Good morning to all new and old readers! Here is your Wednesday edition of Capital Ideas, exploring four startup ideas and five success stories from the last week to help you find your next business or investment.

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Today’s edition:

Cheers,
Alex

P.S. Send me feedback on how we can improve. I respond to every email.

Ideas

1: Anti-Instagram

How often do you see 150,000 people voting with their feet about a product they’d like to see in the world (again)?

Instagram has long been engineered for advertising dollars, and the initial mission of simple photo-sharing with friends is nowhere to be seen.

Apps like Retro, BeReal, and Happyfeed have emerged targeting this white space, but they are all variations of the simple use case of sharing photos in chronological order with friends and family.

Aside from BeReal, none of them have reached critical mass, and the opportunity remains.

The key challenge is developing a business model that doesn't rely on advertising revenue since injecting ads would undermine the core value proposition.

Some potential approaches to consider:

• Freemium model with premium features for power users

• Subscription model with affordable monthly/annual pricing

• Paid customization options like filters, stickers, frames

• In-app purchases for virtual goods or gifts between friends

• Affiliate revenue for related products/services

• Premium enterprise features for families, groups, events

• Donations or patronage from passionate users

Ultimately, the winning formula will likely involve a creative combination of multiple revenue streams that align with delivering a simple, authentic, ad-free user experience.

But the strong signal of 150K votes suggests people are hungry for this and willing to pay for the right solution.

2: Home Health Assessment

The era of increasing awareness around toxins, allergens, and other environmental risk factors is upon us.

Superpower.com (a company started by my friend, Max Marchione) are building a personal health concierge.

You can imagine this being a value-added service built on top of a platform like Superpower or a standalone service. Absolute Rest is an example of a company doing this for sleep.

For distribution, you could partner with gyms, health facilities, companies, or even sporting clubs on an affiliate model.

For monetisation, you would:

1. Charge upfront for the core service, then a yearly annual check-in

2. Partner with providers of products and services on an affiliate model

3. Overtime, you’d build a data advantage and be able to build your own products to serve the most common needs

If you can demonstrate a close tie between health outcomes and the interventions, there might also be room to reduce life insurance premiums, providing an added incentive for the health-conscious to use the service.

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