Hey,

In this first issue of 2025, here’s what we have:

• 6 gaps in the market

• Interesting stuff I saw last week

• I answer a question from you

Let’s get to it.

6 startup opportunities right now

1. B2C: Monetise Loneliness

Timeleft brings strangers together for dinner every Wednesday in cities around the world. Sounds like a simple, small idea, right? For three years, the app made no money. Fast forward the past 14 months, and they went from $0 to $10M ARR. 

The problem: 1 in 3 adults report feeling lonely frequently or almost always. Loneliness also tends to spike during big life changes. Think divorce, newborn, career changes, moving countries, etc…

So build for when people are most open to connection. Here are some ideas for you:

• Online community for people switching careers

• Dinner clubs for new parents

• A virtual platform that allows people to meet IRL

• An AI-powered support buddy

2. B2B: Vertical AI Agents

The default playbook used to be software to help people do the work. Now, with AI, it’s software doing the work. 

A playbook that would work:

1. Choose an industry with heavy regulation (e.g., real estate, healthcare, finance).

2. Scrape all regulatory PDFs, industry guides, and training manuals.

3. Train a large language model (LLM) on this data.

4. Develop 5 highly-targeted workflows that save users 3+ hours each.

5. Price it at 20% of the human alternative.

Example: Medical billing AI. Automates patient verification, coding, and claims submission. Charges $5 per processed claim versus $25 worth of admin time.

This is how you scale.

3. SaaS: Pay-per-result

The subscription model is losing its edge. Companies are frustrated with paying for software that’s more of a gamble than a guarantee. The future? Pay-per-performance.

Think about building pay-per-result software like this:

1. Offer a free version that gives users 80% of the value traditional SaaS provides.

2. Charge only for specific outcomes (e.g., $X per qualified lead, Y% of closed deals).

3. Cap the monthly cost at 3x the price of traditional SaaS.

4. Include a “success guarantee” — users don’t pay unless targets are met.

This shifts the risk to you and ensures your customers see real value before they pay.

4. E-commerce: AI Personal Shoppers

People are overwhelmed by endless choices online, but AI can filter through it all and deliver tailored recommendations. Here’s the business model mix I’d use:

1. Affiliate: If your AI recommends a jacket from a partner store, and the user buys it, you receive a percentage of the sale.

2. Subscriptions: A user could pay $10/month for premium features, like having a personal AI stylist or getting a more in-depth analysis of their style preferences.

3. Partnerships: You could partner with a clothing brand, and their products appear more often in your AI’s recommendations. In return, the brand may pay you a fixed fee or higher commission on those sales.

4. Data Insights: You could analyse which types of items your users are most likely to buy based on certain behaviours, and sell that data to clothing retailers.

5. Creator: tools to go viral or make more money

With more people turning to content creation as a full-time career, there’s a huge demand for tools that help creators make money and grow their audience. You know there’s money to be printed when Mr Beast launched his analytics platform ViewStats to the public.

If you can help creators be seen, make more informed decisions and more money, then you’re onto something. 

You don't need to build AI from scratch. Use these no-code platforms to create your tool:

1. AI Platforms:

• ChatGPT (OpenAI): For content suggestions, captions, and engagement tips.

• Copy.ai: To help generate captions, titles, and content ideas for creators.

• Hugging Face: For machine learning models that analyze content trends (no-code machine learning).

2. No-Code Platforms:

• Bubble.io: For building your tool’s web version with no code.

• Zapier: To automate tasks (e.g., connecting social media platforms with your tool).

• Framer or Webflow: For building landing pages or websites if you need to showcase or market your tool.

Choose an AI platform for content analysis and a no-code platform to build your app or website. You can integrate these two with platforms like Zapier.

6. Overlooked: Elders x Tech

Not many are building for seniors, and that’s a huge missed opportunity, especially in the West, where that group is about to become the largest demographic. 

We tend to think of them as too old to be tech savvy but that’s where the opportunity lies. They already are using Netflix, own iPads and have social media. Make easy-to-use apps solving their problems. Whether it’s health tech, lifestyle apps, or smart home devices, there’s a huge opportunity to build. 

They want solutions that enhance their lives without making them feel like they’re being treated differently just because of their age and the great thing is that they have a lot more disposable income to spend on whatever you make.

Interesting stuff I saw this week

This essay by Oliver Samwer, one of the co-founders of Rocket Internet. Hate them or love them, they’ve made a business out of copy pasting successful startups in the US into other markets. This is the playbook that largely inspired their business model.

My company THIRD published a Fundraising Bootcamp where we’ve compiled everything you need to raise funding for your startup, including a 5,539+ investors database, 7 tools, 18 templates and 4 learning resources. It’s all part of our mission to un-gatekeep funding for all founders. 

A question from you

Every week, I’ll pick a question I receive via email or DMs and answer it here. This week’s question is from Liam.

Q: I’ve been struggling to hire. I think it’s a mix of finding the right people and not necessarily being able to afford the best talent. What would you do?

CS: Hiring can be tricky and especially when you’re building a company for the long haul and to be a market leader, but you’re not exactly there yet. 

This requires laser focus and patience, a lot of it. There’s also no guarantee until you actually hire the person. No amount of tests or meetings will actually guarantee this person is the right fit. People can present themselves extremely differently on paper and in interviews (also a skill) and sometimes fail to impress in doing the actual job.

Honestly, what I came to realise is this: most people will do an average job and will be very comfortable doing it no matter how high their accolades are or amount of experience is. So now I know not to care for that anymore, it’s no way a guarantee that the said person will be an asset to your company.

So what I’m looking for is people that are constantly looking to raise the bar on what it is they’re doing, while being ready to get their hands dirty. This is seriously the magic combo. When people aren’t ready to do that, then I know for sure that they’re not going to be with us for a long time. 

That’s it for today - happy new year and hope you’ll get to whatever you have in mind!

Let me know what you think and if you have any questions or want to see more of something, just shoot me an email back.

Chaymae