Great Startup Ideas, Bad Businesses

Founder's Journal

Morning Brew

Careers, Business, Entrepreneurship

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 March 2022

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

I sent out a tweet asking my followers: "what’s a startup idea that sounds great in theory but would be a shitty business?” 1,600 likes and 700 responses later, I'm running some of your ideas through the gauntlet and walking you through how I analyze and form business ideas. Check out the full transcript at https://foundersjournal.morningbrew.com to learn more, and if you have any ideas for our show, email me at [email protected] or my DMs are open @businessbarista. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	What's up, everyone? This is Alex Lieberman, co-founder and executive chairman of Morning Brew.
0:05.4	Welcome back to Founders Journal, my personal audio diary, where I give you the business builder,
0:10.9	the tools you need to think better in order to build better, whether that's building a business,
0:15.8	a team, or a new product. Today, I am breaking down two startup ideas that sound great in theory,
0:23.3	but our shitty businesses. Let's hop into it.
0:30.4	So I want to set the stage with this episode. Two days ago, I believe I put out a tweet
0:35.5	that very simply read, what is a startup idea that sounds great in theory, but would be a shitty
0:42.0	business? And sometimes I just put out these prompts. I have no idea what sort of pickup they'll
0:46.8	get, but it's just something I'm thinking about. 1600 likes and 700 responses later. I could tell
0:53.1	that people had a lot of things to say about good ideas, bad businesses. But the reason I was
0:59.2	personally so excited about this is that it created so much opportunity for me as just a business
1:04.8	builder and a business mind to practice analyzing businesses that people thought were shitty
1:10.1	and for my own opinion on them. And so what I want to do is share just a handful of the ideas that
1:16.5	folks replied with, and then I'm going to pick two of the ideas and go deeper with them.
1:21.1	So first we had Patrick Nieman who shared an idea of crowdfunding from musicians and concerts.
1:28.5	His view was that this idea of crowdfunding from musicians, great idea in theory, really horrible
1:35.2	business. Then there was Kapil Israni who said package delivery. There were a bunch of people who
1:41.2	also said just food delivery specifically and they referenced how the fixed costs are super high
1:46.2	and figuring out the delivery routes is super hard. Umong Dua said a travel recommendation app.
1:52.2	He also said, basically subscription boxes for anything. His response was subscription box for
1:57.9	X. So I take that as any sort of subscription box, which I generally agree with. But I do think
2:02.6	there are a number of subscription companies that have actually done really well and have really
	...

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