Startup Ideas Recap of My First Million Podcast 💵 Episode #99

Aug 12, 2020

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18:00 WeWork for warehouses

For e-commerce owners you either own your own warehouse and deal with logistics OR you use a 3PL (third party logistics) where you send them the stock and they do all the logistics, shipping etc.
The problem is 3PLs don’t really know your business, they make mistakes and go slow, they charge a lot per order which can hurt your margins
Why not a WeWork for warehouses where they have the space in a building (shelves, forklift) but you rent your subsection of the warehouse and you don’t get charged per order.
No body has built a brand and space to do this at scale
Saltbox seems like the closest bet. But seems like there is more opportunity to do this
Shipmonk is a 3PL. Forbes says Shipmunk did $4M in sales in 2016, expects to do $10M in 2017. Shaan says they are way above that now.
Sam says you can get $1 per square foot warehouses “kinda near” Las Vegas so margins can be really high. SO a 20,000 sq ft warehouse for $20,000.
Shaan thinks you could do this and also offer a 3PL service there as well
3PL are trying to offer the Amazon Prime of shipping subscription option. Would take a lot of scale to do this

27:12 Venture Capitalist as a side hustle?

Handful of people raising money themselves and investing in 20 or so companies—bypassing venture funds
Ryan Hoover with the Weekend Fund does this
Shaan is an LP in Weekend Fund. He realized he can learn a lot about investing if he is there in the action and can see the deals and the thought process
Shaan joined Angel List smart person syndicate but did not necessarily invest. Shaan reads the deal memos and sees how people think about things and got lots of insights
But to see inside a fund Shaan had to put some money in to Weekend Fund to learn more about it and how they operate
Shaan invested a little bit in a lot of fund to learn
So Shaan will raise money form others and invest in larger stakes in companies
Shaan makes money when a change of hand occurs like going public or acquisition

39:00 Female as a differentiator…or any other minority as a differentiator

Shaan thinks there’s so many products but geared towards women you could make a whole new product
For example, on Trends there was someone who started a Facebook Group called the Solo Female Traveler Network. She was doing $1M+ per year. She layered a tours business inside of it to help women enjoy where they travel to. What else can be done this way?
Bumble dating app geared towards women doing the outreach instead of men
The Wing is a co-working space for women
Inner Circle is a women’s mastermind group
example of how you could do this:
Halal financing / lending (muslim)
Female bank like Ellevest
The Skim with news
Audiobooks for women
Bustle women network of publications: $50-$100M in revenue Sam estimates
Credit card the caters to women: maybe reward points that women are interested or part of rewards go towards empowering other women, etc
Sam thinks we need something geared to women but “alpha”

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Solo Capitalist