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- Business Ideas #283: Productivity Consulting, Nut Butters...
Business Ideas #283: Productivity Consulting, Nut Butters...
Plus The College Side Hustle that Became a $15bn Business
Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up business ideas as often as OpenAI raises money 🤑
Here’s what we’ve got for you today:
Business Idea💡: Unlocking the ultimate arbitrage for knowledge workers
Drunk Business Idea 🍻: How to flash the cash (without flashing the cash)
Just The Tip 📈: A trend people are going nuts for
The Moneyshot 🤑: The college side hustle that became a $15bn business
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Let’s get into it.
BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP
AI Productivity Consulting ⚡️
Caching in on AI
Available Domain: Turboflow.ai
💡 TLDR: Consulting that helps professionals to integrate AI tools into their daily workflow to 10x their productivity
1. Problem/Opportunity❓
The Problem/Opportunity: The pace of AI development is stunning. One day hundreds of billions of dollars are being pledged to build AI infrastructure, the next a tiny competitor comes out of nowhere and blows up the entire market.

But as these tech giants fight to get to AGI and automate away all of our jobs, for now we’re in this interesting period where we still have our jobs, have access to incredibly powerful AI tools and most people have barely scratched the surface of how much more productive these tools can make them. Today, the biggest unlock for any of the 255 million knowledge workers around the world is to get good at using AI tools to 10x their productivity (then use that extra time to start a business of course). All they need is a guide. This is that guide.
Market Size: The global productivity management software market is worth around $103 billion annually
2. Solution ✅
The Idea: Consulting that helps professionals to integrate AI tools into their daily workflow to 10x their productivity
How it Works:
A user signs up to the platform and they give a detailed breakdown of their role, what it entails, what software they use etc.
They are then matched with a freelance AI consultant (similar to Fiverr or Upwork) who looks at their workflow and they complete an assessment call so the consultant fully understands their role
The consultant then develops and recommends an AI-enhanced workflow to supercharge the worker’s productivity
They complete regular check-ins (one per month) to discuss any new updates or AI advancements that could improve their workflow further
Go-to-market: Start by focusing on a single industry where workers are paid well, work super long hours and AI can be super helpful, like legal firms, investment banks etc. and expand from there
Business Model: Charge users for an assessment then an ongoing fee for checkins. Split the revenue with the consultants.
Startup Costs: You could start this for basically $0 if you do the consulting yourself. Then start adding more consultants to the platform as you grow.
3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰
Exit Strategy: You could exit to a company like Fiverr or Upwork here, or just keep it as an incredible cash flow business
Exit Multiple: Your multiple here probably won’t be great, maybe 3x - 6x revenue, hence the cash flow route might make more sense
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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA
The Spendometer
How much money is in your wallet right this second? Genuine question. I bet you have no idea right?
Well with the Spendometer™ now you (and everyone else) will know exactly how much cash you have. This is the world's first wallet with a built-in display that shows exactly how much cash you're carrying.
Watch in real-time as your cash depletes after every coffee run and impulse purchase.
Now featuring our patented Mugger Mode™, which automatically displays a tiny balance in extra-large font on the screen that makes muggers feel so bad for you they’ll give you money out of guilt instead of taking it. Genius.

JUST THE TIP
Trend 📈: Pistachio Butter
Back in the day there were two types of nut butter…crunchy peanut butter and smooth peanut butter. Sure wars were fought over which was better, but at least there were only two options
In recent years though the nut butter market has expanded to include a dizzying array of nut butter concoctions including almond butter, pistachio butter, and even smoked chilli peanut butter (which sounds like one of our drunk ideas)
But this trend isn’t going away anytime soon, buoyed by the rise of plant-based eating and protein-rich diets which have elevated nut butters to a nutritious staple food.

Business Ideas
Nut Butter Creation Kits: Help people make their own nut butters at home with pre-portioned ingredients delivered every month
Nut Butter Stuffed Dates Brand: Create a snack brand product consisting of packets of dates stuffed with nut butters
THE MONEYSHOT
The College Side Hustle that Became a $15bn Business
For most teenagers college is about freedom, self-discovery, partying and trying to survive 8AM classes.
But these guys used their time at college to start a side hustle, one that would blossom into a $15bn business.
This is their story.

Rafael Ilishayev (left) and Yakir Gola (right) were two typical college guys.
They met in a Business 101 class at Drexel University in Philadelphia, quickly bonding over their similar backgrounds (both came from immigrant families) and their shared love of business. And it was this shared love of business that meant they were destined to become co-founders, they just needed an idea…
Yakir, being the only one in his friend group with a car, was frequently forced into making trips to convenience stores to satisfy the group’s cravings for snacks and other essentials.
This led the pair to notice that, since traditional delivery services focused on restaurants, this left a gap in the market for delivering snacks, drinks, and household essentials. They wanted to be the ones to close that gap. But to get the business off the ground first they needed cash. So they did the logical thing and started…selling furniture?
A family friend gave the pair office furniture that they didn’t need anymore and they sold it off, netting $60k in the process. They used this capital to purchase initial inventory, rent a warehouse, and pay developers in Ukraine to build their app.
It was 2013 and they had just founded GoPuff.

They initially operated out of their college apartment in Philadelphia, fulfilling every single order through the platform themselves for the first 6 months. Word spread quickly on campus, and demand quickly outgrew their dorm-room operation. They needed to expand…
To expand, GoPuff started hiring drivers and opened their own local fulfilment centers, allowing them to control inventory and cut delivery times to under 30 minutes.
In 2016 the company decided to expand into college towns where demand for the service was highest, raising $8.25m to support their efforts. They also focused heavily on alcohol delivery, a high-margin category that other competitors struggled with and heavily used referral programs, offering discounts and free delivery credits to get users to invite their friends.
Investors saw the potential in GoPuff and backed the business heavily. Over the years GoPuff raised more than $3.4 billion across multiple different rounds, notably raising $1 billion in July 2021 at a $15 billion valuation.
By 2023, GoPuff operated in 650+ cities with hundreds of micro-fulfillment centers across the U.S. and Europe and generated revenues of around $1.2bn per year. That’s a lot of beer deliveries…
All of which goes to show that, in the early days, you have to be willing to do whatever the business needs to work, no matter how unglamorous it is.
There are no shortcuts in this game, you have to put in the time in the early years to get the big win down the line.
But if you do…it could be the some of the most important work you ever do.
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