I have a problem.

My wife says way too often, “Dave, are you even listening to me?”

I went blank. It’s because a new business idea hit me. I’m sorry, I say.

I studied entrepreneurship in college. I can’t turn it off.

Whenever I get a business idea, I write it down on my phone.

I have 2,807 notes on my phone. (They’re not all business ideas)

Here are a few of the best business ideas, organized by industry:

• Media

• Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG)

• Software as a Service (SaaS)

• Health

• Services

I hope one of them leads you to [eventually] quit your job.

Media Business Ideas

1. Get on the 🐝 train

Anytime there is a new platform that creates an inflection in a big market, it pays off to be early. The product team behind Morning Brew (acquired by Business Insider for $75 million) solved this problem and created a way for anyone to create their own “Morning Brew.” They figured out how to solve the hardest task for newsletter businesses (growth) and now droves of publications are launching on the Beehiiv. Beehiiv delivers all sorts of growth levers, including boosts, partner programs, premium memberships, referrals, ad networks — and they’re launching new features every other week. Shameless plug: Subscribe to our beehiiv newsletter at ehandbook.com.

2. Cover products on TikTok

TikTok just introduced TikTok Shop, where creators can earn revenue in dozens of ways by promoting products in their TikToks. Now is the time to launch a product review channel in a vertical you’re passionate about. It could be software, coffee, appliances, cars, mattresses — it could be anything. Riches are in the niches, as it ‘twere. Stick to it for a year, build up your channel, and monetize it until you get acquired by a bigger brand looking for more distribution channels.

3. Niche professional communities

Sam Parr and Shaan Puri spoke on MFM about how huge and generalized LinkedIn has become. I love LinkedIn, but it has two major problems: it provides low-quality networking and unspecialized content. There is an opportunity to create specialized online communities of professionals in a field where people would pay a premium membership fee to join. Examples of this business model already working: Hampton for successful tech founders, Procurement Foundry for sourcing professionals, and RevGenius for GTM professionals.

4. AI Courses for niche industries

1. MidJourney for Marketers. I continually see jaw-dropping designs, art, and illustrations “created with MidJourney” but whenever I try it myself it ends up looking like a melted puppy or a hacked-up Vishnu. If someone could make a course that teaches marketers how to use MidJourney, you could steal a lot of professional development budget as well as the budget that usually goes to creative contractors and vendors for marketing design.

2. ChatGPT for Technical Trades. ChatGPT is prolific but it’s not obvious how it improves traditionally non-tech-forward industries, such as Autoshops, Veterinarians, Accountants, and Social Work. A course that teaches professionals how to use ChatGPT specifically in their more esoteric field could generate a lot of revenue if done well.

Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) Business Ideas

5. Make the “Liquid Death of _____”

Liquid Death sells the most commoditized product in the world: canned water. Anybody could do it. But the reason why Liquid Death became a $700 million business is because they created a remarkable brand. Why can’t this model be replicated across other products? Choose a banal, established category and shake things up by introducing a premium product with a hard-hitting, polarizing brand. Fortune favors the bold. Go deeper: I wrote a Medium article on Liquid Death: 16 Lessons I Learned From Studying the $700M Brand Liquid Death.

6. Professional home recording studio “in a box”

This idea emerges from the collision of two trends: the rise of video and remote work. More people are working from home than before, and TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and media sites are leaning hard into video as the next frontier of content creation. Smartphones like the iPhone 15 continue to make filming videos easier. But just because everyone has a professional camera doesn’t mean they can make a professional video from home. It takes work to find the right microphone, audio equipment, lighting, background, etc. What if there was a service that could deliver a professional home recording studio right to your door? Offer tiers and customization. Do what StreamYard did for video creation, but for your home office. Make it easy and professional for anyone to do.

7. Brewery in a shipping container

I was having a conversation with a friend and he told me his brother-in-law is a master brewer for a really well-known craft beer brand based out of Asheville, NC. He said that he was working on putting together “kits” that contained everything you’d need to set up your own craft brewery. Except these aren’t just kits, they’re shipping containers, built for small-scale commercialization, like a food truck. This is not B2C where you’re selling to budget-sensitive hobbyists at home. It’s the perfect “mid-market” solution where a home brewer can take their craft to the next level and potentially quit their full-time job and create an iconic, delicious product.

8. Updated kid computers

I have three kids. The oldest is four. In today’s age, screens are everywhere (phone, computer, tablet, TV) and arguably too addictive for young minds. The dopamine of an iPad is too intense for a developing brain. But I still want to teach my kids about technology. Technology is good at teaching kids systems and processes, logic, design, and problem-solving. I’d be ecstatic if my kids became interested in software design and engineering. Toy devices like this exist already, but the kid computers that you buy online look like they’re from the 1980s: archaic, campy, and annoying. There’s an opportunity to create computers that are gray-scale, educational, and fun while not annoying. Think like a Kindle but with the UI for a 4-year-old. If done right, parents will not withhold any expense to invest in their kids and their future success.

SaaS Business Ideas

9. Journal-based AI personality analysis and coaching

Spending on mental health is surging. This service lets you upload your notes-to-self, audio files, and digital journal entries to a site that spits out a unified story arc of your life and analyzes your patterns, health, struggles, strengths, and relationships, and delivers a very personalized “ebook” style personality guide that reveals insights about who you are, areas to work on, key characteristics to focus on, relationship “counseling” and career coaching.

10. HotJar for video content

If you’re not familiar with HotJar, it’s a tool UX researchers use to learn about how people behave on their website or in their software. It records actions like mouse movements, clicks, and eye movements (i.e., heat maps), and also feedback surveys. The idea here is, what if you could create a tool that captures facial sentiment while watching video content such as ads, movies, live streams, social clips, etc. This data could be fed into an AI model for analysis and provide insights on the effectiveness of the content, such as “87% of the audience reacted very positively.” Every marketing team in the world would pay for an ROI tool like this.

11. AI brand generator

How does a creator come up with a good name for their brand? Businesses pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a brand. Sometimes millions. Logo and naming generators suck today - completely unuseful. Dime a dozen. Garbage in garbage out. We can do better: first AI brand generator. It ingests data such as: suggestions from your team, surveys, competitor analysis, market sentiment, available domains/pricing, trademark registry, and legal considerations and in return delivers a packet with a name, available domain options, legal opinions, positioning recommendations, and market analysis. You could even call it name.ai ($30k domain).

12. Simple text-only video animation

Kapwing is a fantastic video creation tool. I love it. But it still is super time-consuming to make a simple video. What if it could be much simpler and focus only on text animation? No images, no stock video. Just really good text animations for making announcements on social channels more noticeable. Tweets with video attract 10X more engagement. This tool would need to be faster than Canva, and offer plenty of options and enough customizations to not feel cookie-cutter. To clarify, the “library” would not be the fonts, but the variety of animation styles (i.e., an animation editor) and music to make it a beautiful video.

Health Business Ideas

13. Appetite-suppressant pills

I’m not a health professional but this seems like a simple weight-loss strategy. An over-the-counter appetite-suppressant pill that would make Intermittent Fasting (IF) much easier for more people to do. You don’t feel hungry, eat less, and lose weight. Medicine like this is available but it requires a prescription. What if you could find a safe, natural oral supplement that removes craving? Seems like it should be possible. Then again, I just drink coffee.

14. Blood doping

Blood doping means increasing the amount of blood in your body. The logic is red blood cells carry oxygen from the lungs to the muscles, so a higher concentration in your blood can improve your aerobic capacity and endurance. The business idea here is figuring out how to make this safe, legal, and commercial. Maybe it could follow a similar process to freezing eggs or sperm for later? If it’s your own blood, how unsafe is that as long as you follow safety and sanitary protocols? I don’t know the details and there’s probably a lot of red tape, but seems like an opportunity people would pay for.

15. DoorDash for health checkups

I haven’t gotten a physical in years. The inconvenience of getting it scheduled, going to the doctor’s office, and the overall amount of wasted time is a pain point. What if health professionals came to my house? What if the appointment was conducted over video conferencing? What if I could do it myself and have it reviewed by a healthcare professional? Telehealth is nascent. Seems there’s an opportunity to make simple checkups available at home for routine dental appointments, physicals, eye exams, etc.

Service Business Ideas

16. Digitize your book collection

Books take up a ton of space. Also, your book collection is a massive database of content that isn’t searchable. Create a device that makes it easy to scan books into the cloud from home. Then create an app on your phone that has robust search and cataloging.

17. Book publishing for exited founders

An exited entrepreneur is flush with cash and has a great story to tell. But they may not be good writers. Provide a high-end boutique book publishing service to publish their book that they can use to get speaking gigs, podcast appearances, and build their personal brand.

18. Reddit marketing agency

Reddit has 1.6 billion monthly active users but companies and marketers always get their posts banned because they’re way too promotional and spammy. Create an agency that specializes in Reddit marketing that develops the strategy, anonymous accounts, monitoring, posting and commenting service for organically generating leads.

19. Performance-based PR agency

I’ve worked with half a dozen different PR agencies and they typically charge $15,000-$40,000 a month. Often these months result in no external impact whatsoever, just a bunch of internal messaging docs. Create a PR agency with a low monthly retainer and a bonus payment structure that only gets paid when top-tier earned media placements are achieved.

20. Creator retreats

It’s difficult to film high-quality, interesting content because most of the time you have to work around busy influencer schedules. What if you created a business that hosts retreats in ambrosial locations where creators traveled in and cranked out content together in collaborations? Not only would it be a beautiful but productive escape from the day-to-day but also the inspiration and motivation would be at an all-time high.

See you next Thursday,

Dave

PS. Which one do you think has the most potential? Let me know on Twitter