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,
Caleb

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Ideas

1: AI-Driven Trucking Route Optimization

For those people thinking that all niches are saturated: This idea’s for you.

The trucking industry is absolutely massive in the US. But no one’s talking about it. Think about it—if you drive on a major freeway, massive 18-wheeler trucks are always taking up half the lanes.

But it might surprise you that many of the companies behind the trucks are:

1 - Small businesses - 95.8% of fleets operate ten or fewer trucks

2 - Struggling to make ends meet - margins for this business are getting slimmer with recent increases in labor and fuel costs, among other things

A massive market and a clear problem?

The perfect recipe for a great business.

The idea here would be to focus on one specific aspect of these trucking companies—route optimization—and use AI to bring their operations into the digital age.

Currently, most trucking companies use ancient tech—some still use pen and paper—to plan out their routes. As with all humans, this is bound to lead to inefficient routes and financial losses.

Using AI software to automate route planning and optimizing trucks for fuel efficiency and load pickup & drop-off significantly reduces the potential for human error.

I like this idea for 3 reasons:

1. Solves for human error - computers can calculate for fuel efficiency, route efficiency, drive times, and driver availability much faster and much more accurately than humans can

2. Saves money - if a company is currently doing route optimization by hand or in spreadsheets, you can now do it for much cheaper and therefore save on labor costs

3. Company investment - trucking companies are actively looking for ways to invest in their routing optimization and bring their companies into the digital age

Once you’ve solved this problem, you can add additional services like transportation management systems and supply chain visibility software.

As we’re still in the early days of AI, figuring out what exactly the use cases can be, this would be a great opportunity to run an experiment on an evergreen market.

2: Mold Removal Lead Generation

Here’s an idea for the savvy digital marketers out there:

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Have a wonderful rest of week, all.

Cheers,

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