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Business Ideas #282: Home Selling, ADHD Coaching...

Plus Turning $10k into a $2.9bn Business

Together with

Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up business ideas as surprising as MoviePass pivoting to crypto? đŸ€” 

Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

  1. Business Idea💡: Building The Knot in a new vertical

  2. Drunk Business Idea đŸ»: Making a common household item far more sustainable

  3. Just The Tip 📈: A new coaching trend for a new world

  4. The Moneyshot đŸ€‘: Turning $10k into a $2.9bn business

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Let’s get into it.

BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

The Knot for Home Selling đŸ–„ïž

On the same (home)page

Available Domain: Padsell.io

💡 TLDR: An all-in-one platform that streamlines the home selling process from start to finish

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: There are limited number of truly huge moments in life. Graduations. Getting married. Having a child. Finding an extra chicken nugget in your box


And most of these big moments in life are accompanied by great all-in-one software solutions which help to streamline the process. The Knot for wedding planning. The Bump for having a baby. But what about the process of selling your home? Every year, 6 million Americans sell their homes, juggling multiple services, vendors, and endless tasks across dozens of websites and apps. It's overwhelming, inefficient, and ripe for innovation. Which is where this idea comes in.

Market Size: Total Addressable Market of $93.4bn (based on 6m homes sold annually in US x average $15,576 spent on selling costs)

2. Solution âœ…

The Idea: An all-in-one platform that streamlines the home selling process from start to finish

How it Works:

  • A user signs up to the platform and enters in details about their property

  • They are then brought through an interactive timeline of the different tasks that must be completed in order to sell their home

  • As they move through the different tasks (e.g. hiring a Solicitor, getting a valuation, taking photos/house staging, listing on real estate sites etc.) users are given recommendations for vetted vendors who they can work with to get these tasks completed

  • They can pay these vendors through the platform with all of these costs tracked against the user’s budget to ensure they’re fully on top of the process

Go-to-market: Start in top 3 real estate markets (NYC, LA, SF)

Business Model: You could monetize this platform through commissions (15-20% from service providers), transaction fees (.25% of successful sales?) and lead generation fees from agents

Startup Costs: This will be a complex build so make sure you find a great technical co-founder or hire a team of talented engineers to build this (which you’ll need to raise money to do)

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: Get acquired by a large real estate platform like Zillow

Exit Multiple: SaaS companies in real estate tech sell for 10-15x revenue, marketplaces for 8-12x revenue, so 10-12x is a good target here

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Reusable Garbage Bags

  • Tired of single-use trash bags that give up halfway to the dumpster? Feel guilty about all of your trash bags ending up in landfill sites?

  • Introducing GarbageLoopℱ, the world’s first reusable garbage bag. When it's full, you simply take it to your outdoor garbage bin, dump the contents out, bring it back in and clean that sucker until it’s ready to be used again.

  • But wait - there's more! While you're building those garbage-cleaning muscles, you're also saving 500 single-use bags from the ocean. That's right you're not just washing a garbage bag, you're basically a superhero. A slightly damp, questionably-scented superhero. And we salute you for it.

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: ADHD Coaching

  • Technology has ruined our attention spans. Plain and simple.

  • The average human attention sp- Oh look, a squirrel! No, no, focus. According to studies the average human attention span lasts only about 8 to 12 seconds, after which time our minds start to wander (still with us?)

  • It’s no wonder then that the prevalence of ADHD has skyrocketed in recent years, particularly among young people, with approximately 129 million children and adolescents worldwide living with ADHD

  • This has lead to the emergence of a new field called “ADHD coaching” which we think will be a huge industry going forward

Business Ideas

  • AI ADHD Coaching App: An AI-powered ADHD coaching app which helps users to manage their ADHD

  • ADHD Career Coaching: Guide professionals with ADHD on job selection, workplace accommodations, and productivity hacks to get the most out of their careers

THE MONEYSHOT

Turning $10k into a $2.9bn Business

Steve Jobs rejected IBM. Mark Zuckerberg rejected Yahoo. There are plenty of founders who rejected huge acquisition offers to keep building their dreams.

Take this founder, who rejected a $120m offer en route to building a $2.9bn business.

This is his story.

Gary Erickson is an adventurer.

He grew up in California, where he developed a passion for outdoor activities like hiking and biking in his youth, alongside a love for baking from working in his parents' bakery. Little did he know that later in life these two worlds would collide to make him a billionaire


One day back in 1990 Gary was out on a casual 175-mile bike ride (as you do) and during the ride he had packed several energy bars to fuel him. But after eating a few, he realised couldn’t stomach another one. He wanted a better bar to fuel him on his long rides, and his gut told him he could make one himself.

So Gary started experimenting


He hunkered down in his mom’s kitchen in the hopes of developing a chewy, natural, and flavorful bar. After two years and over 40 different prototypes, Gary finally created a bar he was truly proud of.

By 1992 he and his then business partner, Lisa Thomas, were ready to launch the company with around $10,000 in savings. All they needed was a name. So Gary decided to name the bar after the most adventurous outdoorsman he knew, his father Clifford.

They founded Clif Bar.

In Clif Bar's first year, revenues exceeded $700,000, fueled primarily by strong sales in bike shops and the growth of the health and natural foods movement.

Sales doubled every year as they expanded into retailers and, by 1997, revenue surpassed $20 million. By the year 2000 Clif Bar was bringing in $40m in revenue per year and all of a sudden they were at a crossroads. Someone wanted to buy the business.

In 2000 Gary and Lisa were offered $120 million for the company by Quaker Oats. They planned to go through with the sale until the day it was due to close when, all of a sudden, Gary changed his mind. His gut told him not to sell. So at the very last minute he walked away from the deal.

Lisa wasn’t best-pleased (understandable) so Gary bought out her shares for $70m making him the sole owner of the business and paving the way for his wife, Kit Crawford (right), to get involved in the business.

Did Gary make the right call? Absolutely. Fast forward to 2022 and Clif Bar had reached an incredible milestone
$1 billion in annual sales.

Then in 2022, Mondelez (owner of Oreo & Cadbury) made an offer to acquire the company which Gary and Kit couldn’t turn down. This time Gary’s gut told him it was the right time to sell so that year Clif Bar was acquired by Mondelez for $2.9 billion.

Gary set out to make a tasty energy bar and ended up becoming a billionaire. Epic.

What’s the takeaway from Gary’s story? It’s simple
in business you have to trust your gut. Gary’s gut told him not to sell in 2000, which was the right call. Then in 2022 it told him something different, which was also the right call for him.

Which begs the question, what’s your gut telling you right now?

Because listening to it could change your life forever.

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