Brainstorming $100M Startup Ideas

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For what Blinkist did to books, I think there's a way that you could implement some similar concept to podcasts. The obvious acquire here would be, like, Spotify.
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Maybe a month or two after it was founded, Spotify acquired it. You listen to Acquire, don't you? So in 2017, if you wanted to be, I think, a presenting sponsor, it would've cost you $2,500.
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In 2025, to be the presenting partner, [chuckles] it would cost you $1.5 million.
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I think there's two or three different formats that you could do which are similar to the Acquire podcast, but just in different verticals that I think could do really, really well.
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So the first one would be, like, Acquired for- This is so good. Gen Zs, they're, they're very, very difficult to appeal to when it comes to dating apps. They hate dating apps, yeah. I think we bring speed dating back.
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Problem with the vast majority of energy drinks, I feel like you have this kind of open space in what is an incredibly crowded market for someone to build- [upbeat music] Half Baked. He's like half-baked. Half-baked.
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Half Baked. Half Baked. Half Baked. Half Baked. Half Baked. Half Baked. All of a sudden it's like the revenge of the idea guys.
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[upbeat music] Hey, guys, I'm Daragh, and alongside John, my co-host, we run Half Baked, the ideas company.
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Every day we send a newsletter with a new startup idea pulled from the world's best founders, investors, and builders, and hundreds of thousands of people read it every single day.
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And this podcast is an extension of that newsletter. We have one mission here at Half Baked, and that's to create one million founders over the next 10 years, and that's you. This is episode one.
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John and I get into an idea that Spotify should definitely acquire. We get into a gap in the market that nobody has filled in the podcast space, dating apps for Gen Zs, and a white space in the energy drink market.
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If you have any feedback on this episode, please leave it in the comments below or just message us directly on Twitter. We promise we will read and reply to every single one of them. Thank you, and enjoy the episode.
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Do you know what I was thinking the other day? We could be on episode 1,025 because we've had so many of these conversations. [laughs] What, what did you tell me before?
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You were like, "I talk to you more than I talk to my wife." I do. We are effectively married. It is, with no, with no prenup, unfortunately, so we need to be careful here that we don't, uh, we don't fall out.
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Well, we kind of do have a prenup. We have a company that we both own half of that- Yeah, true... if one person wants to leave, it would be very, very expensive for both- Yeah. [laughs] I was gonna-... for both of us...
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yeah, I was gonna, yeah, I was gonna say, I don't think, uh, I don't think there's a world where that happens, but, uh, yeah. I don't think so either. I, I do, it, it do- Go on... I do think about it, though.
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Imagine, like, if, uh, if you do go through, like, a founder breakup or a co-founder breakup, 'cause, like, it does happen all the time.
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I think it's actually the most common reason why, like, most early-stage startups fail. Like, how devastating must that be? Like, if you're there and you...
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something's working and it's going well or whatever, and then all of a sudden, like, co-founder decides to leave or maybe they have to leave. It depends, like, but that must just be, like, awful.
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It must be awful, but it must be awful for your past self.
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I think it's easier for your current self, because if a co-founder is leaving, they're probably leaving for a reason, and it's either because you've fallen out, or they probably haven't been pulling their weight, or because something has happened externally that they can do nothing about.
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Mm. So I, I don't know.
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I think if, if there's a way to get a fair outcome there, where someone gets bought out or somebody leaves on fair terms, I think it's good, but I think we both know that's probably not the case most of the time.
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Po- poached by a, a frontier lab would be, would be a tricky one.
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If you're there, you've got a super technical co-founder, and they're like, "Sorry, I'm going off to work for Anthropic," you'd be like, "Well, I can't really compete with them, so yeah, that's fair."
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[laughs] I, I was in San Francisco meeting a partner three weeks ago, and they were talking about how they've dropped their headcount from 80 to 20, and I remember thinking like, "Like, was it a riff?
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Have you let people off?" And he goes, "Yeah. Yeah, we did leave a few people off, but also we're just losing all of our engineers to Anthropic." And I'm like, "Really?"
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And he said, "Yeah, they're just offering them salaries and packages that we just can't compete with." Mm-hmm. And in my head I was like, "You should do business in Ireland, man. Salaries over here are way less."
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[laughs] I, I feel like that's kind of a flex. It's like we hired, you know, so well that they're all being poached by Anthropic. That's nearly like a flex. [laughs] Um- Yeah. It's kind... Yeah.
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It's kind of like flexing to yourself in the mirror, though. It doesn't really mean anything. Yeah. No, it, it, it reminds me a little bit of, um, you know, like, Google back in the day. Like, their, um...
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A- a- and it's, they're, obviously they're parodied heavily in, in Silicon Valley by Hooli. They have a couple of episodes, like, dedicated to it.
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But yeah, like, literally, um, Google's entire thing was like we would rather pay people, like, really, really ambitious or, uh, really, really, like, potentially great startup founders, we would rather pay them to sit around and literally do nothing than actually go out and compete with us.
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So I feel like Anthropic, OpenAI are probably gonna just do something similar, where, like...
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And, and Google, of course, where, like, they're just gonna go out and, like, anybody who they think could be a potential competitor to them, they're just gonna s- you know, scoop them up and pay them outrageous salaries because they can afford to, you know?
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The world is mad. That was, like, Nelson in Silicon Valley, wasn't it? Uh, yeah. Nelson Bighetti. Uh, yeah. Uh, he, uh, [laughs] exactly. He just kept failing his way to the top.
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But, uh, yeah, there, there was a whole, a whole storyline there. Um, incredible character. Great show. Incredible. I need to rewatch that, actually. I haven't watched that in a very long time.
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I also think somebody needs to do, like, a Kickstarter or something where we try and bring that back, 'cause I feel like the amount of stuff that's going on in, like, Silicon Valley in the last, like, two years, let's say, has actually been crazier than that show.
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Like, they need- Yeah... they need a, they need a reboot. It would, it would do, like, it would do so, so well. It would do incredibly well. I think it's my favorite show ever.
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This time around, I actually watched it with, with my wife for pure selfish reasons, 'cause I wanted to- Mm-hmm... get her in on all of the jokes that I make- Yeah... that she do- that she doesn't laugh at.
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Um, but it is, yeah, it is an absolutely revolutionary show. Ahead of its time. Like, a lot of what it's predicted and what it did- Uh, has come to fruition and more Absolutely, yeah. Absolutely.
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Life imitating art, as they like to say. Funnily enough, and this is a free, a free shout-out,
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George, a guy working with us, uh, was tasked with finding an enrichment tool, and we wanted to figure out how we can enrich our subscribers, and he came back to us and said, "Guys, I have this company that can do it for us.
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It's called Aviato." And two of us are like, "What? A- Aviato? The company from Silicon Valley?" "Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is them." And I'm like, "Okay, it's probably a coincidence." Uh, get the contract anyway.
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Uh, Aviato training, or trading as Bachmanity [laughs]. That was it, yeah. That, uh- I am... Yeah, I was very jealous, I have to say. I, I immediately wanted to do business with that company the second that we got that.
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Gonna say it's, uh, it's a bit like when we were, when we were going for the, you know, the, the branding stuff, and, uh, we had the guys at Sarado who wanted to, to work with us, and they were talking about, like, nominative determinism.
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They were like, "Oh, man, like, you know, Sarado, Halfbakedly, we've got to work together."
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It's that kind of thing where, like, you come across something [laughs] like Silicon Valley or, or you come across something like, um, Bachmanity, you're like, "Yeah, that, we just want to work together 'cause you're, you seem cool, and, like, let's just do business together."
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That kind of idea. Completely. Completely. Well, John, it's about time we're sitting down to do this because I think we've talked about 1,000 episodes worth of ideas, so we'll be getting- Yeah...
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this is actually our first-ever time doing a one-to-one, so congratulations. Welcome. We've already gotten past 99% of podcasts.
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[both laugh] It's, uh, when you say one-to-one, I think more like of, like, a p- performance review. Is this, like, [laughs] a recording of a performance review? [laughs]. I'm like, oh, God- This is an intervention...
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please don't. Yeah, exactly. John, you're 780 newsletters through, uh, and it's about time we have a conversation about your performance. [laughs] Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Oh, my God, imagine.
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That's one thing I definitely don't miss about, uh, about corporate, corporate life. Um- Let me go first- Yeah... 'cause I, I have a, I have a pretty good one here. Um- Yeah, go for it.
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Well, I, uh, I have a good one that could be a very, very bad one. So I don't know about you, but I feel like I have less time to consume now.
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I, I, I have no time to consume anymore, so when it comes to podcasts mainly, that's my main form of consuming. Mm-hmm.
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Particularly when I go out for runs and stuff, uh, it's probably the only way I can do it, and also, when you're listening to podcasts while, while you're running, you're simultaneously thinking about the pain you're in and also what's being said, so it's quite hard to actually take, take things in.
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Mm-hmm. And especially deeper ones like Acquired. You, you listen to Acquired, don't you? Uh, [laughs] I don't have time. [laughs] No, I do, I do, I do, I do try to. Just say yes. I know. I- Set me up, John.
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[laughs] Yeah. I, I do. I do. Good man. Good man. Well, do I have something for you. Anyway, I think that there's so much good content out there. Like, you listen to podcasts for two reasons, right?
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The first one is you listen to learn, second one is you listen for entertainment, right?
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So I'm just binning the entertainment because you listen to be, you know, satisfied, scratch some, like, mental masturbation that you have.
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Um, when it comes to the learning and when it comes to the actual educational piece, like, the problem is that there is a wealth of information out there, and it's so hard to parse through them.
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So I think that for what Blinkist did to books, I think there's a way that you could implement some similar concept to podcasts. So give me, give me a topic. Um, time management.
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Time management. Yeah, okay. Perfect. Time management. So do you know the way you might cre- or curate your podcast feed based on people? I think there's a way you can curate your podcast feed based on topics.
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So hypothetically, if you said, "Hey, I want to learn about time management," uh, and you say, "Go," and then you in the background have an AI that parses through all the episodes of time management, uh, and ideally is able to find some retention data on that, pick out the best parts of it, and then c- like, bring together, uh, and concatenate all these episodes into one major episode where you're able to pick and choose from all the best parts of those podcasts ab- around that topic.
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Over time, you learn it, and over time, you, uh... Sorry. Over time, it learns about you, and that it then uses all of the content around and brings it together as a way of making it a little bit more efficient for you.
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So am I-- If I'm, if I'm using this product, so let's say, for argument's sake, let's say I want to learn all about peptides, and, like, obviously- Yeah... that's a trending topic right now, you know.
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So the idea would be that I want to learn about peptides, therefore, in my feed, I presume it's, like, a mobile app, but in my feed, I'm basically getting, like, here's a little snippet from, like, Andrew Huberman talking about peptides, like, last week, and then here's another one from, like, Tim Ferriss.
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And then am I getting, like, I don't know, like, a doc, like, an AI kind of summary doc that I'm reading about all the stuff, or is it more, like, the actual clips themselves all kind of being stitched together into, like, as you said, kind of like a mega podcast?
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Yeah, so, like, you know, the doc sounds great. I think if you throw that in a deck, it would look fantastic, but, you know, when you have a bit of experience building products, you realize that nobody wants a doc.
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No, no, that's what I'm saying. Like, nobody- Like, I'm, I-- That's what I was thinking. If, if it was a doc, I was gonna say I absolutely don't want a doc. [laughs] Like- Absolutely not... I do not want a doc...
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absolutely not. So, like- No, no, no...
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if you look at Blinkist, right, Blink- Blinkist was able to get away with doing what they do because they were doing summaries of books, and that's actually not good for the books because people don't buy the books as a result of getting a summary for the book.
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And also, in most cases, you don't really care about the author. You just care about the content within that book. I think podcasts are completely different.
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Podcasts, you care about who's saying it, and also, I think the discoverability around getting people to listen to podcasts through this mechanism is beneficial for both parties.
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So the way that I see it is, and you'd have to figure out how to do this with the RSS and licensing- Yeah... and copyright and stuff. Yeah. But I imagine this where I'd say I have 45 minutes
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I want to learn about peptides Find me what you think are the best clips from different podcasts and then you stitch them together.
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So hypothetically for five minutes, I might be listening to Andrew Huberman for 10 minutes. I might be listening to some guy in the manosphere talking about how he uses peptides to, you know, rob money from people.
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And I think the beauty of this is the monetization. Blinkist sold for 100 million, right? It was pretty flat at the very end of its career.
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So I think this is an incredibly hard business to monetize, to be completely honest. Realistically, is somebody going to pay for an app that brings information that already exists out there together?
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No, like I don't think so. So I think this is an app that you go for scale. And I think you actually make money through ads. So imagine you have your own ad network in the background where it's almost like Google.
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So in the same way, Google, you search peptides, you get peptides ads, except in this case, you're actually turning a podcast into Google. So you search for peptides, you get all of the peptides episodes together.
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Hypothetically, if you say, I want to listen to it for three hours, because I'm going on a long three hours drive, you might have 20 episodes being stitched together.
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Between those episodes, you throw an ad about peptides or about something relevant to the person and the interest that they're listening to. And that's how you monetize. Yeah, yeah.
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Because I was going to say, like with all of those kind of consumer apps, getting people to pay for mobile apps is really, really hard.
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So I think the more you can lean into anything ad supported, you're going to be like, you're going to be in much, much better shape because it's like, it's funny, like we see it ourselves even because obviously like our business is B2B.
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It is an awful lot easier to get a brand to pay out, you know, 10K or something versus getting someone to pay 10 bucks a month for a product, you know? Completely, completely.
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Now, technically, I don't know how it would work. I don't know if you'd be able to tap into various RSS feeds and stitch them together in a way that's seamless and legal. But- Yeah... that didn't stop Uber.
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[laughs] Yeah, I think as well, there's definitely a world here where like the MVP for this could literally be just like a YouTube channel or like a Twitter account or like a, like a media brand nearly where you just do this yourself kind of manually, pull together these videos and then see if they get good traction or a bit of engagement or whatever.
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Try and maybe flag some of the creators, get like, you know, get them kind of involved a little bit as well in the early stages.
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And then yeah, try and figure out how do you kind of productize it because, uh, yeah, to your point, there's definitely going to be some like legal, legal stuff to figure out. But yeah, it doesn't, it never stopped Uber.
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And I think I, I, I tend to be of the opinion that, you know, within reason, like at the earliest stages of something, you have to kind of just [laughs]
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nearly ignore that stuff and just kind of power through, um, because there's no point worrying about, there's no point worrying about the legalities of something if nobody wants the product in the first place.
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So like, it's just something where it's just further down the road of validation.
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Like if you go and you figure out that people really want this, then you kind of go deep on the, the legal stuff without actually doing anything, you know, super illegal.
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I think anybody who has been, who has achieved any reasonable amount of success has probably done something on the blurry line between legal and illegal at some point.
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Except for, except for us, we've done nothing ever even close to illegal. That's, let's be very- No... let's be very clear about that. [laughs] No. We are the exceptions. [laughs] We'll save that for episode 69.
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[laughs] Exactly. The only, the only thing about this idea, 'cause like I think it's a banger idea.
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I think it would, if, if you were able to pull it off, uh, I think there's a world where you either scale this and have a big ad network in the background and, uh, make money that way.
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'Cause like, you know, in 2024, $4.2 billion was spent on podcasts, and that was a 25% increase from the year before. And I think it's only going one way. It's only going up. The one risk is platform dependency.
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If Spotify or Apple Podcasts or YouTube decide that they don't want you working with their API or tapping into the RSS feed,
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there's not really anything you can do unless you actually become a platform, which you're realistically not going to do because you're- Yeah...
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competing against, you know, these incumbents that are, you know, too big, too big to fail. Yeah, absolutely.
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It, it's the kind of thing that I would, I would put down as like totally worth a shot, worth giving it a bash, but I wouldn't be surprised if, if it ends up getting killed like at the kind of later validation stage, let's say, when, yeah, you realize platform dependency or, um, if there's issues with like, yeah, royalties or licensing and all that kind of stuff.
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Like, uh, but I do, I can see exactly like the vision in terms of the product makes a ton of sense to me, and I think we've, we've even talked about this before, like about how,
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yeah, about how much of an open kind of white space this is.
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'Cause when you think about all the podcasts, like the, you know, biggest podcasts in the world like Joe Rogan, Chris Williamson, et cetera, like there are not enough hours in the week to consume that much content.
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Like, there just aren't. It's not possible. Yeah, attention's fixed. Yeah, exactly.
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So if you can do anything you possibly can to, uh, yeah, to pull out the nuggets from those kind of podcasts, um, and then, yeah, surface them to a user, yeah, I think that's a bit of a no-brainer in terms of value proposition.
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But again, it's hard to know about the, the legalities and stuff like that.
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I think somebody like Shopify, who in my mind has a big problem with discoverability, would absolutely love the idea of somebody solving that for them.
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And I think it would be only a matter of time if you got through the, the loopholes that you just get bought out. 100, 100%. Yeah, yeah.
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I think, I think what you'd want to do here is like the, like the, the obvious acquirer here would be like Spotify, 'cause obviously they've already have their ad network and all that.
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They've already got that kind of sorted. The big problem that they have, and the big problem that podcasting in general has, is discoverability. It's not even just a whatever Shopify or Spotify problem.
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It's like across all of podcasting, there is such a huge discoverability problem, um, which is probably why no one's going to listen to this. [laughs] But we'll, we'll figure, we'll figure that out.
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But, uh, no, genuinely, it's, uh, it's, it's a bit of a nightmare. Like, if you compare, like if you compare podcast discoverability to like YouTube and the YouTube a- algorithm, which
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I'm inclined to think that the YouTube algorithm is the kind of best, most underrated probably piece of technology [chuckles] in the last maybe 20 years, or certainly one of them. Like, it's absolutely incredible.
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Um, and there's just no equivalent for podcasts.
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So, um, yeah, if that, if this tool could go some way to solving that discoverability problem, I think, yeah, you're, you're an obvious acquisition target for somebody like, uh, like Spotify, so.
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Why, why do you think they haven't cracked the discoverability side? I have no idea. But one thing I do know is, do you remember, um, do you remember Heardle, H-E-A-R-D-L-E? No. Do you remember that?
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So back when Wordle, um, popped off during, during COVID, uh, somebody basically built, um, Heardle, which was the exact same concept as Wordle, just for, like, listening or with, with songs, basically.
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Um, and I think literally [chuckles] maybe a month or two after it was founded, Spotify acquired it, 'cause I think they thought, "Okay, this is actually something that could help us with discoverability," where, like, you know, people use this as kind of a daily game or whatever.
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They find new songs, new artists. I think this is mainly focused on the, the music side as opposed to podcasting, but the principle's the same.
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But long story short, um, yeah, they acquired it for, I'm guessing, like, low millions of dollars, um, literally after it was, uh, after it was around for a month or two.
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Uh, so it's clearly something that they're thinking about or they, they're happy to, like, you know, take some risks or, or put on some bets in this space. So, um, yeah, I think that's what you'd be hoping for.
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You'd be one of their kind of bets, basically.
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I know you have, you, you have one here that I, I want to get to, but there's definitely a company in big tech acquisitions, because if you think about it, the amount of acquisitions that have been made that have been swallowed up by the giant that is the company, and have not made
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any progress since acquisition is scandalous.
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You hear about a company being bought for a billion dollars, $100 billion, $10 million, because it's going to do X for Y company, and they don't integrate, the team disbands, [chuckles] and before- Mm-hmm...
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you know it, it's sold for, you know, a quarter of the price or just shut down completely- Yeah... two years later. Yeah.
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Like, there's definitely a way you can go to a company and saying, "If you are looking to acquire a company, what we will do is we will make sure-" Mm-hmm. "...
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that that acquisition generates a return on what you've actually invested in it.
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Because I've looked at your org, I've looked at the way your company is set up, and you are not set up to bring this company in, but we're going to make sure you do that."
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It's almost like, you know, migrating ERPs or SOPs- Mm-hmm... except this time you're actually migrating a startup into your company. Yeah.
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It, it, it's, it's very tricky because o- obviously, like, as you know, I, I worked in M&A before, and, uh, [chuckles] the, the stat that really jumped out at me while I was working in M&A was that...
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Now, this is not just tech, this is more broadly, but something like 50% of acquisitions are value-destructive. It's not even that they, like, [chuckles] it's, it's not, it's not even that they don't make any money.
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They actually, like, they have, like, negative NPV or whatever, whatever you'd, you'd call it in, uh, in finance. But, um- So, like, that is horren- like, that is a horrendous stat.
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It is, and it's, it's because, like, there's obviously the whole mechanism around the transaction and, and getting the deal done and all that, but, like, th- and that's obviously the thing that gets all the press and, and, and people kind of, you know, focus on.
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But then the whole integration piece is an entirely separate, like, animal. Um, and where you get particular issues with, on the integration side is, like, uh, culture.
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So when you've got a startup and they've got their own culture, and they get consumed by, like, a gigantic corporation, oftentimes the culture fit is just really not there.
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And then the other issue that you have, um, which is why earn-out things become really important, is that, like, once you've been acquired, um, and particularly if the founder is cashed out, and if the founder then either checks out, like, mentally or literally checks out and just leaves the bu- [chuckles] leaves the business- Yeah...
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you know, the startup then ends up kind of being, like, a, a little bit of a, a lost kind of child inside of a gigantic organization, and then, you know, other strategic priorities, you know, take, take precedent, and all of a sudden you're there and you're looking at this kind of tiny thing that you acquired for, you know,
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a tiny amount relative to where you're trading at, and you're just like, "I just don't care about that anymore." And, and, and the other thing to think about as well is executive churn.
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So you could have a, a deal that's massively championed by, like, one particular executive, and then that executive leaves, and all of a sudden nobody cares about that acquisition or that strategic direction, and companies change directions all the time.
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We've seen ourselves in, in previous companies we've worked for, like, strategic priorities and stuff can literally change every couple of months. In a second. Yeah, literally. So-
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The only thing that's predictable about this world is that it's unpredictable. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. We should do a dedicated episode on companies that you could build for an acquisition.
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So pick a company or pick a few companies, find out what their weak spots are, and then find out, or then do a bit of work on figuring out what products you'd eventually build that would get bought out that they need.
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Actually, one of the things, one of the ideas I have to chat about today is actually kind of a company like that, 'cause there are certain industries where the only, uh, the only way to,
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the only, the only way to basically get a, a return or get, get your exit or whatever to, let's say, make, make a, a bunch of money, frankly, is to, uh, is to exit. But, uh, that'll be, that'll, that's my other idea.
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My, my, my first idea, uh, actually dove- dovetails off something that you mentioned at the very start of this, which was you asked me if I watched the "Acquired" or listened to the "Acquired" podcast.
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So I do sometimes, because, you know, obviously they're a big, they're a big commitment. They're three, four hours and, and whatnot, um, to listen to.
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Well, if you're listening to the Google episode, you're talking about, like, 13 hours. Yeah. It's an audiobook. Yeah.
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No, no, like, they're, they're mega, and I have to say, like, the c- like, it, it's an unbelievable product. Um, it is, like, I'm pretty sure it's the number one business podcast, um, in the world.
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Definitely by revenue, anyway. [chuckles] Well, that's exactly what I was gonna talk about.
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So what I'm kind of obsessed about is, uh, I love, like, diving into the financials of, like, media companies and figuring out, like, how much money they make. You're so cool. I know. I know.
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[chuckles] I don't know if you remember, uh, we bought, the, the Harvard, um- Harvard Business Review, I think did- Yes... a case study on the Acquired podcast a couple of months back. Yes.
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So obviously, with us, with us firing up a podcast here, I decided I'd go back and have a quick look through, like, you know, how does the best in the business, like, h- how much money do they make?
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Do a bit of mental masturbation for what's, what's ahead of us. [laughs] Very much so. Yeah. Oh, no, like, no, this is, this is next level. But yeah, and then my idea kind of dovetails off this. Go on.
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You're, you're teasing me. I know. Yeah, I know. Um, so Acquired Podcast, they do about a million downloads per episode. So they're the number one tech podcast in, in Apple, you know, across Apple and Spotify. Um,
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their listenership is probably, like, the most valuable in the world. Um, rough numbers around that, [laughs] 35% are, are C-suite or VPs, um, and about 33% are founders.
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Um, and the funniest one I saw was, uh, [laughs] they say that the majority of C-suite at NVIDIA, Apple, Google, Meta, and JPMorgan are all listeners.
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So, like, this is literally, like, the highest value, like, audience in the world. Um, the team, so there's two, two hosts and one editor. So that's the entire team. There's nobody else in the business.
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Um, and their output at the moment is they do eight episodes a year. Uh, they do two seasons a year.
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Um, and yeah, I said they're, like, four hours each, or they can be, you know, they can be a lot, a lot longer potentially as well. Um, and the guys put in, I think, a combined 200 hours of prep into every episode.
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Into every episode? Yeah. They, I think they do about 100 hours of prep each, some- something like that. Oh my God. I think we did the same for this podcast, didn't we? Indirectly, maybe.
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Um, no, genuinely, they, they do a ridiculous amount. And like, that's why the product is so good, and like, you know, it, it is, it is, like, the guys did an, an unbelievable job, uh, job with it. But yeah.
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What, what does an ad slot cost, by the way, before we get into your idea? Well, that's, that, that, that's the big thing. So if you look at the sponsorship structure, so they have four partners per season.
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So they have one presenting partner and then three mid-rolls. So just to show the, the growth of the cost [laughs] in this, so in 2017, if you wanted to be, I think, a presenting sponsor, it would've cost you $2,500.
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In 2025, to be the presenting partner, [laughs] it would cost you $1.5 million. Oh my God. 1,000x. So 1.5 million for presenting and then a million dollars for a mid-roll, and they actually have their media kit.
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Uh, it's, it's on their website, so you can actually read through this. It's, it's, it's really, really interesting.
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So they do four, so 1.5 million an episode for presenting, then they have three mid-rolls for a million dollars.
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So that's just shy of $5 million an episode, eight episodes a year, 40 million a year, plus whatever else they're not disclosing. Yeah.
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I'm not sure if it's 1 point million,.15 million per episode or if that's for, I think that's for a season as opposed to for an episode, if you get me. I see. So that'd be for four episodes.
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That's, that's crap, so bunch of losers. [laughs] It's, it's ti- it's tiny, yeah. It's tiny. But if you look at their season partnership availability, right, um, so they're sold out through 2027.
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Um, and if you want to sponsor for the fall 2029, uh, season, a presenting partnership is gonna be $6.5 million, [laughs] and a mid-roll is gonna be 4.7. Yes. I love- Per season... I love it.
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I, imagine having the balls to do that. But, like, they're, they literally, if you look back, I think they started back in 2015. They've been growing consistently at, like, 2X every single year.
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So, like, I think they just know, they just know they're gonna keep growing. I, I bloody love it when someone commits to something for 10 years.
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Um, and then the last part of it as well is that they've got an entire back catalog partnership as well.
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So you can, you know, for, for spring 2029, again, for $1.5 million, um, you can basically get ad slots in their, like, previous episodes that they've ran before. Um- Oh. We should do that.
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We should figure something out there, yeah. It did get me thinking about our, our back catalog of ideas. How do we monetize them a bit better?
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But, um, anyway, bottom line is the Acquired podcast is an un- like, it's an unbelievable business. Like, they're making huge amounts of money, team of three people.
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Um, you can run the numbers on it, but, like, they're doing, you know, over the next couple of years, they're gonna do probably 50 million of cumulative revenue, like, easily, uh, between the three of them, which is, like, insane to think about.
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Pretty much 99% profit. Yeah, like, ab- absolutely unbelievable, and obviously they've, they've got a fund on the side as well. Like, there is a $25 million fund, and they're, they're deploying capital there as well, so.
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Anyway, w- why am I talking about this? Because I reckon you could trans- This has been the longest setup ever. [laughs] I know. Yeah, I know. Got to stand up if we need to. But, um- Go for it...
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no, the reason being that, like, obviously the format works incredibly well, so, like, I'm a big fan of, like, how can you transplant a format from, like, one vertical into another?
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I think that's always a, a good starting point for a business idea.
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So I think there's two or three different formats that you could do which are similar to the Acquired podcast, but just in different verticals that I think could do really, really well.
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So the first one would be, like, Acquired for sports franchises. Yes. So you basically go incredibly deep. I knew you'd like this idea. This is right up your street.
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You basically go incredibly deep, uh, long episodes into the biggest sports franchises in the world. So, for example, Dallas Cowboys, Golden State Warriors, Manchester United, Real Madrid.
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Like, you do it across all different sports. Um, generally speaking, people who are, like, people who like one sport like a lot of sports, um, so you're gonna get a real, a kind of loyal, uh, listenership.
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Um, you'll hopefully pick people up along the way. So, like, you launch your Manchester United episode, for example. All the Man United fans kind of pour in 'cause they'll be interested.
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You do, like, three, four-hour deep dive on, like, the entire history of the club, like, how they make money, finances, just, just everything, like, the, the definitive- This-... guide to these things. This is so good.
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This is so good.
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Honestly, like, I, I really think, I really think somebody could make a h- like, make a h- huge podcast out of this because, like- Because Like, the difference between this and Acquired, now bear in mind, there are pros and cons.
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Like- Yeah... your, your audience is not gonna be anywhere near as valuable as Acquired's audience. Mm-hmm. But- No... the audience already cares.
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I feel like the guys at, in, in Acquired already, like, when they start an episode, they have to sell the episode. Like, do I really wanna listen to the start of, you know, how Coca-Cola was founded?
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Do I, do I really wanna go back to 1918 to when Rolex kind of like first started as an idea? Maybe, but realistically not. In this case, the audience already cares.
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Like, they, they already care about the topic, and the fandom is your distribution.
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So every club already has a tribe, so you already have this huge TAM that are going to listen to it because they already have a vested interest in what it is you're gonna be talking about. 100%.
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And then obviously you can run this kind of business in two ways.
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You can obviously go the route of, like, just run it as, like, a cash flow machine, you know, getting your, your, your sponsors, et cetera, and, um, and, and go big there.
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But also, I happen to know that, um, the ath- you know, the, The Athletic, um, the like subscription, uh, yeah, so they basically, um, there's a YouTube channel, I forget what it's called.
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Is it, like, Tifo Football or something like that, that they actually acquired. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Oh, I think that was acquired by The Athletic a while back.
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I also think the guys at The Athletic acquired, um, The Race as well, which is like a, an F1 kind of podcast, um, slash me- media company. So, like,
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there, there's clearly a market as well for people, you know, for these types of, uh, entities to get acquired as well.
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So, like, it's not only something where you're, you're not just hoping to build it up as a cash flow business and kind of run it forever.
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It's actually something where you could potentially get a big deal out of it as well, so, um, yeah.
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Now, the one, the one absolute requirement for this, because un- unless you're already a key person of influence in sport, I think, like, the only way this is gonna work is, number one, if you commit to doing it for five-plus years before you see- Yeah...
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any traction. Mm-hmm. I would hope you'd get it sooner than that with, you know- Yeah... the ability to clip and already, like, jump, jumping on the distribution bandwagon.
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But the second thing is you actually have to be the best in the world to do this because- Oh, 100%. Like, yeah, yeah...
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like, the level of depth that you need to go into, the level of fact-checking, the level of interest that you actually need to generate off the back of the topic you're talking about, it, it needs to be best in class.
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And if, if it isn't, I don't think anybody's gonna listen, frankly. No, th- this is not something that anybody could start. You have to be-- You have to have a very specific mixture of skills if you wanna make this work.
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Like, you've obviously gotta be good at broadcasting. You've gotta be good at, you know, good on camera, et cetera, et cetera. You've also got to be a sports fanatic.
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You've also probably gotta have a little bit of business acumen, bit of commercial, bit of a commercial head on you, et cetera. So I think that, yeah, for the right person, this would be an incredible business to build.
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Um- I kind of want to start this myself. [laughs] This is the kind of thing where genuinely if,
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if, if someone came to me, if someone came to us and were like, "Hey," like, "I would love to start this," like, this is the exact kind of thing that I would happily, you know, ang- angel invest in.
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If I th- if I, if I met who I thought was the right team for this, I would happily give them some money to get this going 'cause I think you could build a gigantic media company here.
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I completely agree, and purely for the selfish reason of getting invited to all the best sporting events in the world. Absolutely. Absolutely.
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Um, the other way you could do this as well, so that's, uh, I think that's the strongest idea. Uh, the other idea I had around the kind of Acquired format, uh, hits a bit closer to home.
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There's a little bit of overlap with Acquired itself, but I think it'd be really cool to do, like, Acquired but for, like, old kind of historic businesses.
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By that I mean companies like the Dutch East India Company, to do, like, a deep dive on them or do, like, a deep dive on U.S.
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Steel or, um, the Medici Bank or, like, you know, those kinds of, like- Or the Roman, the Roman Empire. The, like, the, this ki- yeah, like, this, this kind of stuff, Lloyd's of London.
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Like, basically, like, these kind of businesses that were around from, like, the 15th to, like, the 18th century, so then you're kind of mixing in, like, history, you know, in with it as well.
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So it's kind of economics plus history and, a- and all that, so, like- I think that's a, like, a less convincing one because- I agree...
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you're, you're immediately gonna be compared to the Acquired podcast 'cause the Acquired podcast does companies that have existed for hundreds of years. I, I think they've done Standard Oil, and yeah, I, I agree.
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I think it's the weaker of the two, but I could see a world where you could get... And I think the listenership, the listenership for that would be a lot smaller but probably more valuable. But yeah- Agreed...
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if, if I was, if it was me, I'd run with the first idea 100%, but I just think that's a- Yeah... cool, like, interesting, interesting idea. Yeah. Completely.
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If you're listening to this podcast, there's a good chance that you have an idea that you want to bring to life, and whenever anyone brings an idea to me and asks what do I do next, I always say the same thing: Make it real.
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Give it a home. And for all of the businesses that I've ever started, alongside the thousands of businesses that we have helped start through Half Baked, that home is Google Workspace.
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It gives you a business email address, so people actually take your idea seriously. You get one place for all your docs, your calendar, meetings, storage, spreadsheets, and even AI with Gemini built right into it.
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Setting all of that up used to take me days, and now it takes less than 10 minutes. Nothing else even comes close on price or quality, and anyone who says otherwise, I challenge you to a duel.
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Google Workspace are very good friends of Half Baked, and they're giving our listeners and readers 14 days free and 20% off their first year. And with plans starting as low as $7 a month, you really do have no excuses.
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So if you want to grab this exclusive offer, go to gethalfbaked.com/google. That's gethalfbaked.com/google. Thank you, Google Workspace, for making this episode possible. This is, uh,
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this is rich now, right? Because I haven't dated for 10 years. I'm happily married, in a relationship for 10 years, but I think I have an idea that will fix what's the dying dating industry online. So
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If you look at Tinder, right, Tinder have actually been- Never heard of it. No. What, what does Tinder do? [laughs] I-- do you know what?
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I was driving to college in, like, 2013, and I had a guy in the front seat saying, "Oh, yeah, I have this app called Tinder when you can s- where, where you can swipe against people and you get matched to people."
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And it was probably, it was probably one of the best penny drop moments I have ever had as a young teenage boy with the thought of, "I can meet people online in a gamified sense." Mm. What?
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And then I thought I was gonna be, you know, very, very successful in my endeavors, but sure, of course, you, you always have that initial excitement, and then reality hits.
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But ultimately, the dating in- industry is kinda dying online. Well, a- according to the numbers anyway. Tinder are down 7% over year, yea- sorry, Tinder are down 7% year over year.
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Bumble's revenue have fallen, has fallen 14%. Match Group- Mm... is cutting its workforce. Mm-hmm. And they, they mainly say it's because the younger generation are just really, really hard, like the Gen Zs.
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They're, they're very, very difficult to, uh, appeal to when it comes to dating apps because I suppose Tinder- They hate dating apps, yeah... they, they hate it.
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Tinder for Gen Zs is like us hearing our parents talk about... I don't know. What did our parents talk about? Speed dating. [laughs] Speed dating. Well, it's-- okay, it's funny, it's funny you bring up, bringing that up.
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I, I think we bring speed dating back. Okay. But I think we bring it back in a virtual form. So do you ever go onto TikTok or the short-form apps and you see these clips of people on O- Omegle? So- Yes...
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Omegle, for people that don't know, was this online sort of chat room service that randomly matched you one-to-one with another random person through video, and you can do whatever you want. You can talk, you can,
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you know- And-... c- commit crimes. You, [laughs] you- As you can imagine, it went, it went wrong quite a lot. Didn't, uh, didn't Chat, Chat Roulette, I think, was the same thing.
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Didn't they have to shut down or something, um, because- Yeah, so- Yeah... Omegle shut down in November 2023. Um, it settled a 22 million lawsuit, uh, a couple of days beforehand.
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They had 50 more cases of pedophiles, uh, who were running the platform.
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Uh, they now had bots, and I think their CEO came out and said some of the crimes that were committed on the platform were so heinous that they had to shut down the platform ultimately.
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Uh, and you see, the thing about Omegle, right, it was started in, I think it was the late noughties or even early teens. Verification back then was very, very difficult because it was all, it was all manual.
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If, if you asked somebody to scan their passport for an application, it was the equivalent of, you know, asking someone to pull their pants down. Like, nobody, nobody did it. It just wasn't a done thing.
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So I think that the gamification of Tinder apps as-- John, you have a good line about this, actually, about what Nikita Bier said about dating apps. Yeah.
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He was talking about how, like, like, dating apps are, [laughs] are not about dating fundamentally.
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Like, they're, they're about monetization and keeping users on platform for as long as possible, so, like, the dating, like-- or swiping mechanic that people, like, say is terrible and doesn't work or whatever, like, it's kind of the point.
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Like, it's not a, it's not a bug; it's a feature.
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The whole point of it is that you, you swipe, and you get this kind of endless, uh, these endless opportunities coming in front of you, and that keeps you on the app for longer or gets you to upgrade to Tinder Pro or Premium or whatever it's called, so you get more swiping.
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And then, like, that, that's the whole mechanic. That's the point of it. It's all about time on app.
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Like, the dating apps don't want people to actually meet somebody because if you meet somebody, then you're gonna churn from the app, so. Completely. Yeah. Completely.
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And, like, this is the, the, you know, the non-capitalist side of me coming out, but I think there's actually room for a genuine dating app.
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I know Bumble say that they want you to be the, the last dating app you ever have, but- They all say that... they, they really, they really do. And, like, if I think about dating, I, uh, I have a friend who,
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he was single, um, after a long relationship, and he decided, "Right, I wanna meet a partner." And he treated it like a job. He went on dates every night, you know, met a lot of people he didn't like.
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He met a lot of people that he liked, and it didn't end up working out.
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And then a year later, after all these reps, um, he met someone that he now loves, married, bought a house with, um, and, like, hopefully they're gonna live a long, health- healthy life together.
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And I think you can do the same thing except maybe do it a bit, in a bit of an online fashion. So you almost package up a dating app with the back end of a friendly, uh, Omegle.
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So the idea here is that you have authentication, so you only have one account. Like, you can't create more than one account. The idea is you need your passport, or you need some form of ID to actually get onto the app.
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Uh, and then what it does is it matches you with dates. So these dates can be done in a organized fashion where, say, how many dates do you wanna have a night? Or how many dates do you wanna have a week?
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And then those dates are set up via video call, uh, and it's done in such a way where it's, uh, verified.
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So I know I'm coming on with John tonight, and I have an option to keep it to five minutes, or I have an option to keep it going.
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And the idea is that after the date, you then have an option to meet them IRL, in real life. And over time, you don't pay for premium packages, like, you know, pay for premium in a location, blah, blah, blah.
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You actually pay per date. So you frame it as a person, or you frame it in such a way where you'd say, "How much is meeting the right person worth to you?" It's priceless. Like, it genuinely is priceless.
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There is no price on finding the right partner.
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So the idea here is all you need to do here is maximize your chances by talking to as many people as you possibly can that you wouldn't otherwise meet, and use that as a first date, kind of like the show First Dates, where they set people up on a date.
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Uh, and you do that over time, and get those reps in, like my friend. Do it virtually, and then get to a point where you actually meet people.
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It isn't a profile where you have some picture with, you know, you and four of your hot friends [laughs] and it's like, "Which one am I?" Like- Yeah... can I win the lottery? Uh, it's very much one-to-one. It's natural.
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You're gonna have a lot of issues. It's gonna be a really, really difficult business to run, but there's just a history of Match.com just buying these companies.
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So, like, Match.com would buy a company if you do one of the following things. The first thing is if you own a pool that Match can't reach.
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So for example, if you have a dating app for Gen Zs or a dating app for, like, uh, Muslims or a dating app for, uh, people of a specific et- ethnicity, that is where they will a- acquire you.
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The second one is engagement density. So if, if you can prove that your daily active users divided by your monthly active users is greater than a certain number, they will buy you on a per-user basis.
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And then if you're able to do one of those two things, they generally buy you on a 100 to $170, um, per user, uh, price, or they do five to eight times your revenue, and take it from there, because they're dying. Yeah.
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Yeah. No, that makes sense. I feel like the first question people are always gonna ask for something like this is, like, you know, the safety aspect.
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Like, we obviously talked about Omegle, Chatroulette, all of them getting shut down.
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Like, may- maybe there isn't a good answer to this right now, but, like, I am curious, like, h- how would you approach the, the safety aspect of it?
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I su- I suppose, is there an argument to be made that it's actually safer because you're meeting somebody over video call first before you actually meet them in person?
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So, like, okay, there will be, you know, at a certain scale, bad things inevitably happen.
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Like, that, that's just law of large numbers, but, um, would you kind of then try to frame it as it's actually a safer option because you're actually meeting your, your dates before you meet them in person via video call?
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Yeah, you definitely could. Now, there is a problem around AI and AI video getting so good and you getting catfished by an AI. However, I do think, you know, that there, there's always gonna be things AIs can't do.
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So you could actually educate the users on, hey, if you think it's an AI, do X, Y, Z.
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Get them to do this, get them to do that, and if they can't do that or if they won't do that, then it's probably an AI and you, you, you need to hang up. That actually, it's funny.
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Did you read, um, so you know YC do their, like, request for startups. They, they put that out, I think it was yesterday or the day before.
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Um, they had one in there, uh, I forget which partner, uh, which [laughs] partner surfaced the idea, but, um, the whole, like, request for startup was around, like, verification, that people are real on calls.
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The reason being that they, they gave a story, and I'll, I'll probably get this wrong, but the, the broad outline of the story was that there was somebody who was working in a finance team, and they were invited onto a call with what they thought was, like, the rest of their team and, like, you know, CFO and fin- financial manager or, like, whoever else it was, and they ended up wiring out, like, 25 million bucks to somebody who they weren't meant to because they were all AI generated.
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They were all AI, AI avatars on the call. My God. That is genius. It, it's evil. [laughs] Like, it's evil. That is evil genius. That's like, you know, Dr. Evil going like, "One billion dollars."
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[laughs] No, lit- no, literally. Um, so no, I think, like, that, that is one thing that, yeah, will have to be figured out.
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But, uh, yeah, I do, I do tend to think that, like, the safety aspect is something that all dating apps have to deal with, and, um, yeah, if, if you probably meet somebody via video call first, assume that you can verify who they are, yeah, it's probably better than, uh,
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better than the alternatives. You're, you know what? You're, you're always gonna get false actors. I think it's inevitable- For sure... that you're gonna get lawsuits. Mm-hmm. Like, you have to be prepared for that.
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Mm-hmm. But I, I, I think that barrier is an opportunity because people find it so difficult to
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date effectively online, and the dating apps find it so difficult to create an environment to which that, you know, dating can flourish.
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I think if you really attack those two barriers with that one-to-one element that we've talked about, I... If you figure it out, you know, not-- forget about an acquisition from Match.
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If you figure that out, you just become Match, you know, because Match is dying. You know? They'll probably end up launching a competitor.
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But if you already have that market saturation and brand, I think there's a really, really strong, like, case for this business.
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Now, when it comes to actually getting it out there and marketing, I was trying to think about what are cool ways you could get someone's attention for something like this, and I don't know how you do it.
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You'd probably need to raise a buck load of money. Yeah. But imagine getting two ambassadors, like, one male- Mm... one female- Yeah... um, like Sydney Sweeney or, like, somebody else, and- Yeah...
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they then- Just, just a little, little celebrity. Just, just Sydney Sweeney. [laughs] Exactly. Exactly. Just a little celebrity, you know, won't cost you a hell of an amount of money. Just a small, little influencer.
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Uh, and they were, they were your brand ambassador. So if they're single, hopefully, I mean, like, this person has to be single- They, they need to be, yeah... uh, they would, they would need to be.
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They would go on calls, and they would showcase themselves talking to people live and using that as the idea. Kind of like what American Eagle did with the big ad, you know, that big campaign. Yeah.
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I think, I think you do something similar here. I think the only way you really get traction here with Gen Zs is by getting a very, very big Gen Z influencer to rep this and push it forward. Mm-hmm. Give them equity.
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G- give them as much equity as, uh, as they want. Uh, give them as much money as they want, if you're able to raise it, and use that then as your distribution. Absolutely. Absolutely.
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Um, one of the things as well that I was just thinking about on the, you know, and I think this is true of any- any business, um, like where you have, you know, potential like dangers at scale or whatever.
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I remember listening to, uh, Chris Sacca, who's a really f- like famous angel investor, um, founded Lower- Lowercase and Lowercarbon Capital.
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Um, he was talking before about, uh, he had an opportunity to invest in Airbnb, like really early on, um, but he said no. Yeah, I've heard of them. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
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Um, but I think he said something, uh, [laughs] he said something to Brian Chesky, something along the lines of, you know, "Someone's gonna get really badly hurt in one of these properties.
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Like, I, I can't believe you're, you know, running this business," or, "I can't believe you're gonna do this."
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And like, you know, of course, like in a sense, he was correct because like o- obviously at scale, like, you know, bad things have happened in, to people in Air- Airbnbs.
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Um, in same way that bad things have happened to people, you know, in Ubers and stuff like that.
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But basically he was saying like, you know, that's a great business, like they really run it the right way, and like he would've loved to have been involved in that business.
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Um, but he wasn't because he let the kind of, uh, negative case outweigh the, like his judgment on what the bigger opportunity was.
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So it's just something where if you're, if you're either investing or, uh, thinking about starting something, like you can't let the kind of negative edge cases like override your thinking on like the, the bigger opportunity at, at play.
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100, 100%. Honestly, I think that's really stupid. I think that's so careless. Right, okay, I just found there, Airbnb have anywhere from 150 million to 200 million active users. That's a country.
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Think, think about, you know, the Philippines, right? They have about 120 million people, and saying to a government, "You can't let anything bad happen in your country under your jurisdiction."
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That's effectively the expectation that he was setting on Brian Chesky. Now, they probably didn't have that many users at the time, but when you're dealing at that scale, bad things are gonna happen.
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Good things are also gonna happen, but it's inevitable. 100%. But yeah, but I think, I think he kn- he knows himse- like obviously in retrospect like that, that was a big, big mistake.
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But I mean, Chris, Chris Sacca has passed on more incredible investments than we'll probably ever have the opportunity to make in our- Yeah... in our lives.
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So, uh, I think forgive him, we'll give, forgive him his misses for his wins. Yeah, yeah. Well, look, Chris Sacca has done a little bit better than me, so, um, take, uh, take what I'm saying with a pinch. Yeah.
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He's a, he's super interesting guy. I, it, that's actually one of my all-time favorite podcasts is, uh, Chris Sacca on Tim Ferriss from a couple years back. It's like, um- Really? Yeah, yeah. Really, really good.
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Really, really good. Um, well worth a listen. Tim has un- like, Tim, Tim is like a discoverability engine for business influencers. Mm-hmm. He, there's a saying that goes, "I don't wanna read 100 books a year.
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I wanna read the best books 100 times." I feel like that Naval episode that Tim Ferriss did with him back in the late teens, uh, is the top episode of any podcast I've ever listened to.
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So I, I think if you just add both of them to your list and just re-listen to them, I think you'd probably be in a pretty good spot.
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Or just spin up a prototype of, uh, of your first idea and just get the snippets [laughs] from, from them. Boom. There you go. There's your GTM. There's your, there's your call.
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That's, that's what we call in the biz a callback, I believe. [laughs] Yeah. Uh- Or a loop... very cool. Whenever I go running, I always come up with my best ideas.
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For example, the other day when I went for a run, I thought about the idea of wearing glasses that had augmented reality built into them that could make my runs a bit more entertaining.
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And though I definitely don't have the capacity to go and start this idea now, maybe this is gonna go in the someday pile.
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And any ideas that I always feel a little bit more conviction on than others and go into the someday pile, I always buy the domain, because you never know when you're gonna use it, and the best time to buy a domain for a business that's gonna be launched in the future is yesterday.
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And the place that I always go to buy my domains is name.com. They are a longtime friend of Half Baked.
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In fact, they were the second sponsor we ever had back when we were a fledgling media company, and they have been supporting us ever since.
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So if you have some ideas in your someday pile or even your today pile, go and buy them from name.com. Thanks name.com for keeping the lights on here at Half Baked.
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We were talking earlier about like building businesses that are specifically like designed to get acquired. So like one, uh, industry where that is kind of true or very much the approach is like CPG fundamentally.
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So like if you're looking to build a consumer packaged goods business or like a, you know, like a, a soda brand, like an Lollipop or Poppie or that kind of stuff, they're like generally built to get acquired by, by the really big guys.
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So, um, yeah, so this idea is kind of in, in that space. So, um, I am, as you know, not a coffee drinker. It was actually, it, it was actually a major red flag. [laughs] It probably, honestly, it is.
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Some- something like, is it like 80 or 90% of people consume coffee like every day, something mad like that.
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I think caffeine is technically the most used like drug/stimulant, or sorry, caffeine is the most used drug/stimulant on the planet. It, you know. I am, I, I am default skeptical of people that don't drink coffee.
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[laughs] I am, I am the exception. Um- You are the exception. But yeah, but the point is, if you, if you don't drink coffee, you're, you're kind of like, you're kind of left in the lurch. You're like, how, how...
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'Cause obviously, like you need caffeine to function. We, we just do. Like I don't know anybody who doesn't, you know, have some sort of, uh, form of caffeine to, uh, that they, that they live off of.
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So, um, the obviously next kind of category you get then are, are energy drinks. So energy drink market obviously is gigantic. Like we all know the big players in it. You've got Red Bull.
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Red Bull do something like $14 billion a year of revenue. Monster do about half that. Um, Celsius are kind of the newest, like up-and-coming brand. They, I think they grew their revenue last year by about 85%.
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They're doing like $2 or $3 billion- Mm... a year in, in revenue. So energy drinks market, gigantic. It's something like $80 or $90 billion globally.
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Um, compounding at like 10% a year, it's gonna be, you know, double- double the size in the next sort of five to 10 years. But long story short, the problem with the vast majority of energy drinks, um, is that...
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Well, there's two things. So number one, they're just too intense.
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So if I went to somebody with a very low caffeine tolerance and had a can of Monster, I would probably b- be bouncing off the walls or have, like, a mega panic attack because [laughs] my bo- my body is just not, like, not used to that.
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And even for people then who do consume them, um, or people who consume too much caffeine and stuff like that, they, you know, it's very, very easy to get jittery.
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So it's, you know, it's not just me, it's people more generally.
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And when you start thinking about the amount of people, um, around who've got, you know, anxiety conditions and stuff like that, and obviously don't want to over-caffeinate, 'cause it can genuinely lead to things like panic attacks, stuff like that.
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Um, I feel you have this kind of open space in what is an incredibly crowded market for someone to build kind of like a, a calm energy drink business. Um- Mm. So
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if you think about, like, challenger kind of brands in the, in the space now, in the energy drink space, they're all kind of trying to carve out their own little niche. So obviously, like, Nutonic is like a,
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you know, I don't know what you'd really call their, I suppose their niche. Like nootropics. Yeah, they're called, like, a noo- kind of nootropic performance kind of drink. Um, and they're- Yeah...
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obviously doing really well. They, they raised I think six at a $60 million valuation, um- Nice... last year. So they're doing really well. Um, I don't know if you saw Kim Kardashian.
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She, she's launched an, [laughs] launched an energy drink, uh, recently. Uh, she did a, [laughs] she did her, her kind of announcement of it, uh, yesterday. Did you watch the, uh, the video for it? No.
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It's like a, it's like a fake press conference.
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I didn't actually watch the video, but, uh, the tagline on it was, uh, [laughs] "I didn't pass the bar, so I raised it," 'cause, you know, the way she failed the, the bar exam. [laughs] I thought that was so good.
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Great, uh, self-deprecating marketing there. But, um- Brilliant... anyway, so- I love, I love a bit of self-deprecation. I don't get why people don't do it more. I know. People take themselves too seriously, I think.
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But, um, yeah, so I thought that was very funny.
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But, um, anyway, uh, so yeah, I do think there's a world here where you try and carve out your own niche, where you're like, "Right, I'm going to build, like, a super clean energy drink brand," which is like- Mm-hmm...
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it's not full of, you know, artificial sweeteners and, and stuff like that, like most energy drink brands are, number one.
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But number two, it's, like, lower, lower in caffeine, so maybe 75 to 100 milligrams of caffeine, and then you throw in, like, 200 milligrams of L-theanine or something to, like, really take the edge off. Yeah.
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So it's, like, this kind of more stable, like, focused kind of, um, kind of, uh, energy drink product. Um- I wish I knew about L-theanine sooner.
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I think I saw Dan Go on Twitter saying, "The one thing I wish I knew 10 years ago was to take L-theanine with coffee." Yeah, exactly.
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So I think you just take that exact premise and just build an energy drink around that. Um- You're, you, you are talking to your number one customer, right?
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I, I have, I have this ongoing thing with my wife that I have a new trend every six months, where I quit something or I try something, and- Mm...
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you know, one in five of them stay, uh, but the other four just die, and one of them is caffeine. I love caffeine.
366
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I didn't start drinking until maybe I was 20, and I kind of got to just, like, some un- unhealthy situations where I couldn't focus if I didn't have a coffee, or I couldn't work if I didn't have a coffee with me.
367
00:58:46.412 --> 00:59:00.912
And when we were away traveling in New Zealand, I kind of got to this point where I was like, "I have to just cut it cold turkey," because I am full on r- too reliant on it. The crashes- Yeah... were insane.
368
00:59:01.412 --> 00:59:12.612
I couldn't- Mm-hmm... I couldn't focus, even with the coffee. I was just, you know, very heavy-eyed. So I quit it cold turkey, and- Mm... the first two weeks were, no joke, the worst two weeks of my life.
369
00:59:13.272 --> 00:59:24.692
I was full-on depressed. Uh- Yeah... I was, like, like, my, my, my eyes would tear up every so often because I was just going through the wi- the withdrawal symptoms. Week three was okay.
370
00:59:25.312 --> 00:59:33.772
Um, week four, best I've ever felt, genuinely. Mm. I... It, like... It's weird, right? Because when you're on caffeine, you are a type of person.
371
00:59:34.452 --> 00:59:53.412
You are this hyped up, this motivated, um, person that is probably gonna do something that your non-caffeinated self wouldn't do, and I kind of realized that I'd gone the last 10 years not knowing who my baseline was of me without coffee or me, me without caffeine in my system.
372
00:59:53.912 --> 01:00:03.752
And I was so much more relaxed. I was so much calm. Yeah, I didn't have those spikes of, like, you know, dopamine, inspiration, I'm gonna go and email this Fortune 500 CEO.
373
01:00:04.212 --> 01:00:17.552
But come 7:00, 8:00 at night, I had similar energy than I had at 9:00 in the morning, 8:00 in the morning. So I eventually went back to coffee. The first time I had it was like a, it was like a psychedelic experience.
374
01:00:17.672 --> 01:00:29.152
Um, it was bloody amazing. But I think the, the key with this brand, uh, going back to it, is I think everybody's talking about ingredients now.
375
01:00:29.312 --> 01:00:41.332
Everyone's talking about, like, what they have in the brand or in the drink. Yeah. Mm-hmm. I think with this brand, you don't own the ingredient, you own the moment. So for me, I drink coffee in the morning.
376
01:00:41.572 --> 01:00:46.172
I don't drink coffee after 2:00. I actually have nothing to drink between 2:00 and 6:00. Mm.
377
01:00:46.292 --> 01:00:56.282
I, I constantly have this experience where it comes to 2:00, and I'm like, "I would love another coffee," but I know I shouldn't, because- Yeah... it is going to affect my sleep, and I'm probably gonna- Yeah...
378
01:00:56.352 --> 01:00:57.702
get the jitters, and I'm gonna have a crash. Mm-hmm.
379
01:00:58.652 --> 01:01:11.072
I love the idea of launching a brand that's specifically geared towards people, caffeine drinkers and non-caffeine drinkers, "Hey, this is what you have bet- between 2:00 and 6:00 to get over the lunch slump," or to- Mm-hmm...
380
01:01:11.092 --> 01:01:22.992
keep the momentum going throughout the day, because everything else is focused in between, you know, 6:00 AM and 2:00 PM. There is nobody that owns the moment of 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM.
381
01:01:23.152 --> 01:01:35.092
I do think the one issue you'd have with that is y- you might then need, like, a non-stim version of it, because I know, like, the half-life of caffeine is, is such that if you consume something caffeinated at, like, 5:00 or 6:00 PM, it's just not out, it's just not out of your system by the time you're, you're going to sleep.
382
01:01:35.592 --> 01:01:39.292
But, um, but no, I know what you, I know what you mean. I, um, [lip smacks] I think that, like-
383
01:01:40.244 --> 01:01:52.344
If you think about the, the kind of energy drinks market now, everything is like, everything is marketed as like, you know, maximal caffeine, like maximum, you know, taurine and whatever, and, and 300 milligrams of caffeine per serving.
384
01:01:52.364 --> 01:02:00.224
And like, you know, Monster, like Monster's entire value proposition, um, 'cause obviously, you know, Monster was a later entrant into the energy drinks market after Red Bull pretty much invented it.
385
01:02:00.704 --> 01:02:08.084
Their entire value proposition was just like, "We're gonna give you like double the amount of like volume, and obviously caffeine as well, at half the price."
386
01:02:08.224 --> 01:02:15.804
That was essentially their, like how w- they were gonna compete with Red Bull and, and obviously doing a pretty good job now. Better and cheaper. Yeah, li- literally. Exactly.
387
01:02:16.084 --> 01:02:19.344
Um, and obviously they're like, you know, everywhere now and doing incredibly well.
388
01:02:19.374 --> 01:02:29.804
So, um, yeah, I think that, um, yeah, I think it's the kind of business where like this is, this is a little bit like the a- the acquired, uh, the acquired, uh, podcast, uh, for sports franchises business.
389
01:02:30.324 --> 01:02:35.524
This is something that I would love someone to start, but not me. [laughs] Yeah. Because- Yeah...
390
01:02:35.544 --> 01:02:40.964
on the flip side, like, like I, I, I do like this, like I really like this concept, and it's definitely something I would buy.
391
01:02:41.524 --> 01:02:48.904
But the problem is, or the problems with this are like, number one, obviously the energy drinks market is getting more and more crowded.
392
01:02:48.984 --> 01:02:53.464
Like, we talked about a couple of challenger brands earlier, like there's a, there's a ton of challenger brands out there in this space.
393
01:02:53.504 --> 01:02:59.404
So like you're, you're kind of fighting for a finite amount of shelf space, particularly in retail, which is like really, really hard to get.
394
01:03:00.064 --> 01:03:12.634
Um, like if you're gonna go to the D2C or e-commerce route, like shipping liquids [laughs] is really expensive. So actually like running it as an e-commerce business is really tricky. Um, so yeah, a-
395
01:03:13.564 --> 01:03:29.044
it, it, it's all about, again, finding the like right person who can be like the kind of, um, I don't know, face of the brand, who eats, lives, and breathes it, and has really good brand sensibility, really good taste, which everybody's talking about right now, and yeah, getting it out into the world.
396
01:03:29.224 --> 01:03:38.764
Um, I think the clo- the closest comparison I can think of is, um, do you know, uh, have you heard of Cadence, the, um- Yeah... uh, yeah, the U- yeah, the UK electrolytes.
397
01:03:39.504 --> 01:03:49.894
Is that the brand that Stephen Bartlett i- invested in? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So if you look at, uh... Have you ever watched Stephen Bartlett's Behind the Diary channel? Yeah, that's how I know it. Yeah, yeah.
398
01:03:49.924 --> 01:03:55.064
It was like- Yeah... this is an episode on this cool brand that I have also invested in. [laughs] Yeah.
399
01:03:55.084 --> 01:04:08.944
Well, the whole, the whole premise was that I think Stephen Bartlett wanted to start his own kind of electrolytes-type brand or whatever, and then he met, uh, Ross McKay, who's the, the founder, um, who seems like an absolute savage based on his, [laughs]
400
01:04:09.004 --> 01:04:14.564
his, uh, social media. Um, incredible founder. Savage in what way? Just an absolute animal?
401
01:04:15.064 --> 01:04:25.924
As in like, yeah, yeah, as in like he, he's like an endurance athlete and like, uh, while running a company, and like he just seems like, uh, like he, he's the perfect person to be like the front man for a brand like this.
402
01:04:26.024 --> 01:04:33.184
Um, so I think the way Stephen Bartlett put it was like, "I want to start my own electrolytes brand, but this guy is also starting his own kind of similar thing.
403
01:04:33.204 --> 01:04:40.784
So like I'm gonna meet him and basically see like should I do this myself or like just invest in someone like him." And he obviously met Ross and was like, "I'm not competing with that guy."
404
01:04:41.154 --> 01:04:50.064
[laughs] Like, "I'm just gonna invest in him-" Yeah... "and let him do it." So basically I would love- This, this entire business lives or dies on distribution. Like- Yeah... are you able to get on shelves?
405
01:04:50.604 --> 01:05:00.164
Because I don't think D2C is gonna work here at all. This is all about retail. No, 100%. And, you know, you've, you've underwritten hundreds of D2C companies.
406
01:05:00.324 --> 01:05:16.823
I spent a year of my life trying to figure out if there was an opportunity in the retail space, and it is a bloodbath. It is so difficult. Now, don't get me wrong, if it works, it works, and you're in a great space.
407
01:05:17.304 --> 01:05:27.844
But I don't think this is a business for a first-time founder. I think this is a business- No, no... for someone who's already... They've, they have already done, uh- Yeah... FMCG, CPG. They know how- Yeah...
408
01:05:27.853 --> 01:05:35.544
the industry works. They know how to talk to buyers. Uh, they know how to brand this effectively, and they know how to get a face for the business to front it.
409
01:05:36.544 --> 01:05:47.244
Yeah, I think the, the playbook here fundamentally with all of these kind of types of brands is that you generally start D2C just to essentially prove out the demand and get just a sense for unit economics and, and all that.
410
01:05:47.924 --> 01:05:49.864
Uh, and then you try and get into retail as quickly as you can.
411
01:05:50.464 --> 01:06:01.564
And then the longer term goal is like, essentially what you do is you go, you raise money, you burn through that on marketing and, [laughs] and trying to sell through and trying to prove that you can grow your top line as much as possible.
412
01:06:01.684 --> 01:06:07.644
Um, you keep doing that. You keep raising, basically burning through the cash to grow top line. Doesn't really matter if you're loss-making, to be perfectly honest.
413
01:06:07.714 --> 01:06:17.264
And then the, the goal here is to get acquired by one of the, the bigger players in the market. So, for example, uh, Rockstar Energy, Pepsi acquired them. Pepsi also acquired Poppi.
414
01:06:17.924 --> 01:06:29.544
Uh, Bang Energy was acquired by Monster. Uh, Ghost was acquired by, uh, Keurig Dr Pepper. It's almost like these big, like, uh, these big brands have given up on creating their own products. They're just buying.
415
01:06:30.544 --> 01:06:40.164
Well, what, we see what they do is, the way that I think that they approach it is like this is effectively like outsourced R&D for us. So like you said it earlier that distribution is everything in this type of business.
416
01:06:40.204 --> 01:06:44.164
So like who is the best distribution in the drink space? Like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, et cetera.
417
01:06:44.284 --> 01:06:54.134
So all that they need to do is find little mini challenger brands that are doing 100-plus million in revenue, 'cause even at that scale, they're still tiny compared to [laughs] Coca-Cola or Pepsi. Yeah.
418
01:06:54.204 --> 01:06:55.244
Um, they are still a rounding error.
419
01:06:55.684 --> 01:07:07.854
But I think the idea is that if they see potential to plug them into their distribution, get them across shelves around the world, and then, you know, grow top line from 100 million to 500 or a billion, all of a sudden, you know, they've got a, they've got something that actually moves the needle for them.
420
01:07:07.874 --> 01:07:16.784
'Cause the thing about companies like, you know, your Pepsis, your Coca-Colas, it's also true of the likes of Google and stuff like that, and actually ties back to what we were talking about earlier with acquisitions.
421
01:07:17.424 --> 01:07:25.704
A lot of the time when these companies acquire businesses that we would view as like being gigantic, in the context of that business, they're just a rounding error.
422
01:07:25.744 --> 01:07:35.704
Like if I'm- Yeah, they're- If I'm, if I'm Pepsi and I acquire a brand doing 100 million and it shuts down next year, it's kind of like, okay, like it's, it's tiny compared to our top line, so.
423
01:07:36.764 --> 01:07:40.564
Do you ever hear the story about Virgin Cola trying to compete with Co- Coca-Cola?
424
01:07:41.620 --> 01:07:49.360
I think we talked about this a long time ago, but you'd have to refresh my memory So Richard Branson, one of his many endeavors was launching Virgin Cola.
425
01:07:49.880 --> 01:07:55.780
So he wanted to compete with Coca-Cola, and he invested, I don't even want to know how much money he invested in it.
426
01:07:56.080 --> 01:08:05.940
I think it was around, like, 1998 or whatever it is, and he said that he couldn't have picked a worse company to go against because anywhere that...
427
01:08:06.020 --> 01:08:15.880
I mean, look, you go to the depths of the Amazon to a shack with a woman that doesn't speak English and has not seen anybody outside of her tribe, and she has a Coca-Cola fridge machine in her shop.
428
01:08:16.340 --> 01:08:30.950
Like, that's how ridiculous their d- distribution is. Anywhere that Coke or that Virgin Cola, uh, tried to get in, in a retail capacity and they succeeded, Coca-Cola would tell the store to half the price of Coca-Cola.
429
01:08:32.020 --> 01:08:48.300
So they were undercutting their own drinks as a mechanism towards deterring people from buying Virgin Cola, and he said they did that so often and so well and with such aggression that it was impossible for them to make it economically viable.
430
01:08:49.220 --> 01:08:57.780
Mm. Yeah. Like, it, it's similar to, uh, you know, the Amazon, uh, diapers.com, uh, thing where d- like, diapers.com took off.
431
01:08:57.860 --> 01:09:07.480
They were selling, um, you know, doing hundreds of millions, think, of revenue, uh, in, in diapers, uh, diaper sales online, and all of a sudden Amazon came along and just slashed their prices and massively undercut them.
432
01:09:07.520 --> 01:09:18.920
I think it ended up, like, cannibalizing most of their business and then acquiring them for pennies on the dollar for what they were worth in terms of, like, like, where the business trajectory would've gone had Amazon not come in and basically just, yeah, ripped them apart.
433
01:09:19.480 --> 01:09:28.950
Business is tough. Like- Business, business is hard... business is brutal. It's brutal, yeah. Business is hard. I do, I do have a cool marketing idea, though, for, for this brand. Yeah.
434
01:09:28.950 --> 01:09:37.800
You know the way you have all these brands like Red Bull, it's all about doing these crazy stunts. It's all about Formula 1. Yeah It's all about doing these big, big events. Monster are similar.
435
01:09:38.340 --> 01:09:46.610
I think you go the other way. I think you get j- I think you brand this with monks. I think, like, you, like- Yeah... have a monk as your, like- Yeah...
436
01:09:46.660 --> 01:09:58.149
core character, your brand, and I think you get these monks to gatecrash all of these ridiculous events where you have people, you know, drinking Red Bull, shouting, screaming- Mm...
437
01:09:58.160 --> 01:10:08.260
getting excited, and in the midst of the crowds, you have a monk meditating with a can of whatever you have on its head, and you do that for hours, and you crash all of these events.
438
01:10:08.520 --> 01:10:12.970
You build all this interest around what the, what the hell is this? Yeah. What's going on here? Yeah.
439
01:10:12.970 --> 01:10:24.200
And then you just use that as the, uh, anchor to which you get people's attention who are already drinking all of these, you know, energy drinks and position yourselves as, "No, you should be as calm as a monk.
440
01:10:24.440 --> 01:10:37.040
You shouldn't be as-" Mm. "... you know, crazy as whatever it is." Uh, yeah, I think, I think that would be my branding/mobility play around getting some attention, hijacking attention from, from the competitors. Yeah.
441
01:10:38.180 --> 01:10:49.240
100% because, again, coming back to the, the boring unit economics stuff here, like, you need your CAC to be as low as possible 'cause, like, particularly in retail, margins are razor thin. They're a killer.
442
01:10:50.020 --> 01:11:00.540
Yeah, they're a killer, so, like, you need to be able to find ways to basically acquire, uh, or hijack attention as quickly or, sorry, as cheaply as you possibly can, and if you do that, yeah, you're hopefully onto a winner.
443
01:11:00.600 --> 01:11:05.480
But again, I, I think this is a business where, like, I would love someone to start this. I would not love to run this myself.
444
01:11:05.740 --> 01:11:16.020
Um, but for the right person, I think, uh, I think they could, they could get a foothold, uh, into the market with this kind of a product. But it would be, it would be no mean feat to get it done, to be fair.
445
01:11:16.100 --> 01:11:24.940
If, if you've made it this far into the podcast, first of all, well done. Um, second of all, you probably don't know who we are. Like, we have a company called Half Baked.
446
01:11:25.340 --> 01:11:36.679
Uh, our core asset is a newsletter that John has sent, you know, 700-plus editions of around startup ideas, but the reason we started this is to create more founders. That's ultimately our mission as a company.
447
01:11:37.160 --> 01:11:45.910
So alluding to what John said there around, you know, "I'd love somebody to start this," you know, we've, we've funded a lot of people to go and start companies.
448
01:11:45.980 --> 01:11:53.880
Now, when I say funded, I mean modestly funded, uh, with, you know, maybe a bit of cash or a bit of help or introductions or advice, one-to-ones.
449
01:11:54.860 --> 01:12:07.039
If you liked any of the ideas that we talked about here, uh, or we talk about in the newsletter and you genuinely think you are a good person to start it, message John and I on Twitter, uh, and we'll see if we can make it happen for you.
450
01:12:07.620 --> 01:12:17.160
That's how we... That, that's our benchmark of success here with this podcast is how many people we activate to go and start these businesses.
451
01:12:17.800 --> 01:12:29.160
Uh, and hey, if you use our partners in the meantime, that's good for us, too. [laughs] This has been a lot of fun. Yeah, it's been cool. That was fun. Yeah, right. That's it. Turn off the oven.