Hey — It's Nico.

Today I'm launching a new newsletter: 💡 Startup Ideas.

Every week, I analyze dozens of companies and industries and come up with new startup ideas.

I can't build all of these ideas, so I thought I'd start sharing them with you so that you can turn them into profitable businesses.

Every week, on Tuesdays, I'll send 3 startup ideas. 2 of them will only be for Pro members, which has a price of $9/mo.

The Pro membership also comes with access to a community where we'll discuss mine and your ideas.

​Get full access to Startup Ideas Pro for $9/mo →​

Today's ideas are:

• An AI-powered app.
• (Pro) A Chrome Extension SaaS.
• (Pro) An EdTech startup.

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💡 Idea #1: AI-powered restaurant recommendation engine

AI is super trendy right now, so I couldn’t avoid starting this newsletter with an AI-related startup idea.

I love going out to have dinner or drink a coffee. I’m not someone who likes going to the same places repeatedly - instead, I enjoy getting to know new restaurants or coffee shops with different dishes and drinks.

The problem is that I sometimes don’t know where to go. I generally use Google Maps to try to find something of the style that I like, using keywords like “specialty coffee” and filtering by reviews and price. Alternatively, I ask for recommendations from friends who like going to similar places as I do.

But this strategy isn’t perfect, and I think AI can do a much better job than me.

I’d pay for an AI-powered app that could learn about my food preferences by asking me about the restaurants I like and connecting to my Google Maps account to see my visited places, and recommend me restaurants and coffee shops that I’ll like.

Such an app would be particularly useful when traveling. Imagine going to a new city and being suggested some restaurants and coffee shops similar to those you like going to when you’re in your city.

Now, I’d pay more money if the app could also do things like:

• Suggest which of the dishes or drinks I should order based on what it knows about my tastes.
• Take care of doing a reservation, either through the restaurant’s website or phone number (related to the new technology of AutoGPT).
• Connect with my CRM or contact list and suggest people with whom I can go out based on the last time we met or talked.

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⚙️ Business Model: SaaS

The clearest way to monetize such an app would be by charging users per month or per credit.

A price/month model makes the most sense to me, as most people are used to going out to have dinner or a coffee at least a few times per month, so they’d give it at least a monthly usage to the app, which justifies paying every month for it.

A price/credit model makes more sense if you expect that the user will just use the app once to get a list of restaurants and coffee shops similar to what they like and won’t require the service anymore.

I’d definitely pay something around $10-$20/month for the app.

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🆚 Competitors: ChatGPT

ChatGPT is the competitor of basically every AI-related startup. Most of these startups are ChatGPT wrappers, so there’s always the risk that Open AI builds the startup’s solution into ChatGPT.

ChatGPT has recently launched plugins. One of them is OpenTable, which can be used to obtain restaurant recommendations and a direct link to book a reservation. This is really similar to what this startup idea is about.

Therefore, the differentiation of the startup should be on the deep understanding of similarities between restaurants and the food preferences of the users.

Moreover, OpenTable is not available in all cities and has far less information than Google Maps. Integrating the app with Google Maps would give users more restaurant options than what ChatGPT currently offers (though ChatGPT is probably soon launching a Google Maps plugin).

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✅ Validation: Service & Community

It’s hard to validate the willingness of people to pay for this app, as it happens with most B2C products.

Something you can start by validating is if people are willing to pay you in exchange for restaurant and coffee shop recommendations. You don’t need to build the app for this. You can sell a service in which, for $10, you provide your customer with 10 restaurant and dishes recommendations based on their restaurant and food preferences.

If people aren’t willing to pay for these recommendations, that’s a bad signal. However, it may be the case they don’t trust you or don’t want to pay someone for this, but may be open to paying an AI or an app for it.

If you want to go one step further and build a simple version of your app, you can then do the following:

1. Find on online communities or social networks people asking for restaurant recommendations.
2. Ask them about their preferences.
3. Use your app to find similar restaurants.
4. Share with them these restaurants and a link to your app where they can find more recommendations.

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🛠 Building: Technical Co-Founder

Properly training an AI requires coding knowledge. Therefore, if you don’t know how to code, you’ll have to find a technical co-founder who can take care of building the product while you focus on marketing.

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💰 First 100 Customers: Community, WoM & PR

1. Community: Find online communities of people who enjoy food or coffee. When they ask for restaurant or coffee shop recommendations, find some using the app, share them with them, and add a link to your app where they can find more recommendations.
2. Word of Mouth: If one user successfully finds a good restaurant or coffee shop using the app, they’ll really likely recommend it to someone else. AI is really new and impressive, so everyone wants to share their AI use cases. You can incentivize WoM by providing users with messages or pages containing the recommendations, which they can share with other people or on social networks.
3. PR: Open any media platform and you’ll see dozens of AI-related news. All journalists want to discover the next ChatGPT. Contact journalists that are covering AI news and tell them about the launch of your app.

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💡 (Pro) Idea #2: Chrome Extension SaaS

Numerous Chrome extension have become profitable businesses, including Honey, sold to PayPal for $4B, and Grammarly, valued at $13B in 2021.

This SaaS:

• Is in the productivity industry.
• Is both B2B and B2C.
• Can have a pricing of $20-$50/mo, or even higher.
• Has no competition.
• Can be built with low code (or even using ChatGPT).

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💡 (Pro) Idea #3: EdTech Startup

A good framework to come up with startup ideas is to take a proved business model to a new industry or niche.

This is how I came up with the ideas of Failory and this EdTech startup.

This startup:

• Is in the AI industry.
• Has a high CLV (of even $30,000).
• Has no direct competitors.
• Can be built with no code.

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🤯 Unlock Startup Ideas Pro for $9/mo

​Become a Startup Ideas Pro member and get access all to the weekly premium startup ideas, including today's ones:

• A Chrome Extension SaaS.
• An EdTech startup.

Each one with:

• Possible business models.
• Research of competitors.
• Ways of validating it.
• Tools to build it.
• Strategies to acquire your first 100 customers.

With your Pro membership, you'll also get access to a community where we'll be talking about everyone's startup ideas.

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What do you think of this new newsletter?

• ​​🔥 Great​​
• ​​😒 Meh​​
• ​​👎 Not interesting​​

Cheers,

Nico