BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

AI Tutor for Professional Exams 🎓️ 

Certified banger idea

Available Domain: Certiflier.com

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: As kids we all collected things. Coins. Pokémon cards. Mysterious illnesses from other kids of course. But some people haven’t grown out of their collecting habit just yet, opting to collect professional certifications like they’re going out of fashion. Like this guy, LinkedIn’s final boss…

Many of these certifications take hundreds of hours to study for, like the CFA exam in finance which famously takes 1,000 hours of study to qualify for. So why not build tooling to ensure people can pass these taxing exams (including tax exams)? Here’s what we have in mind.

Market Size: The global professional certification market is worth around $10 billion annually

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: An AI-driven tutor specifically designed to help professionals pass notoriously challenging professional certification exams like CFA, CPA, and similar credentials

How it Works:

• A user starts by answering a few questions and taking a diagnostic test to assess their existing knowledge in the subject area and how ready they are for the exam.

• They then get a custom study plan tailored to their strengths and weaknesses spread out over a set number of weeks to best prep them for the exam.

• Over time the user takes adaptive mock exams to understand their progress and can use the AI tutor to clarify tricky concepts instantly.

• Their progress is tracked over time so they can see how they are tracking in the lead up to exam day

Go-to-market: Target a specific certification first, like CFA or CPA candidates, becoming the go-to trusted resource. Then expand.

Business Model: Sell licenses to businesses to offer to their employees who are pursuing specific certifications

Startup Costs: You could start by building this as a wrapper around ChatGPT to get something off the ground, then invest more heavily as it grows

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: Get acquired by a major professional education company like Kaplan or Wiley or an online learning platform like Coursera or Udemy

Exit Multiple: EdTech companies historically command multiples of approximately 3-8x annual recurring revenue based on growth and market dominance.

TOGETHER WITH SNAPCHAT

You’ve tried Meta. You’ve tried TikTok. Try this Next

If your business is spending on paid ads, you’ve probably seen the ceiling. You know what they can do and their scale. But now it’s time to add something new.

Snapchat is built differently.

It reaches an audience that other platforms don’t. 40% of Snapchatters aren’t on TikTok daily. They’re also not passive. 85% percent discover new brands through ads. And they have intent. 88% percent say they love to shop.

This isn’t about testing another channel. It’s about serious reach you can’t get anywhere else.

Learn More

DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Tortoise Toy

• Are your kids getting sick of their remote control cars and exciting flying drones? Looking for something a little…slower?

• Introducing Shelldon™, the world’s first remote control tortoise toy. Shelldon™ perfectly mimics the behavior of a real tortoise, reaching speeds of up to 0.3 mph. As Owen Wilson would say…”wow”.

• Double the fun by racing it against a remote control hare (if you can find one) and see who wins. The results won’t surprise you.

• Note: this is a remote control tortoise, not a turtle. So just like a real tortoise, no dropping it in water. Warranty voided if you do.

Vote

• ✅ Yes this actually exists

• ❌ Nope you totally made this up

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: The Death of the Shopping Mall

• The rise of e-commerce over the last decade or so has spelled trouble for malls around the USA.

• Foot traffic at malls has declined by 30–50% in the past decade and since 2010 more than 300 of the 1,500 malls around the USA have closed.

• Not only this but Coresight Research estimates that over 25% of malls in the U.S. are expected to close by 2025.

• But all of this valuable real estate coming on the market means opportunities in this space are opening up

Business Ideas

• Dead Mall Reuse Marketplace: A platform that connects real estate developers, municipalities, and startups with underused mall properties for alternative uses (e.g. clinics, schools, housing).

• Fulfillment Center Franchise for Local Brands: Convert mall units into local micro-fulfillment hubs for small e-commerce brands, using dark store models.

TOGETHER WITH SURFSHARK

Hackers Love Tourists

Public WiFi. Airbnb TVs. Sketchy charging stations. Your data is up for grabs every time you travel.

Surfshark One locks it all down. Stay private at home and abroad.

Half Baked readers get 85% off + 3 extra months.

Learn more.

THE MONEYSHOT

Building a $500m Business in 2 Years

Business ideas can emerge from asking the simplest questions.

Take this founder who, by asking himself a simple question, went on to build a $500m business in two years.

This is his story.

Chad Janis is an adventurer. Both in life and in business.

He studied Finance at Brigham Young University, graduating in 2017, and after college went on to work in investment banking.

But soon after starting into his career Chad felt the entrepreneurial itch. So he started his first business, Credit Cache, which was the "Kayak" of free flights. The platform allowed users to accumulate the necessary points to book flights almost for free.

While running Credit Cache Chad also took some time to travel to 40 different countries with his wife, a great publicity move for the business. Ultimately Credit Cache grew to $100k ARR, but Chad shut it down since he didn’t feel like it had enough traction to really work.

He then went back into finance, working as as investor at Summit Partners and getting his MBA from Stanford for good measure.

In 2022 though he got back into founder mode, starting Influenceli, a product which matched influencers and brands programmatically which he had to sell after just a year of operations.

With some experience but no big wins under his belt Chad wanted to try again. All he needed was an idea. And one day, it hit him.

One day Chad was trying to drink his AG1 (Athletic Greens) but he hated the taste. In fact, this was his second time trying it, hoping he’d like it this time. No dice. But at that moment Chad asked himself a very simple question: “How could I make this taste amazing?”.

He decided to turn the messy powder into a delicious, easy-to-consume gummy.

This was the idea for Grüns.

Working closely with nutritionists and food scientists, Chad developed the Grüns gummy product, these bite-sized gummy bears packed with a blend of over 60 whole-food-derived ingredients.

Once the product went live it was an instant hit. Over the course of 2024, its first year in business, Grüns amassed over 250,000 subscribers to receive the product monthly.

In late 2024, the company secured distribution deals to put Grüns on store shelves such as Sprouts Farmers Market.

In August 2024, in order to keep up with this this rapid growth, Chad secured $11.1 million in debt financing and earlier this month secured another $10m in equity financing at a reported valuation of $500m. After just two years in business? Bonkers.

But Grüns had a great shot at success because it followed the golden rule of entrepreneurship…it took something people were already doing and made it better. And it all started because Chad asked himself one very simple question.

Who knows, you could be one simple question away from success too.

You just have to keep asking.

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