Hey — It's Nico.

This is edition #5 of 💡 Startup Ideas, a weekly newsletter where I research business ideas and share my findings in 20-minute reports.

As every week, this free issue contains just the overview of the ideas. If you’re interested in getting the full report (6,026 words), subscribe to Startup Ideas Pro for $9/mo (includes access to a member-only community).

Today’s ideas are:

• AI-Driven Finance SaaS
• Fully AI-Powered Social Media Management Tool

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💡 Idea #1: AI-Driven Finance SaaS

One of the biggest problems all startups have to solve in order to be successful is how to manage cash flow effectively.

Even if your startup has a great product and a solid customer pipeline, you may be forced to shut it down if you run out of cash and can’t secure an extra round of funding.

Case in point: Yottio.

Yottio was a mobile-first tool that enabled video participation in broadcast television.

Yottio allowed content producers to drag and drop participants they wanted into a given conversation, while still being able to moderate and control the conversations discreetly and in real time.

Afterwards, the content producers could then output all the individual video and audio streams in HD broadcast-compatible formats.

Everything seemed to be going well for Yottio at the beginning, and in 2014 the startup landed a coveted spot at a competitive startup hub called SPROCKIT, where it generated a lot of interest and leads, and even earned a “Best of” award.

Yottio took away several solid client prospects from the experience, who had a 60-70% chance of converting to paid customers within the next 6 months. This would have put Yottio at well over $1 million in annual revenue, and left the company with a sustainable cash flow.

But before Yottio could convert these leads into paying customers, the startup began to experience significant cash flow problems.

These problems largely arose from the fact that it was very expensive to demo the product to prospects, and there was no guarantee that prospects would convert to sales after a demo.

Yottio also had to invest a significant amount of time in chasing down annual renewal fees and quarterly licensing fees from existing customers, and the cash just wasn’t coming in fast enough.

To combat their cash flow issues, Yottio tried to raise additional venture capital, but was unsuccessful.

As the money dried up, the co-founders had to make the difficult decision to shut down the company for good, despite its high potential for success.

Yottio’s story shows the importance of proper cash flow management for startups, and the startup idea I bring you today — an AI-driven finance SaaS — aims to solve this problem.

This app connects with your startup’s bank accounts to analyze its revenues and expenses and find ways to maximize the first and minimize the second.

Here are some examples of how it does this:

• Analyze credit card expenses to find abnormalities/non-permitted expenditures.
• Find expenses that could be avoided or reduced.
• Generate forecasts of future revenues and expenses.
• Predict the startup’s runway (when it will run out of cash).

Additionally, the app connects with other third-party invoicing tools used by your startup, helping ensure invoices get paid on time. It also aids startups in negotiating longer credit terms with banks and other fund suppliers.

Lastly, the app has an AI-powered chatbot that quickly answers questions about all your startup’s financial data.

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💡 Idea #2: Fully AI-Powered Social Media Management Tool

During Covid, pretty much every business that was not yet in the digital world started working on its digital presence, whether in the form of a website or a social network account.

Even the most anti-social media companies started to see some upside from being present on Facebook, Instagram, or Tik Tok.

The problem is that being active on social networks is almost like a full-time job. To be successful on them, you need to read what others share, reply to them, create original content, interact with your followers, etc.

To make this easier, around a decade ago, a lot of social media management tools started to surge (Buffer was launched in 2010, for example). These solutions unify social media efforts and enable businesses to more easily create compelling content and monitor its performance.

This still takes time and knowledge. But what if AI could become your social media manager? Today’s idea consists of an AI-powered social media management tool.

There already are a few of these services, but they’re mostly limited to creating short-form content based on some user input. This idea goes beyond that. Nowadays, AI has the power to do pretty much all the work a social media manager does.

This tool will:

• Find relevant news, articles, videos, and images of the business industry and use AI to create engaging posts from this content.
• Allow you to review, edit, and approve or reject the content before it’s posted.
• Interact with your followers’ replies and find opportunities for replying to other accounts.
• Automatically find the best time to post for maximum engagement.
• Track the performance of the posts and adapt the content to what’s working best.

This tool is ideal for small to medium businesses that can’t afford to hire a social media manager but can still benefit from being active on social networks.

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• 🔎 Market Analysis
• ⚙️ Product
• 🆚 Competitors
• 💵 Pricing
• 📈 Customer Acquisition Channels
• 💭 Conclusion

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Cheers,

Nico