that are getting into their last leg of their career, and they're going to be spending a fair bit of time in retirement at home, etc. To me, that means more time for them to be engaging with technology or talking to their family with technology. At the same time, you have the tailwind of just technological advancements happening as fast as they ever have. And I think with that, not only is technology changing, but there's more choice than ever before. Like there are more. technology hardware devices to choose from and software. So choice can be really crippling. I actually think this is a great idea. I think there's going to be more people than ever before that have questions about how to use their devices, how to connect their devices, everything from like, how do I store my pictures that my family has sent me from my entire life in the cloud, all the way to how do I maintain connectivity between a bunch of different devices? So I think a franchised effectively a franchise geek squad that has one brand wrapped around it, but it's a franchise business. So you can decentralize scale, you can scale it faster, you can de-risk it to your franchisees, but you can help them with distribution, marketing, and say training. I think it's a really interesting business. I would be surprised if something like this doesn't already exist. But yeah, I mean, Alex, you should go build this. Or if someone who's listening to this podcast is interested in the idea, Definitely think it's worth going deeper on. Okay, next idea. This is from Dan Goldstein, a fractional CMO. Evening daycares making date night easier and cheaper. Basically drop your kids off for some fun and not have to spend $150 for a babysitter. So I will vet this idea through the lens of not being a parent yet. So first of all, I'll say I am not the most qualified at all to weigh in on this idea because I haven't experienced this problem. And it sounds like the problem is that parents sometimes want to be independent, but they want to make sure that their kid is taken care of. What I will say is I would be surprised if, let's call it like night care, isn't a service that could be bundled into existing daycares. Like if there was enough demand from parents who want to go out for date night or for dinner or for a show, I'd be surprised if there were that many of those people that daycares wouldn't see this demand. And just extend their hours so that people like Dan could go have date night with their partners and their kids are taken care of at the daycare facility. So I'll give this a 3 out of 10. I think it's a good idea in the sense it would be helpful for parents, but I just feel like it could be an add-on service versus a standalone business on its own. Okay. Next idea is from Todd Saunders. Uh, Todd is a venture-backed vertical SaaS founder. He actually built a software business for flooring retailers. So if you are someone who sells flooring, he provides us software that kind of allows you to do everything from building a website to inventory management, et cetera. He said a D2C, direct-to-consumer carpet brand that allows you to install yourself and makes for easy clean. Think Casper for carpet. So what's interesting is as I thought through this idea, right, the first thing I said to myself is like, how annoying is it To get carpet installed, right? Like if you are hiring a carpet installation company, I would think it's actually not that annoying for you as the homeowner because someone's doing the job. So then the, to me, the potentially annoying part would be, is it really costly or are there a lot of mistakes made? So I actually Googled, and I'll do it right now, I Googled how much does it cost to install carpet? And it was kind of mind-blowing. Like I've never bought a home before. I've never had to install carpet. And so here it first says that it could be anywhere between $588 and $795 per square foot. Just looking at this, it says most homeowners pay between $760 to $2,335 for carpet installation in one standard-sized room. So that's interesting. It sounds like, you know, let's just say you have 2 rooms to carpet. It could be anywhere between $1,500 and $5,000. Like, that's significant, right? I could see people. Yeah. Being like, hey, if there's a brand that allows me to install a carpet and trade kind of my time and effort for $5,000, I'll do that. So my view is, is I would give this idea a 7 out of 10 in the sense that I think it is a relatively painful problem. It seems pretty expensive to install carpet. I give it a 7 out of 10 if this business stays lean and it raises as little, as little venture capital money as possible. I'll give it a 2 out of 10 if it raises a shit ton of venture capital money in the early years. And the reason I say that is, you know, we have just seen so many examples of direct-to-consumer businesses that just don't have the economics of software companies, but raising venture capital money as if they're software companies. And we've just seen so many examples from Casper to Rent the Runway. You know, I just saw like their current market cap is $50 million. Blue Apron, I think, was just purchased for $40 million. These are companies that literally were valued at more than $1 billion in the last few years. And now they've raised, you know, literally multiples of what they're worth. So I think it's an interesting idea, but I would try to run this thing as lean as possible. I will say it seems difficult to run lean because carpet, I would think, is a pretty expensive physical good. It's heavy, shipping costs a lot. So that would be my biggest concern is, is it even feasible to run this thing lean unless you're, you know, a second or third time founder who can basically bankroll the business yourself? Okay, next idea. Blinkist, but for health podcasts. Something that generates a one-page summary of Andrew Huberman podcasts, Peter Attia, et cetera, monetized through subscription and affiliate links to products mentioned. Okay, I'm gonna give this a 7 out of 10. What I love about this is that it is solving a very real problem, and it's a problem I've experienced that I can speak to. The issue with podcasts is they're highly inefficient. Like, if you think about all of the ways to consume content, from newsletters to social posts to books, to podcasts. I would actually say podcasts are similar to books in the regard that they're really inefficient. When I say inefficient, if I listen to, let's just say, a 2.5-hour-long Tim Ferriss podcast interview— Tim is one of the best interviewers in the world. His episodes are great. But oftentimes when I think about the value I get out of his episodes, it probably is like a 3-minute story that's told in the middle of the episode or an 8-minute conversation that happens on the back half of the episode, but I have to listen to the 2.5 hours to get that golden nugget. And so I think there's something really inherently valuable of basically turning audio into text so then that text can be summarized into the most important moments. Like, I think that really increases the efficiency of turning podcasts into a more high-signal, high-efficiency medium of content. And I actually think you could do this outside of just healthcare, right? So Alex and Books, who is the X account who mentioned this idea, he mentioned Huberman, Peter Attia, like health-related podcasts, which I think is a great vertical. But I think you could do this really with any knowledge or skill-focused podcast, like any podcast you go to for education versus entertainment. The only question I have around this, or the big question I have, is kind of what does usage and rights look like? Like if I am creating a summary, of Andrew Huberman's podcast episodes. Am I allowed to create that summary? Do I have to get permission from every person that we create summaries for? And if I was to monetize this, say, through subscription or affiliate or whatever, what does the agreement look like with the person who owns the original IP, meaning the podcaster who had the full-length podcast? So those are my biggest questions around this idea. But I actually think this is a great idea that someone should look into and build. Honestly, I may look more into it as well. We're going to take a quick break, but more from Founders Journal when we get back. Okay, let's do a few more of these. This one is from No Code Devs. No Code Devs said a digital marketing portal for SMBs, small-medium-sized businesses, plus local brick and mortar. A single place for your CRM, SEO, SMS, calendar, billing, landing pages, And reputation management. So basically, it sounds like kind of one piece of software that is the operating system that allows you to acquire new customers as a brick-and-mortar business. It allows you to collect payments. It allows you to set up your website. It allows you to run marketing. It allows you to do retention marketing of your existing customers. So I would give this a six out of ten. I really love the idea of empowering SMBs. I have to think whenever you have like a huge space or a huge market. Like you have to think that there are people who have tried to build in this space. So I think the way I would look at this idea is look at who has already tried to kind of build the operating system for brick and mortars or SMBs to understand what they've built. If there's a solution that people love, are SMBs already using a system like this, etc.? I think the other thing here is it sounds like no-code devs like smashed a lot of different offerings, a lot of different products into one piece of software. CRM for managing customer relationships, SEO for acquiring customers through search, SMS for notifying prospective customers or existing customers of things like sales or deals, billing, landing pages. Like there's so much in here. So I try to simplify things as much as possible. Like this is too much for me to understand day one with an offering. So I would try to understand what is the core problem that an SMB faces that is not being solved by their existing software. And I would try to focus on, you know, almost like what is the Trojan horse product that would make an SMB super sticky where then you can kind of upsell vertically into some of these other things that No Code Dev mentions versus trying to kind of, you know, boil the ocean at once. Okay, let's do one or two more. Stuart Sharp said a marketplace for first edition or rare books that are authenticated and verified. This reminds me, I feel like this would actually be a great business attached to a YouTube creator or someone who is known in kind of like on the internet as the authority in rare books or first edition books. So it makes me think of Doug DeMuro, who's a huge YouTuber who's known as like the guy who knows everything about cars and he does car reviews. And he ended up creating a marketplace called Cars and Bids where people can go and buy cars and all of the reviews are done by Doug DeMuro. So there's a lot of trust there. I think there could be a great niche marketplace, kind of like Cars and Bids, but for first edition or rare books. So I give this a 7 out of 10. I think what's also interesting about this business is I love the idea of starting with a high passion niche that again trusts a source, but then you can go expand into other verticals of rare collectible items outside of books. So I think it's an interesting idea. 2 more. Ryan from Detroit said a coffee shop franchise that is members only, and in order to become a member, you have to own an LLC. I would say I am normally against the idea of physical retail or like any business that requires 4 walls and breaking ground. But I love the idea of basically a verticalized coffee shop, like a place where especially, you know, I read some stat like 50 or 60% of all workers now are gig economy workers. You know, there are more solopreneurs than ever before because technology has just enabled people to go off on their own. and build businesses at lower cost than ever before. So like the risk of failure or the cost of failure is lower than ever before. But I think, you know, a, a big problem that entrepreneurs face is loneliness, not having people to bounce ideas off of, right? If you don't have an audience online and you're, you're just working in your apartment every day on your business, like who are you getting thoughts and feedback from on your business? Or who are you getting to talk about kind of like the hard things you're dealing with in your business? Imposter syndrome. Having to worry about making payroll, like all of these things. So I love the idea of a coffee shop that is for entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, freelancers, etc. And, you know, I think the one risk would be you open up a store, a shop in a city, and you don't know if you'll have enough demand. So I— the way I'd actually go about this is I'd pre-sell locations. So I'm in Hoboken before opening the Hoboken coffee shop. I would actually try to sell memberships to the coffee shop and coworking space ahead of time. Once I hit a certain threshold, then that's when I would actually start trying to secure kind of like everything I need to build the property, build the brand, etc. So I'll give this an 8 out of 10. Bill Murphy Jr. said virtual and AI-assisted memoir writer. Grandma or grandpa does a few Zoom calls with an interviewer. A couple of days later, they get their full autobiography to share with the family in their own words. First of all, what I'll say is I just love this as an idea. The idea that life is really precious and there is nothing better than memorializing the experiences you have with loved ones, memorializing their stories so you understand the context of their life. And it helps you understand who they were as people and the way in which they behaved and went through life. And it's something I've thought about a lot because You know, I was best friends with my dad. I lost my dad in college, and there's very minimal documentation or memories of my dad or being with my dad. Like, we have a lot of childhood videos of like when I was 3 years old with my dad, but like, there's not a lot of stuff when, you know, we were older, closer to when he passed, when I was in college. And also, like, I wasn't at the maturity level as a kid to really ask him deep questions about his life and understand his full story in the context that he lived in. And so I would love to have that for my dad, and I'd love to have that for any of my family members. I think it's a hard business because I think to write a truly great autobiography for a family member, the kind of the cost of doing so can be quite expensive. And so I'd be really interested in kind of what the economics look like for this business. So I give the business, you know, 6.5 or 7 out of 10. I think it can be a nice business to have. I think it can be a nice lifestyle business. And this business actually already exists. Andrew Wilkinson, I know, invested in a version of this company called No Story Lost, which I think is a very high-end version of doing this. Like, I think I'm looking at it, it costs almost $1,700 to go through this process, which means to me— oh, and I'm looking at it, it's anywhere between 2 and 6 hours of phone interviews. I'm sure there's a drafting process and an editing process. So you can imagine, like, the quality is really good, but the cost of producing this for No Story Lost as a business has to be really high. There's another company, Storyworth.com, which I think is of a mass market product for this. So long story short, I think I, I love the idea. I think it's a really interesting business, but I'd be interested in better understanding the economics and just how good or bad the margin is. And so those are some of the 408 ideas that, uh, people shared with me on X over the last few days. If you have a business idea that you want me to take through kind of this intellectual CrossFit, I would love to do so. Again, it's not about if the idea is good or bad. It's What are kind of the models and tools you use to think through the idea to understand if it's worth you going deeper in researching and testing, etc.? And so I hope you enjoyed this exercise. It's something I love doing, you know, every at least month. It's like my favorite activity as an entrepreneur is ideation and intellectual CrossFit. So feel free to share your business idea with me, no matter how crazy or ridiculous it is, at alex@morningbrew.com. And maybe in an upcoming episode, I will run it through the gauntlet with all of my listeners. Thanks for listening, and I'll catch you next episode.