👩‍🏫  1m+ kids go to teeny tiny schools

Happy Trends Tuesday!

If you need some inspiration today, just remember that Asia's latest billionaire is a guy who:

• Came from a struggling family with 11 kids
• Lost use of his legs due to polio
• Sold snacks on the street because no one would hire him

He took all that shit, and turned his street stall into Malaysia's largest grocery store chain, which IPO'd at $531m on Monday.

Entrepreneurship is really a rocket ship sometimes. 🚀

In today's email…

• Microschools can be a venture for teachers
• 5 tips to create smashing success with a smash room
• What we’re surfin’, from Founder Mode to the end of brat summer

Let's dive in! 

🧾 INVOICING MADE SIMPLE

When it’s high time for you to get paid, or send a payout – just use this invoice generator app for instantly crisp PDFs.

🚀 WHERE TO BUILD NEXT

With microschools, teachers can be founders

Let's be real: public school teachers have a tough gig.

They gotta deal with kids glued to their phones, overbearing parents, and notoriously low salary (and support). It's a wonder they keep going. 

But hey, some folks love teaching and are looking for alternatives.

Reddit's r/Teachers is a goldmine for disillusioned educators. You'll find them trying everything from teaching at juvenile detention centers (turns out, "troubled kids" can be the best kind of students) to starting their own micro-schools.

Source: Google Trends, six-month rolling average

What's a microschool, you ask?

It usually consists of a tiny class with 6-15 students and one teacher. 

They’re private, largely unregulated, and look like a modern rendition of the one-room schoolhouse. 

Teachers can set up their own curriculum, and pay more attention to individual students. Under this setup, homeschooled kids can socialize more within a tight-knit group of friends. 

They typically cost $5k-10k a year, which is more affordable than private schools. 

Microschools are still quite niche (<1k monthly searches on Ahrefs), but interest is growing fast. Per the National Microschooling Center: 

• There are ~95k of these schools and homeschooling pods in the US;
• 1m+ students attend these schools, 40% of whom used to attend public schools or be homeschooled

I’m guessing most teachers didn’t have “starting a business” in their career plans. But their skills are highly transferable to entrepreneurship. 

That’s the cool thing about this —

The microschool movement is opening up an avenue for educators to pursue their passion (teaching) in a much more rewarding way, financially and mentally. 

Source: Buzzfeed

So what's the opportunity here?

The obvious one is to start a microschool. It sounds daunting, but if you’re an educator, think of it as scaling a tutoring business. 

Do some market research in your local area, get into subreddits of dissatisfied parents, and you might just find some potential customers.

Try creating some free content to establish authority first, though. YouTube or Substack are probably your best bet — parents don’t exactly trust teacher influencers on TikTok. 

You can also niche down and focus on kids with special needs, or specific subjects like STEM or the arts.

If you’re not a teacher, there are other ways to do business with existing schools: 

📚 Sell curriculums: Create and sell educational materials to existing microschools.

💰 Funding advisor: Connect founders with investors or help them apply for available grants.

📒 Supplies: Become their designated supplier of stationery, space and facilities, or other essentials.

⚙️ OPERATOR WISDOM

Rage rooms are still all the rage — 5 tips to run one like a pro

You know the beloved tradition of sports fans throwing TVs out of their window after a loss? 

Not demure. Definitely not mindful. 

But there are moments in life where we get mighty close to acting that way. And rage rooms were invented for those moments. 

Source: Google Trends, six-month rolling average

Also known as “smash room” or “anger room,” these are places you can pay to de-stress by destroying objects, from plates and bottles to full-sized appliances.

They’re not “new,” but demand remains high — 184k+ people around the world search for it every month, per Ahrefs (and its difficulty to rank is only 4/100). 

A Trendster’s rage room venture

Trends’ old friend Vincent Serpico started Breakthrough Smash Room in 2021, after his daughter spent three days in the ICU following a suicide attempt. 

He spoke with us back then on how he took that idea to fruition. I caught up with him recently, where he told me that the business is still growing strong — it’s got a healthy 40% profit margin and several thousands of foot traffic every month. 

Here are his 5 tips on running a successful business in the experience economy. 

1. Analyze the market and learn from others

He tracked down and studied 100+ smash rooms in the US, Europe, and Latin America, and set a Google alert for terms related to the industry to stay on top of new developments.

He found out what he didn’t like about existing ones, and used them as opportunities to diversify. 

For instance, many brand their experience around rage, and while he admits there’s a market for that, Vincent wanted to focus on health and positivity. 

Most smash rooms called the things they use to destroy objects “weapons,” but Vincent instructed employees to call them “tools” instead. 

“Weapons implies violence, and we are 100% not about violence. We're about transmuting your inner tension and stress, and getting it out,” he said. 

Source: Giphy

2. Put customers before profit

“I wanted to create something like Disney,” he said, “where the experience is really what makes it.”

Like a scene out of The Founder, he and his wife/business partner Melissa spent days mapping out their customer flow on the floor of their new shop before they did any renovations.

They also made sure each stage of the experience favors human connection, even if it sacrifices efficiency.

Case in point: rather than watching a safety video, customers get a live safety briefing that allows employees to engage them on an emotional level and determine whether they’re working through something, or just looking to have fun.

“Ask yourself, ‘what can you do for the customers so that they’re the happiest they can be?’ Vincent said. “Focus on the value prop, and not how much money you can make.” 

3. Build multiple revenue streams

Base fee: For the regular experience (1-5 people), Vincent simplified their pricing to one tier only. A $39 flat rate gets you a crate of smashables, and safety gear. 

Here’s the kicker: every crate is different. There are 40-50 curated crates on the floor for people to choose from — Vincent even throws in extra crunchy stuff if you’re going through a divorce. 

Upsells: Since the sessions aren’t timed, people usually opt for “add-on” smashable (e.g., appliances, windows, printers, etc.), making the average spend $50 per customer. 

“We look like a thrift store or a pawn shop,” Vincent said. “We’ve got keyboards, monitors, windshields, toilets, sinks, confetti bottles… whatever you need.” 

The most popular upsell? The “office space” bundle. 

IYKYK. Source: GIFDB

Events: Breakthrough also makes money through group events and corporate events. Popular event packages include:

• Bachelor and bachelorette parties
• Birthday parties
• Family gatherings (a shocker to Vincent) 

Notice how none of these revolve around rage? 

To cater to evolving needs, Vincent even converted one of the four smash rooms into a “splatter room,” where the experience gets a little more artistic. 

He keeps the investment on supplies around 10% of revenue. They partner with local restaurants, bars, and thrift stores to get excess supply, and also bid on Public Surplus auctions. 

Keep reading to see Vincent's two other tips, from retaining talent to marketing strategy, and why he thinks rage rooms are great business (he's operating at a 40% margin). 

🗂️ OPEN TABS

📈 Deep dive: Unicorns are out, gritty startups are in. 

🧱 From X: A cheat sheet on how to build startups in 2024

🧑‍💻 Founder Mode: Watch this summary of Paul Graham’s viral essay

💚 Bye, brat summer: How the Internet warps our sense of time