Startup Idea - Marketplace for Unconventional Advertising

The Problem – Limited advertising options and increasing advertising budgets have led to steep rises in advertising rates of these options. This has affected the return advertisers can get on their advertising spend, at times making it unreasonable for them to do so.

The Solution/Startup Idea – A marketplace connecting sources of unconventional advertising with potential advertisers. This includes adverts in places like gyms, hotels, salons, educational campuses, residential areas etc.

Rationale – A host of unconventional advertising sources exist which are largely untapped. Tapping these would tend to bring down the advertising costs of advertisers, help them target better and also generate additional revenue of vendors of these new advertisement options.

Target Market –

Customers – Advertisers (especially local businesses, SMEs etc.); New vendors of advertisements (local options like gyms, schools, hotels, salons, spas etc. and online options like blogs, personal websites).

Geography – Global (launch can be in a particular city/country)

Current Competition – This unconventional advertising market is still untapped.

Competitive Advantage – The market is largely untapped. A first mover advantage can prove to be a significant competitive advantage. Also the volume and quality of the data will create barriers to entry in the future.

Startup Model – Online Booking of Beauty & Wellness Services

The Model: A platform where users can discover the different beauty and wellness outlets around them, read about them, get customer reviews and then make a booking as well. Discovery is great, but if you can add a booking facility as well, the customer experience grows multifold.

Startup Doing It: Treatwell (Dutch startup)

What I Like:

Core Idea – End to end services, from discovery to booking, for beauty and wellness. Experience is great and more complete for a user.

Revenue Model – Commission on bookings is the obvious. Even advertising can kick in.

Barrier to Entry – Since bookings involve setting up a proper booking management system (which includes inventory management and bookings management), the barrier for a new entrant to enter is higher than the barrier in say a discovery only tool.

My Concerns:

Difficult to Scale – A lot of time and effort has to be invested to scale this model, vis-à-vis a discovery only tool. Outlets need to be contacted, convinced and a system has to be put in place.

Requires Better Control on Processes – If a customer makes a booking, which the outlet does not honor, it will impact your brand at the end of the day. Startups need to establish and work on the back-end systems, so that the process flow is smooth and customer experience is not hampered.

Startup Model – Data Visualization

The Model: A platform where users can create interactive and beautiful web pages to display data and information. This model is based on the proverb ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’. Using simple and easy to use tools, users can create ‘silks’ for representing information, which would normally be displayed in a word document or pdf.

Startup Doing It: Silk (Dutch startup)

What I Like:

Core Idea – Data representation tools present a good opportunity for budding entrepreneurs. With a reduced attention span of readers, data visualization is a focus area to generate new opportunities.

Ease of Use & Good Representation of Data - These are the 2 factors which are instrumental in ensuring user retention in this space.

Scalable – Since the product is a self usage tool, scaling potential is great.

Revenue Model – Freemium model, with a price for upgrading to a business account (having more allowed usage and features).

Full Featured API – Developers can build an application on top of Skill data, which increases usage and acceptability of the product.

My Concerns:

Competitive – This space is seeing a lot of traction in the last few years. Competition would include any data visualization startup including presentation creation and sharing websites.

Startup Model – Discovery of Trending Fashion

The Model: Creating a platform where users can save and share fashion articles, which can be discovered by other users. The concept revolves around social buying, as users can take inspiration from the clothing of fashionistas.

Startup Doing It: Fashiolista (Dutch startup)

What I Like:

Core Idea – E-commerce of fashion is crowded. Everyone has focused on selling fashion. Discovery has been largely neglected.

Creating Value – From identifying trending fashion to building affiliate purchase links, there is a lot of value that the Fashiolista team is adding in the entire process.

Revenue Models – The current models are advertising revenue and affiliate revenue. Also the business is looking to develop into a market intelligence tool for fashion, which can open up new avenues for revenue.

Low Competition – There are hardly any players operating in this space.

My Concerns:

Difficult to Scale –The fashion community model is based on user generated content, scaling is easier. However, building affiliate links for purchasing of articles is not.