🔥 "AWS" for customer service, a peer-to-peer shipping service, and more!
Startup ideas from My First Million podcast episode #109 with Jonathon Barkl
Hey guys,
Here’s a summary of all the startup ideas from My First Million podcast episode #109 including links and time stamps. This episode features guest Jonathon Barkl. Hope you enjoy!
2:30 An insurance company that focuses on startups
A good model would be lemonade.com but insurance for startups that don’t have a history, etc.
Very difficult to get insurance for a startups, especially if you’ve got an e-commerce business
Tons of paperwork and phone calls currently required with traditional insurance companies
[Wes] One issue I see with this approach is most startups fail, therefore an insurance business focused just on startups will be very volatile
3:50 A personal concierge / advisor service company that helps you with various tasks.
like how best to redeem credit card points, which credit card you need based on your specific goals (like you want to do a yearly family vacation, so you need this credit card)
An example is mopoints.com: book a call with this guy named Mo and he’ll tell you exactly which credit card you need to fulfill your needs
Can also do this for insurance advisors (which type of insurance do I really need), credit card advisors (how can I maximize travel rewards), etc
A 15-20 minute phone call to understand the customer’s problem and how to solve it
Must be non-biased (no affiliates) so you are trustworthy
Can do this for various other niches or services. I would start out by specializing in one specific service like Mopoints.com did. Could be a cool lifestyle business!
6:25 Virtual mailbox: A company that can scan mail, forward packages, deposit checks, and more.
As a customer you get one address and use that for the whole business lifespan instead of changing addresses every time you change offices
Stable is one example of this. Jonathon knows them.
Could make a personal version of Stable, where the company always forward the mail to the address they have on file with you. So you can change the forwarding address whenever you want but can keep your main personal address forever.
10:30 “AWS” (Amazon Web Service) for customer service: A marketplace to hire customer service or other services on demand.
A lot of early stage companies want better customer service but can’t justify it
Lots of retirees that would love a part time gig or stay-at-home moms
Would need to give the retirees basic training to allow them to do this
For startups it would be great if they could only by X hours of support per week to keep costs down
Shaan has a lot of friends with e-commerce founders and he doesn’t think they really need this
But Shaan does like the framework of how to empower the “stay at home” work force like stay at home moms, retirees
Rev.com is an example of using “stay at home” workforce
May be vulnerable to AI
16:45 A “unified” rating system
Ratings are all in different places (google maps, yelp)
This causes friction and division of your company ratings
What is needed is a company that allows customers to rate your company using one unified rating system that ties in to Google, Yelp etc and posts that one rating to all the rating platforms
Create a more cohesive brand
27:37 Peer-to-peer shipping service: When people don’t use their free baggage on their flight they could use that space to ship an item
Travelers could get extra money while helping others save on shipping
Would be difficult to get the logistics right
43:00 D2C (direct to consumer) printer ink cartridges
