BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Shared Office Space Platform 🏢 

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Available Domain: Werkplaces.com

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: Covid changed the world in a lot of ways, but one of the lasting effects covid has had is on office attendance. The pandemic reduced office use in the US by almost 50%, with employees slow to return to their daily commutes to get into the office.

But for these businesses they’ve been left to deal with highly inflexible, long term lease agreements for office spaces that they

Market Size: The global share office spaces market was valued at $41.4bn in 2024

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: Office leasing platform which allows companies with excess office space to rent it out to small businesses

How it Works:

• Businesses sign up to the platform and become lessors, similar to hosts on Airbnb, where they post how much excess capacity they have in their offices and what the rate is to rent the space

• Other businesses can then go on the platform and take out flexible, month-to-month leases in these spaces with the revenue accruing to the lessors

Go-to-market: Start off in the big cities which are suffering the most with this problem - NYC, London, San Francisco etc.

Business Model: Take a % of each lease on the platform

Startup Costs: Pretty minimal, this isn’t a hugely technical build

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: The path to an exit here is to sell to a coworking business like Regus, or to a residential real estate business, like Zillow, who could use this to expand into the B2B space

Exit Multiple: Your business is likely to be valued as a marketplace, so will likely fetch 1-2x the run rate GMV (gross merchandisable value) or 6x - 8x annual revenue

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Split Screen Cinemas

Short form video is killing our attention spans. A lot of people these days can’t sit through a 10 minute video, never mind a full movie.

Well we’re here to save the movie industry by creating split screen cinemas. Moviegoers can enjoy their movie while watching staying engaged with Subway Surfers playing alongside, just like on TikTok.

Everybody wins.

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: AGI is Coming Sooner Than We Think

Back in 2020 most experts thought AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) was at least 50 years away. But the timeline has getting shorter and shorter, with the latest consensus that AGI is just 7 years away. And Elon Musk believes that we’ll reach AGI within just 2 years.

The world is changing so quickly, make sure you don’t get left behind.

THE MONEYSHOT

How One Video Sparked a $1bn Exit

It’s 2010.

33 trapped Chilean miners have just been saved, Spain triumphed in the football World Cup and Michael Dubin and Mark Levine are both at a party discussing their frustrations with the cost of razor blades.

So they decided to do something about it…and disrupted the entire consumer packaged goods industry in the process.

In January 2011 the pair founded Dollar Shave Club, a DTC business that delivers razor blades on a monthly basis to customers, as well as offering additional grooming products.

But it wasn’t until 2012 that Dollar Shave Club found its footing, thanks to a single video they made. With a budget of only $4,500 the brand shot a video of Dubin bouncing around their warehouse, proclaiming that their blades are “f***ing great”.

The video went super viral and propelled the brand into the main stream.

The growth they achieved on the back of the video allowed them to raise $9.8m in series A funding.

The company kept growing and became a household name, raising $12m in 2013 and $75m in 2015 to fuel their growth.

They grew so quickly they caught the eye of industry giant Unilever and in 2016 Unilever acquired Dollar Shave Club for $1bn in cash.

An awesome outcome for such a simple concept. Bravo.

FROM THE FANS

#HalfBakedBizIdea

Clint Fischer spotting a side hustle opportunity in the agriculture space…

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