Inflatable Nightclubs, a $500M idea, exploring side quests, ...

Hey,

this is Jakob Greenfeld, author of the Business Brainstorms newsletter - every week I write this email to help you level up your entrepreneurial game.

Let's dive into today's ideas, trends, and opportunities.

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💡 Social Listening

• “This is the tool I wish existed - a simple tweet queueing tool with a native feel.” - Twitter

  

  • There are already tons of Twitter scheduling tools and most of them are bloated which means you have to pay for tons of features you’re not really using.

  • So a super simple, clean, and cheap tweet queueing tool could become a nice side business. I definitely would become a happy customer.

• “Free $500m idea: reinvent and relaunch slideshare. The opportunity still sitting there for the taking” - Twitter

• “So... is there a baby formula that isn't full of industrial seed oils? Because I started doing research and wow this is not good.” - Twitter

📈 Trend Signals of the Week

• An inflatable nightclub is a portable structure that is erected by inflating it using a blower. Its features mimic those of an actual nightclub.

• They are especially popular for weddings and birthday parties.

• You can buy one for around $1000 on AliBaba and companies are renting them out for $200/night. So it’s not hard to do the math on how quickly they’re getting a solid return on their investment.

• The Leica paper camera is an eco-friendly camera that is made out of thin sheets of cardstock that are equipped with a thin digital camera in the middle and a simple button which serves the purpose of snapping photos, turning the device on and off.

• Read more here and here.

• The Centered Student Planner was created to give students an academic planner that is "a professor in an academic planner," with more than 50 tutorials that provide support for taking notes effectively and balancing a social life.

• The planner was created with monthly and weekly layouts, plus hourly breakdowns, to teach time management in a way that is easy to take action on.

• It is not a digital solution and it is specifically speaking to Gen Z and their struggles with anxiety.

• Read more here and here.

• Fun related idea: turn popular Notion templates into analog products.

👨‍🎓 Framework of the Week

• The Framework: Sell traditional products by exploiting a novel acquisition channel. Research what acquisition channels are emerging right now and then brainstorm how you could use them to sell products with proven demand.

• Explanation:

  • This is what Moiz Ali did with Native Deodorant (acquired Procter & Gamble for $100 million). Deodorants with natural ingredients have existed for a long time before Moiz entered the stage. The only thing he did differently was to start selling it directly on the internet instead of going through the usual retail channels.

  • GymShark was able to build a huge sportswear brand using influencer marketing before the term existed.

  • Tabs managed to build a rapidly growing chocolate business by leveraging user-generated content. (UGC is really just less polished influencer shoutouts that happen to work really well on TikTok right now.)

💭 Prompt of the Week

• Prompt: What new business ventures could you create if you focused exclusively on ___?

• Example: Coworking spaces exclusively for women. Meal delivery specifically for single-person households. VAs for solopreneurs. Daily planner specifically for runners.

💸 Revenue Signals of the Week

• Datafetcher now makes $8.6k/month. (“import data in airtable”)

• Podcasting360 generates $1500/month. (“you record, we handle the rest“)

• Adam Lyttle’s app portfolio generates $1,190/month. (“Intermittent Fasting+ Tracker, Angel Numbers & Meanings, …“)

• Caplena is now at $1k MRR. (“Quickly explore & analyze text comments and share your results in dashboards.”)

• Hivoe grows by almost 100% in 30 days to $204 MRR. (“twitter dms. made easy.“)

• AI SQL starts with $75/month in revenue. (“With AI2sql, engineers and non-engineers can easily write efficient, error-free SQL queries without knowing SQL”)

📚 Business Read of the Week

• Jack Raines is one of my favorite newsletter writers and I love this piece he wrote on the importance of pursuing side quests.

• Favorite takeaways:

  • “The main story isn't your story.“

  • “Side quests are where the magic happens. Where you get a taste of the unknown. And that taste of the unknown, that's where the exciting stuff begins.”

  • “Sure, you can speed-run the main plot line and avoid everything else. But the point of the game is to enjoy playing the game. Not to reach some arbitrary finish line.”

🤖 AI Ideas of the Week

• The Idea: Airbnb for Office Space

• The Pain Point: It’s hard to find a private place to work outside of your house.

• The Opportunity: Someone should create Airbnb for office space. This website would allow employees to work at a variety of offices. People could rent a desk or for a day, week, or months at a time from companies that don’t need all of their office space.

• The Idea: A Recycling App for Businesses

• The Pain Points: Many businesses have recycling programs, but they’re often not well-advertised or easy to use. This leads to a lot of recycling waste ending up in the trash.

• The Opportunity: Someone should create a recycling app for businesses. This app would allow businesses to list their recycling programs and would give users directions on how to recycle their waste. The app would also provide businesses with analytics on how much waste they’re recycling and how they can improve their recycling rates.

📢 Shoutouts

• Ty Frankel's 20 of the Best Cold Email CTAs - A free resource: 20 shockingly effective cold email CTAs used to book 100s of sales calls with billion-dollar Fortune 500 companies.

• Building Rome(s) is a must-read for technical program managers. In under 5 mins a week Aadil manages to share amazing advise, insights, learnings.

• The Young Professional by Jonathon Larkins is about helping you become the best self in your personal and professional life. If you want to grow as a person The Young Professional is a great place to start.

• The Lake Street Journal by Joe Wells is all about borrowed wisdom for a better life. Loved his post on his misogi experience.

• Last week’s AI Idea was a CRM for Communities. One reader (👋 Stefan) pointed out to me that the Burb team is working on just that idea. Really cool!

End Note

As always, if you’re enjoying this report, I’d love it if you shared it with a friend or two. You can send them here to sign up. 

And should you come across any interesting businesses, trends, or ideas this week, send them my way!

Have a great week,

Jakob