⚡ Signal - What's cookin'

The perfect quarantine business idea and the ultimate list of podcasts every founder and entrepreneur should be listening to

Jul 21, 2020

Hello Everyone!

🔙 In case you missed it, here’s last week’s edition on a business you can start to generate some cash, quickly.

This is a particularly exciting edition. You’re gonna want to read top-to-toe!

First up: You might’ve noticed I’ve started dropping a business idea every day on Twitter. If you see one you like and you want me to break down, comment on it!

Second up: If you applied for Startup Labs, you would have got an email from me. Check it out.

Third up: Build a business below!

Fourth up: I’m going to start crowd-sourcing what idea you guys want to tackle. So every week there will be three options. You click the one which interests you most, and the most-voted for one will get the full-spiel in the next week’s edition. See below!

Alrighty, admin done. Into this week’s edition.

🧨 Build A Business

// Follow along, as I actually start and build an internet business, step-by-step

I’m building a business.

From scratch.

With less than $100.

Over the next 52 Weeks, I’ll be journaling every single step of that journey here.

Everything I learn - you will too.

The best part? You can do it along side me. Every week I’ll be explaining what I’ve done, and what I’m working on next, and give you actionable steps to do on your own before the next edition.

Get 50% off forever

FYI: I’m going to be making this a paid segment.

Why? Well, it’s going to be super in-depth, with a ton of quality content. It’s going to take me a LOT of time.

Also, there is going to be an engaged community that is going to be running along side it where we discuss everything that’s going on, and go into your business too.

Because you’re already a subscriber (thank you!), you can get a lifetime 50% discount on the yearly subscription right now.

That’s only going to last for one week.

When next week’s Signal goes out, the discount will go down to 25% for your first year (for subscribers only), and thereafter (when we launch in the first week of August) it will be full price.

Here’s what the journey is going to look like:

Idea Discussion
Validation
Minimum Viable Product
First Customers + Revenue
Customer Growth Strategy and Implementation
Full Product Build + Skills Needed
Scale
Operations (Customer support, marketing, hiring etc.)
A whole stack more

Get 50% off forever

PS: If you want access to the first month (editions 1 to 4) for free, all you have to do is refer three friends to sign up for the Signal. I’ll track these and when three referals come from your unique link below, you’ll get an email saying you’ve got one month’s complimentary access:

Here’s a button you can click to do it quickly.

Share The Signal

🚀 Startup Labs

// A business idea, explored

🍜 Traditional, authentic meals

What’s cookin!

There has been a big shift in the way we consume and regard food. Access to restaurants is at an all-time low, and people have been forced to cook.

Something surprising has resulted: Most people are sticking with it. Cooking isn’t so bad!

Thing is, if you’ve been doing it for any length of time you’ll know that one of the worst things to do is actually deciding on what to eat.

That’s mainly because options are limited to the traditional recipes online or what’s in your head.

⚡ The Opportunity

Enter: The genuine authentic real food marketplace.

It’s like Gumroad/Teachable, but for authentic food recipes. How is it any different from any recipe you can get online for free? Well, there’s are specially-sourced traditional recipes from cultures all around the world.

Ever wondered what a traditional Garam Masala tastes like in India?

Or how to make a proper Spanish Paella?

Or maybe you’ve got South African friends coming over and you wanted to treat them to a traditional braai.

Not convinced? Check out these search trends:

Check out the stats from r/tonightsdinner where everyone shares recipes for (mostly) exotic foods that they make for dinner:

And the second most popular thread…?

💥 Features

Build a traditional food marketplace.
Allow verified users and chefs to submit authentic, traditional recipes which other users can use, for free.
Work with those chefs to curate traditional herbs, spices and ingredients from local suppliers.
Deliver everything the recipe needs, with the correct amounts (and a recipe) to the person’s door for them to make.
Profit-share with the chefs on the ingredients.
Allow a cook-in-home option where the chef’s get hired to make the recipe at home, for dinner guests, and either do a masterclass (where they teach about authentic cuisine) or do it with them and give out tasks to members of the dinner party.

📈 Gameplan

Validate

Collect 10 of the most popular recipes you can find online that are from various cultures.
Put just one into an email, with a short (super interesting!) piece of content, history or media about the country of origin and send it out to as many friends as you know. Do that 10 more times, three times a week. (You might want to give the mail a precursor like “I’m running an experiment with a close group of friends - you’re one of the guinea pigs. If you want out of these, just drop me a note”)
At the end of three weeks. Email all your friends and ask them what the experience was like.
Get feedback on what could make it better, and how many of them made the recipes, what their challenges were, and whether they’d continue. Use that constructively to craft a MVP.

MVP

Spin up a quick landing page using Webflow (my preferred web-design tool) and offer free early access, if they share the page with three friends (there are free tools which help you do this).
Check out this post on crafting a landing page for tips.
Sharetribe is also great if you go the ‘crowd-sourced’ recipe route where people can submit their traditional recipes. It helps you build a marketplace MVP faster than any other software out there.
Make some noise about your idea on Reddit, Hackernews, IndieHackers, and start drumming up an audience. Reach out to a few journalists in your niche.
If possible find a few ‘celebrity’ chefs who have a following of their own to partner with. Try in the small to medium (1k to 10k followers) category.
Find 3 chefs to work with on recipes. Explain the business prop to them. Chef’s are looking for any additional income at this stage, they should be open to sharing their ideas in exchange for a profit share.
Get a database of 30 or so recipes and put them behind a paywall (Substack works great). Send them out on a weekly basis to subscribers. Include sources for the ingredients from local suppliers and aritsans.
Try get the chef’s to make video’s. Make the experience immersive.

Grow

Once you’ve got a viable product (it may look very different from what I’ve described above), you can start getting into more of the features I mentioned above.

You’ll want to start setting up socials, getting the community to engage with you while they’re cooking and create a bit of a community. Encourage the sharing of fails, pictures and evening’s with friends.

Start diversifying to work with partners, and guest chef’s etc. (the additional features described in Features, above) once you’ve got a steady income.

Run PPC ads on highly targeted communities that you’ve identified as places where your potential customers hang out.

🗳️ Vote

Which of these ideas do you want to go through next week? Click the link to vote.

🛠️ Skill Builder

// A skill to add to your founder’s toolbox

🙎 Customer Profile

One of the most important steps in validating a business idea is defining your ideal customer.

It allows you to:

Found out where they hang out,
Build a brand around who you’re trying to resonate with, and
Test your product-market fit and whether your product actually solves a problem for them.

It’s one of the first things I do when validating an idea.

If you want a template (like below), you can download a free one here.

Here’s what to include:

Demographics (Who they are)
Buying Habits (How they spend their money)
Psychographics (How they think)

An example:

Demographics

- Male
- Mid 30's
- Married, 2 young kids
- College Degree
- Lives in San Francisco
- Earns $5 000+ monthly
- Works at a VC fund as a medium-level analyst

Buying Habits

- Compares options before buying
- Doesn’t like to waste, so buys food more frequently, in smaller quantities
- Shops online for convenience
- Price conscious, but would prefer to spend more on a quality product
- Prefer to pay a bit more to support local businesses

Psychographics

- Outdoors person
- Likes having his own time
- Driven, intrinsically motivated
- Values financial freedom — has a rainy day fund
- Values time with family

📣 What’s-a-Twitter

// The tweet of the week, from someone I follow over at @simon_blogs

An awesome thread, worth the read.

Jeff Morris Jr. @jmj

“1st time founders are obsessed with product. 2nd time founders are obsessed with distribution.” Is distribution more important than product? Let’s debate 🍿

🖱️ Clickworthy

// Valuable tidbits from around the interweb

🎧 The ultimate list of podcasts for entrepreneurs on founders. Catering for everything from ideas through to execution and exit. This is off the back of @con_keppel ’s Twitter thread. It’s still a work in progress - bare with me. Got one to add? Drop a comment below.

🧩 From one of the absolute best in the VC game - a16z - 12 Things About Product Market Fit

🧐 If you could ask someone only one question to learn how they think, what would it be? Here is a thread of over 100 examples.

👋 The End Notes

// I know, I know. I can almost hear you saying "Don't go, don't go."

That's it for this week. Hope there was some value in there for you.

How did you find this edition?

👍 YES - I liked it
〰️ MEH - Average
👎 NO - Almost no value

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