FT 1000 highlights, anti-swipe files, target audience generator, true founder stories, ...

Hey,

this is Jakob Greenfeld, author of the Business Brainstorms newsletter - every week I write this email to share the most interesting trends, frameworks, opportunities, and ideas with you.

Let's dive in!

💡 Opportunities

• “Can someone please build copilot for creating slide decks?” - Jack Altman

• “side project idea: Target Audience Generator. - Ryan Kulp

  • 1. upload CSV of customer emails

  • 2. pick an ad platform (FB, LinkedIn, Google, etc)

  • 3. backend uses Clearbit to enrich

  • 4. download PDF that tells you exactly which drop-downs / fields to fill in on chosen platform’s ad builder

🛠 Things Worth Checking Out

• Wave is a coaching app that helps Developers, Freelancers, Creators, and Entrepreneurs deal with the challenges of their role (building trust, inspiring, gaining confidence, communicating, negotiating…), by tapping into the collective brainpower of multiple coaching experts empowered by AI.

• Caraway Home. Clean up nice this season with non-toxic ceramic coated kitchenware from Caraway

• SaaS Origin Stories Podcast. Deep conversations with founders as they share how they started their SaaS journeys. You’ll hear firsthand the do’s and don’ts of building and growing a SaaS company and inspirational stories to fuel your own SaaS adventures. Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

👨‍🎓 Framework

• A swipe file is a collection of ideas, examples, and templates for creative inspiration that a person can refer to when they need ideas for their own work. It can be in the form of physical files, digital folders, or bookmarked websites.

• But as it is so often the case, the opposite of a good idea like this is also a good idea. Here the opposite is keeping an anti-swipe file:

  Alex Lieberman @businessbarista

  I've been keeping a Shit List since 2015. Not of people I hate. But of products/experiences I hate. It forces me to question the status quo & find business ideas constantly.

🧪Founder Story

• This thread is a great example of how successful founders often find their winning idea.

• There is no methodological brainstorming session, no strategic rating of ideas, no grand master plan.

• Instead, Anand got started with an idea (”Corporate Portfolio Management consulting”) that turned out to be pretty bad. But then by talking to people in the industry, they learn what people really care about, are willing to pay for, and how the sales processes really work.

Anand Sanwal @asanwal

We bootstrapped @CBinsights by first building a totally different business It involved hedge funds, too big too fail banks and $100,000 PDFs For nerds interested in data and information services businesses, you might enjoy this

• Stories like these are the perfect antidote to the usual nonsense that gets shared on Twitter or TikTok. “Follow these three steps to build a $10k/MRR SaaS”. You know, this kind of stuff. In reality, the process is never that neat and tidy.

💸 Revenue Signals

• The Financial Times released its annual report of the fastest-growing companies in Europe, including exact revenue numbers and three-year growth rates.

• Since a lot of the websites are in local languages, it can be hard to understand what each company on the list actually does. So I scraped their websites and then used GPT to write a short explanation. Table view here, card view here. (I did this for the first 200 companies so far but will add the remaining ones later today if there’s interest.)

• A few of the most interesting ones below (h/t Glen Allsopp):

  • Reedsy is essentially a niche-focused Upwork specifically for people with the skills to help you complete your romance / adventure / mystery book. Revenue is currently around $3M/year.

  • BEEsharing is an agency that focuses on facilitate networking among hobby, semi-professional, and professional beekeepers with the agriculture and trade industries. $1.7M in yearly revenue.

  • AIHR is offering online courses for people looking to advance their human resources career. Revenue is around $6M/year.

  • Expertlead, a Toptal competitor, doing $16M/year.

  • RightNow, a German company that purchases legal claims arising from everyday life situations from both consumers and business partners, is generating $20M/year.

  • PhotoAid lets you upload a photo and outputs compliant passport and visa images. Seems like your average indie hacker project but revenue is $3M/year.

End Note

As always, if you’re enjoying this report, I’d love it if you shared it with a friend or two. You can send them here to sign up.

Have a great week,

Jakob

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