BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

HelloFresh for Dinner Parties 🍽️  

It’s party thyme

Available Domain: Tablefull.com

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: Millennials get stressed about lots of things. House prices. Climate change. Avocado ripeness of course...

But interestingly, 65% of millennials say they feel “stressed” about hosting friends at home. That’s because hosting a dinner party is pretty stressful, even at the best of times, which is a shame since they’re such a great way to connect with people in an age where people feel so disconnected. So why not create a product that makes hosting a breeze? Let’s do exactly that.

Market Size: The global meal kit market is worth c.$20bn per Statista

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A premium dinner party meal kit that delivers everything needed to host a themed dinner party at home

How it Works:

• The customer selects when they are hosting a dinner party and for how many people

• They can then choose from themed monthly menus e.g., “Tokyo Tasting,” “Italian Summer Night” etc.

• Customers then receive their box including pre-measured premium ingredients, recipe cards, menus for guests, a QR code to a matching Spotify playlist and even games for after dinner.

Go-to-market: Set up a landing page to pre-sell some of the dinner kits to test demand, then expand from there

Business Model: Customers pay per kit ($99 - $149 price point)

Startup Costs: You could start this for almost nothing by getting customers to pre-order and pre-pay for kits then delivering them on a small scale to start out

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: Get acquired by HelloFresh, Blue Apron, or another player in this space

Exit Multiple: Food brands with strong DTC traction generally sell for 4x - 8x revenue

TOGETHER WITH GOHIGHLEVEL

One Platform to Run Your Business

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And to help you grow your business the High Level team are hosting a free, live training on May 19–20, where you’ll learn step-by-step how to turn your social channels into a powerful sales engine. Mark your calendars!

In the meantime we’ve secured an exclusive 30-day free trial just for our readers. Start exploring HighLevel and see what it can do for your business.

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Guitar Cheese Grater

• Are you an aspiring rockstar at heart? Looking to inject some energy into your cooking?

• Introducing Shred Zeppelin™, the guitar-shaped cheese grater forged in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and lightly tested in a suburban kitchen.

• Shred Zeppelin™…the best tool for cooking your “gratest” hits.

Vote

• ✅ Yes this actually exists

• ❌ Nope you totally made this up

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Ice Water Facials

• Cold plunges have made waves in the wellness space, so it was only a matter of time before the trend reached our faces…

• Enter the ice water facial: a recent viral beauty ritual where people dunk their faces in a bowl of ice-cold water for 10 to 30 seconds.

• The shock of cold causes blood vessels to constrict, which can reduce puffiness, calm inflammation, and leave skin looking tighter and more refreshed.

• It’s simple, dramatic, and oddly satisfying. The perfect fuel for TikTok’s algorithm.

Business Ideas

• Mythbusters for Viral Trends: A content series that tests viral trends (like ice water facials) to see how effective they are

• “Cryo-on-the-Go” Travel Kit: A TSA-friendly cold facial kit with instant-cool packs (like mini ice packs), wipes, serum samples, and under-eye cooling gels.

TOGETHER WITH PREDICTIVE SUCCESS

What kind of founder are you, really?

You’ve read every business book and taken advice from 10 mentors.

But have you ever seen a behavioral x-ray of you? The reality from HBR is that only 15% of entrepreneurs are actually self-aware – it can be an expensive problem.

Take a 6-minute, scientifically valid behavioral assessment used by Fortune 500 companies, the fastest growing companies in Silicon Valley, and NHL / NFL / NBA franchises. Use it to discover your unique leadership style and harness people data to hire smarter, move faster, and lead better.

If you’re an entrepreneur, building a team, or just curious to learn more… try the survey here (it’s freakishly accurate). Half Baked readers will receive a free 15-minute debrief from Predictive Success.

Take the test

THE MONEYSHOT

From 30 Investor Rejections to $4bn

In business you have to back yourself.

Take these guys who got rejected by 30 investors but went on to build a $4bn business.

This is their story.

Back in 2007, Eren Bali (left), a Turkish software engineer and math whiz, was living in a small village in eastern Turkey.

Despite limited local educational resources growing up though, he managed to teach himself advanced mathematics online and win a silver medal in the International Math Olympiad. This experience made Eren realize that the internet could level the educational playing field for people in underprivileged regions. And he wanted to be the one to do drive this forward…

So he teamed up with Oktay Çağlar (bottom right) and together the pair created a live virtual classroom in Turkey in 2007. However, they struggled to get traction or funding locally. So in 2008, he moved to Silicon Valley to pursue their dream more seriously.

In Silicon Valley, the pair met Gagan Biyani, a former Accenture consultant and writer for TechCrunch, and together they decided to pivot the platform into a marketplace where any expert could teach a course and any learner could take it.

Initially, they bootstrapped the company and launched without venture funding, building a minimum viable product that allowed anyone to upload a course using video, PDF, and PowerPoint formats.

It was early 2010 and they decided to name their business after "You + Academy".

They founded Udemy.

Their early traction was encouraging. Within just a few months, over 1,000 instructors had signed up, and they were seeing steady user growth.

Despite the promising early numbers, over 30 investors rejected Udemy in the early days. The main concern? Investors weren’t sure that ordinary people would pay for online courses from non-accredited instructors.

Their persistence paid off though when First Round Capital, Floodgate, and Learn Capital finally came onboard in August 2010, providing a $1 million seed round. And since then, the company has never looked back.

Over the next decade the company raised around $185m across multiple different funding rounds. By 2020, Udemy was valued at $3.25 billion and in 2021 Udemy went public on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol UDMY, raising $420.5 million at a $4bn valuation.

Since then the valuation has dropped to $1bn, however the business brought in $780m in revenue in 2024 and has over 77 million users. That’s a lot of people doing a lot of learning.

But the big learning from their story is that you have to be willing to back yourself to make it. You’re gonna have to keep going in the face of endless adversity, a sea of setbacks and no after no after no.

But that will make winning all the sweeter.

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