Unique Business Ideas And Stories of the Week
While everyone is jumping on Threads I decided to finally login to Twitter and see what is up. And it’s a gold mine for business ideas and success stories. Here are just a few that interested me in the past week.
I found this post from @gas_biz intriguing. I didn’t even know that old gas pumps could be refurbished. But here’s a business where they take the old ones, fix them up and sell them to mom and pop gas stations. The owner’s a multi-millionaire and has months of bookings for installs.
This business is great because:
People don’t know about it
It saves small businesses money
With the growing EV market it’s doubtful lots of people will enter this space
Dorsal is an interesting small business that sells bracelets and for every one they remove a pound of plastic from the ocean. Which is awesome. But I also like the margins!
Bracelets are around $20 and they use Empower Eco to remove plastic from the Ocean, which uses plastic credits at a typical cost of $1 per 2kg of plastic. So that’s $0.45 for plastic removal. And the bracelets? A quick search on Alibaba has some in the sub $1 range with small minimum orders. So lets say $2 landed and we’re selling a $2.50 product for $20. Awesome!
They also share how many pounds of plastic they’ve helped remove out of the ocean (158k) over 5 years which is $3.2 million in gross revenue. Interesting business.
The next one is an idea. Check out this video. Now think how cool that would be to share across your socials the day after your wedding. Now you could do the video and edits yourself but that would be limited by your time and geography. I think the most interesting way to do this would be to offer this as a service to wedding videographers.
You add an upsell for a wedding movie trailer ($1,000? $2,000?) and then you have a team overseas whose day is our night and they do a quick cut of the trailer and have it ready for the videographer to deliver to the couple in the morning. I saw a post that someone would pay a ton to have their wedding video the next day instead of a month later and this is just the next level of that.
What else is going on?
A company making nearly $100 million per year selling car washes.
Three game developers built Battlebit over six years and sold $27 million worth in their first two weeks (it doesn’t have native controller support yet).
TLDR, a five minute daily newsletter on tech, makes $4 million a year and takes the founder 30 minutes a day; We’ve reached peak newsletter.
San Antonio has 350 and 660 sq. ft houses for $135K and $171K, I think this is a trend that will continue. If I did one of these I’d have an HOA to have all the yards be standard and look great.
Creatine gummies are a thing. Two things in this one. How can you make something easier? The power of influencers. $21k/day in sales.
Flow Club charges you $30-40 a month to work with others online… But on your own projects… It’s called a body doubling session and it helps you be accountable and work. Not only are the members creating content. The content is just sitting quietly on a call working.
FareHarbor. Tourist software that started in 2011 and sold 7 years later for $300 million.
$630 million exit selling pimple patches.
I think there’s a market for sound dampening panels that double as wall art.
Japan sells Coca-Cola Plus that has dextrin (source of fiber) and may help suppress fat absorption and moderate levels of triglycerides in the blood after eating… First one to put this in an energy drink in NA wins.
Someone needs to make a cheaper TI-84 Plus.
Future post, check out Zach Bryan and Ren. This is how music gets discovered today.
Interesting Business Stat: Lipstick is a $9 billion global business. If you’re interested in a success story check out this episode of How I Built This on The Lip Bar.