Old Industry + New Technology = Easy Win

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This is Pat, founder of Starter Story — I wanted to give a warm welcome to the 1,160 people who joined us since our last newsletter on Tuesday. To anyone reading this, your support means a lot! I hope you enjoy reading our content as much as we enjoy creating it.

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Old Industry + New Technology = Easy Win

You wouldn’t even imagine the tools some multi-billion dollar industries use to run their companies.

Excel 95 sheets that you can’t update because everything will break, getting information by fax, or even notebooks!

That creates a huge opportunity you can profit from by introducing new technology in an old-school industry.

It doesn’t need to be super cutting-edge technology, you can simply take something that already exists and apply it where it hasn’t been used before.

As always, niching down makes it easier. Easier to come up with the right solution to solve a specific pain and easier to develop a go-to-market strategy.

We’ve put together a list with 18 examples of real businesses, categorized by level of technology complexity –the more complex, the biggest the opportunity– to showcase how they are profiting from following this strategy:

Level 1: Make available online stuff that was offline only

The easiest and quickest win.

Some products are hardly available online so you need to settle for whatever suppliers you have close by.

Take that online, offer people a whole new set of suppliers and lots of people will come to you.

✅ Selling seeds and growing supplies online 👉 $400K/month

✅ This former investment banker started a plants e-commerce 👉 $350K/year

✅ Turned a card game turned into virtual game nights over Zoom 👉 $2,5K/month

Level 2: Start an online marketplace to connect buyers and sellers

This is the next step or a different approach to solving the previous problem –sort of.

The main difference: instead of you becoming the supplier, your focus is to create a platform where supply and demand meet.

Your main objective will be feeding both sides of the marketplace to provide a good experience.

✅ These brothers brought a new approach to the import/export industry 👉 $12M/year

✅ Starting the first Airbnb for motorcycles 👉 $150K/month

✅ This marketplace helps coaches get more clients 👉Started by a 7-figure exit founder

Level 3: Create an industry-specific tech solution

The more specific you can go, the best.

If you experience growth and dominate a niche you can always expand afterward. But to create that first product, find a very specific problem that one precise industry is experiencing.

✅ Creating and validating a tool to manage maid services 👉 $500K/year

✅ Two non-tech founders spotted an opportunity in the food safety space 👉 $40K/month

✅  A tool to help restaurants sell more online 👉 $36K/year

✅ This OpenTable for the nightlife industry went to $0 during COVID and bounced back 👉 $1M/month

Level 4: Build new products that improve existing ones

This is where it starts to get more challenging. To provide value at this level, you need to bring something extra to the table.

However, the tougher the challenge, the bigger the reward.

✅ This solo founder designed a 3D-printed woodworking accessory 👉 $18K/month

✅ A software to help non-lawyers create contracts 👉 Raised $1M

✅ Creating Google Analytics for video games 👉 Raised $20M

✅ A wellness tracker –like Fitbit– for dogs 👉 $10K/month

✅ Apply technology to men’s suits 👉 $3M/year

Level 5: Inventing stuff that didn’t exist before

Visionary-level founders here. People able to imagine a better future thanks to the use of technology. 

✅ 3D-printed waterproof casts 👉 $500K/year

✅ A robot barista that is disrupting the industry 👉 7 figures per year

✅ Smart locks for Airbnbs 👉 $5M/year

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Can you think of any space that can benefit from adopting technology? Reply to this email and let me know! Would love to know about more examples.

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400+ organizations already trust Vitally to predict when a customer is going to churn way before it happens and provide them with the tools they need to keep churn from happening.

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• Powerful automation built for Customer Success.
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Plus, it’ll also help you make more money by providing your sales team with upsell opportunities and recommendations for new use cases to your client base.

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