BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Influencer Vetting API 🤳  

Catch frauds, not feelings

Available Domain: Cloutcert.com

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: We are truly blessed to live in the same era as influencers. Which of course is why we all constantly ask them about their lives so they can share their sage advice with us…

But in truth the right influencer campaign can be a game-changer for a brand, driving huge sales and brand awareness. But the flip side is that working with the wrong influencer can be incredibly damaging for a company. This is why vetting, such as background checks and audience quality scores, are so important. But how can this be done at scale? We think we have a way.

Market Size: The global influencer marketing industry was valued at $21bn in 2023

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A platform that provides instant verification, fraud detection, and brand alignment scoring of influencers for brands and influencer marketing platforms

How it Works:

• A brand or marketplace taps the API to complete an influencer identity check

• The influencer’s social accounts are checked for follower authenticity, with engagement rates calculated and bots/fake follower counts estimated

• The platform analyzes past influencer posts/content for problematic language, themes, or brand mismatches as well as ensuring FTC compliance (clear disclosure of sponsored content) and flags any prior issues

• Over time the platform continuously monitors influencer behavior for new controversies or suspicious engagement patterns.

Go-to-market: Sell into influencer marketplaces (e.g., #paid, Tribe, Activate), influencer CRMs, and agencies needing instant vetting integration

Business Model: Monthly/annual subscription fees with tiered pricing based on usage volume (number of API calls)

Startup Costs: This could be pretty expensive to get up and running unless you have a great engineer you can work with

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: This business would likely exit to an influencer marketing giant like GRIN or CreatorIQ

Exit Multiple: Influencer tech and API-focused SaaS companies typically see strong exit multiples of 6x–12x ARR

TOGETHER WITH OMNISEND

Boring Marketing that Delivers Big Results

The thrill of not knowing how something will turn out? That’s what gets your heart racing, right?

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Yes, $68 for every $1.

It’s not flashy. It’s not a gamble. It just works. Every. Single. Time. At Half Baked, we only recommend tools that actually deliver. That’s why we partnered with Omnisend—because they’re the real deal.

From popups to newsletters to abandoned cart recovery, 125,000+ e-commerce brands use Omnisend to grow their revenue while keeping costs low.

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

McDonald’s Candles

• Do you love McDonald’s? Do you wish your home could smell like freshly unwrapped cheeseburger with a faint hint of industrial fryer grease all the time?

• Well now it can with this incredible line of McDonald’s candles, the only candle collection designed to make your home smell like America's favorite fast-food chain.

• Pro tip: if you burn all the candles together at the same time, it smells like a quarter pounder. What a time to be alive.

Vote

• ✅ Yes this actually exists

• ❌ Nope you totally made this up

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Calming Treats

• We’re all aware of the mental health crisis our generation is facing. But it turns out that even our pets aren’t safe from it…

• With growing awareness around pet mental health, “calming treats” have become a popular wellness solution for pet owners seeking a gentle, holistic approach to reducing anxiety in their animals.

• They often contain natural ingredients like L-Tryptophan, chamomile, valerian root to ease a pet’s anxiety during travel, thunderstorms, fireworks, or trips to the vet.

Business Ideas

• Pet Anxiety Certification Program for Trainers: Create a course certifying dog trainers in anxiety-reducing techniques, bundled with private-label calming treats they can resell.

• Frozen Calming Treats Line: A line of frozen calming treats (think dog-safe popsicles or frozen yogurt) infused with calming herbs or CBD.

TOGETHER WITH SHOPIFY

He was a 19-year-old pizza delivery driver. Now he’s a billionaire.

Ben Francis started Gymshark in his garage - sewing fitness gear by hand and selling it online between pizza shifts.

He built a Shopify store, went viral, and scaled his brand into a global fitness empire.

Now Gymshark is worth over $1.5 billion. Ben didn’t have investors or a roadmap - just a laptop, an idea, and the will to build.

Whether you’re just starting out or ready to scale, Shopify gives you everything you need to go from driver to billionaire. Start your store with a 3-day free trial, then it’s just $1/month for your first 3 months.

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THE MONEYSHOT

The Simple App Google Acquired for $30m

Sometimes ideas can seem incredibly simple, but they’re difficult to execute.

Take these founders who had an idea just like this that they sold to Google for $30m.

This is their story.

David Lieb (left) has always been super ambitious.

And back in 2008 David, a Stanford grad and former Texas Instruments engineer, enrolled at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business to complete his MBA.

And as part of his MBA, David was doing a lot of networking, which is when he noticed how awkward and inefficient all of this networking was. People would fumble with phones, manually type numbers, or exchange business cards, all of which felt quite archaic.

Which is when David wondered…”why can’t we just bump phones to exchange info?”.

He teamed up with his classmates, Andy Huibers (right, a former Microsoft engineer) and Jake Mintz (a former McKinsey analyst), to see if they could build the product.

They entered the University of Chicago’s New Venture Challenge, where they got early validation and feedback from judges and investors. This early attention encouraged them to relocate to Silicon Valley to pursue the idea full-time after graduating.

This was the beginnings of Bump.

David’s initial idea seemed simple, but back in 2008 this was incredibly hard to achieve. Until the trio came up with an ingenious way to pull it off.

When two phones were "bumped," they detected the motion via the accelerometer. Each phone would then send data (plus a timestamp and GPS location) to the cloud. The backend server then matched the two phones that "bumped" at the same time and location, and completed the data exchange. Genius.

They launched their app a few months after the App Store itself launched, and it immediately took off. Bump became the #1 free app on the App Store within weeks and Apple even demoed Bump in TV commercials and at WWDC keynotes, catapulting its visibility.

In order to support all of this growth the team raised money, raising a $3.4 million Series A round from Sequoia Capital in 2009 followed by a $16 million Series B in 2010 from Andreessen Horowitz, SV Angel, and Sequoia.

At its peak, Bump had over 100 million downloads and was the 7th most downloaded app of all time. But by 2012 Bump’s growth started to slow as smartphone platforms evolved and file-sharing became more standardized.

Interested in the team and the tech the company had built, Google acquired Bump Technologies for a reported $30–$60 million in September 2013. After the acquisition, the team joined Google and began working on new products, but the Bump app itself was shut down in January 2014. A sad end for the app, but a great success for the founders.

All because they had the fortitude to see their idea through.

1 - 1 FOUNDER FEEDBACK

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