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Business Ideas #280: Audited Donations, Phone Charms...

Plus Turning a $20 Ice Cream Machine into a $2bn Exit

Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up business ideas as fast as Nvidia shares dropped yesterday đŸ“‰ 

Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

  1. Business Idea💡: Where clarity meets charity

  2. Drunk Business Idea đŸ»: Bringing the heat with this product idea

  3. Just The Tip 📈: The latest buzzy phone trend

  4. The Moneyshot đŸ€‘: Turning a $20 ice cream machine into a $2bn exit

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Let’s get into it.

BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Audited Donations Platform đŸ•”ïž 

License to give

Available Domain: Virtrue.io

💡 TLDR: A platform which audits and certifies the charitable donation claims made by consumer brands

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: In an era of heightened corporate social responsibility, companies are falling over themselves to tout their charitable giving, no matter how small their contributions may be


Many consumer brands trade on these promises. "10% of profits donated." "A portion of every sale goes to charity.” We’ve all seen these campaigns. But whenever you buy a product that promises to give back, how do you know they’re really giving back? Well the dirty little secret is that many of these brands don’t live up to their promises, making these feel-good marketing claims the wild west of corporate responsibility - unregulated, unverified, and often unfulfilled. We need a business which acts like the Moody's or S&P of charitable giving. Here’s what we have in mind.

Market Size: Global corporate giving exceeded $21.1bn in 2023

2. Solution âœ…

The Idea: A platform which audits and certifies the charitable donation claims made by consumer brands

How it Works:

  • A brand signs up to the platform and submits details of their charitable donation promises (which is cross-referenced with their website’s claims)

  • They then connect up their banking data to the platform and their transactions are scanned to ensure they’re making their stated charitable donations

  • Assuming they are they receive a digital certificate which they can add to their website and can point to the validity of their charitable giving claims in their marketing campaigns

  • Their monthly donations are tracked going forward to ensure they stay in line with their claims (and to create recurring revenue for this business)

Go-to-market: Start by selling into brands who try themselves to prove that they follow through on their giving and turn them into evangelists for the brand

Business Model: Monthly subscription fee to maintain certification

Startup Costs: You’ll need a few thousand dollars here to create the first version of the product and a technical co-founder who can handle the development side of things

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: Sell to a company like B Corp or an ESG rating agency

Exit Multiple: High-growth, high margin SaaS companies in the compliance space get good multiples, usually in the 8-12x revenue range

TOGETHER WITH NAME.COM

Find your .io Domain Name Today

You’re a Half Baked subscriber, which means a few things. You’re smart. You’re attractive. And of course you’re drowning in business ideas.

And if you’re anything like us you like to collect domain names the same way Thanos collects infinity stones. But how do you set yourself apart from competitors who own .com domains? It’s simple.

You buy a .io domain from name.com.

.io is a trendy and fast-growing domain in the startup world. Tech companies, startups and even personal websites are using this extension more and more frequently.

Here are some .io domains you can buy today:

â™Łïž Cardcademy.io - for a mobile app which accelerates and gamifies the process of learning poker

đŸ’» Citenation.io - for a platform for academic papers that combines discovery, discussion, and tracking functionality specifically designed for academic papers

🧠 Arguearena.io - for a platform which matches together users who can debate a topic with AI analytics to determine who won

DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

FireFresh Toothpaste

Tired of your boring old mint toothpaste you’ve been using for decades? Looking to add some spice to your morning routine?

Start your morning off with a bang with FireFreshℱ, our new chili-flavored toothpaste brand. It’s packing our signature “Capsaicin Clean” formula that doesn't just fight cavities, it makes them run for cover.

Side effects include steam coming out of your ears and involuntary fire-breathing. If these. symptoms persist please contact your Doctor.

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Phone Charms

There are 7.2bn smartphones around the world today, meaning there’s almost one for every single person on planet earth. And while everyone focuses on creating apps for phones, others have focussed on creating phone accessories, which has led to the rise of Phone Charms. Phone Charms (which look like this if you’re curious) are decorative accessories that attach to mobile phones. They’re a fun way to personalize a phone and make them easier to hold. They’re particularly popular among the younger generation and given the size of the market here it’s not a bad area to build a business in


Business Ideas

  • Tech-Enhanced Phone Charms: Develop charms with built-in NFC tags for emergency contact info, sharing social media profiles, whatever the user wants

  • Eco-Friendly Phone Charm Brand: Create a brand of phone charms made of recycled materials like ocean plastic where a portion of the profits are donated to charity (and verified using our main business idea 👀)

THE MONEYSHOT

Turning a $20 Ice Cream Machine into a $2bn Exit

There is one trait that’s more important than any other for entrepreneurs to have.

And this attorney, who created and sold his business for $2bn, is a perfect example of someone who embodies that very trait.

This is his story.

Like most of us, Justin Woolverton enjoys a sweet treat.

And back in 2011 the Los Angeles-based corporate attorney was looking for a way to satisfy his sweet tooth without spiking his blood sugar (Justin is hypoglycemic).

Frustrated by the lack of options, Justin began experimenting with a $20 ice cream maker in his own kitchen, using ingredients like Greek yogurt, stevia, and erythritol (a sugar alcohol) to create a low-sugar, high-protein alternative to traditional ice cream.

Justin’s early batches weren’t perfect, but he knew the idea had potential. He tried again and again to create the perfect recipe, spending almost a year perfecting the formula. Eventually Justin decided to go all-in and left his job in law to focus on his new business, despite having no background in food science or entrepreneurship whatsoever.

He teamed up with Doug Bouton, another former lawyer, and using borrowed money from family and friends, student loans, and approximately $150,000 in credit card debt the pair launched their business in 2012.

They founded Halo Top.

The early years were a real grind for the founders where they faced huge challenges. Their formulations required constant tweaking to ensure the product could withstand shipping and distribution. They also faced a lawsuit when they launched which forced them to change the company’s name from Eden Creamery to Halo Top.

They finished 2013 with just $250k in sales and the next few years weren’t much better. They managed to secure some supermarket listings, but sales never really took off and supermarkets were constantly threatening to drop the fledgling brand. In fact Justin thought long and hard about shutting down the business after a few years of limited traction. But finally in 2016 Halo Top had their breakout moment.

In 2016, an article in GQ magazine about a “10-day Halo Top-only diet” went super viral and almost overnight sales surged. That year the brand brought in an eye-watering $130m in sales.

By 2017, Halo Top had become the best-selling pint of ice cream in the US, surpassing established brands like Ben & Jerry's and HĂ€agen-Dazs, bringing in revenues of over $340m that year.

The company kept growing, adding more products to their line-up and expanded beyond just the US to different countries around the world. By 2019 Halo Top was everywhere and some of the big players in the food industry and private equity space wanted in.

So in 2019, Halo Top was sold to Wells Enterprises (a huge ice cream and frozen treat manufacturer in the United States) for an undisclosed sum, with some insiders estimating the deal to be worth close to $2 billion. Not a bad return on buying a $20 ice cream maker back in 2011.

Which brings us back to the beginning and the question of the single trait that Justin embodies that every founder needs to have? Persistence.

In entrepreneurship being persistent is the most important thing there is. It’s more important than being smart, technically gifted or anything else. You have to be persistent and keep going no matter what you have to endure.

Because if you’re persistent enough, you too can experience the sweet taste of success.

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