Startup Sphere Weekly #4

Welcome back to another edition of Startup Sphere, where we talk about online businesses selling for life-changing amounts of money. In this edition, I included the first e-commerce store. I’m always open to hearing your thoughts, just respond to this email. Thank you for being a subscriber, and let’s get into it!

Ultra-premium matcha brand with a European fan base 

Asking Price: $596,000
Monthly Revenue: $36,000
Monthly Profit: $15,000

I’ve noticed a recent rise in the popularity of premium drinks on social media, espresso, and matcha specifically. So this listing seems super well-timed, considering I’ve been getting matcha-making videos all over my TikTok. The thing that makes niche businesses like this even better is that the customers and extremely dedicated to the craft. This is further supported by the listing which mentions that over 50% of buyers are long-term returning customers. The listing also claims the business only uses unpaid acquisition through social media and newsletters. This means there is room to grow and expand into paid channels. Another marketing idea is using TikTok to shoot high-quality videos of matcha making. I’ve seen those go viral quite a few times. The customer base is European, so this may be a good opportunity to jump into an existing business and expand into the US market (which is probably the easiest to sell to). Competitors include Anatae.fr and CeremonyMatcha.ch. 

👉 View the listing here

AI-driven platform that assists users with dating app conversations

Asking Price: $3.5 million
Monthly Revenue: $190,000
Monthly Profit: $120,000

This business is a good example of using AI in an effective, unique way. This isn’t just a GPT wrapper that lets you chat with a PDF. The platform is like a dating copilot, it lets you upload messages and get clever responses generated by AI. Does it solve some sort of important world problem? I wouldn’t say so. But with 1.4 million downloads in 5 months, there seems to be a demand for apps like this, despite how gimmicky they may seem. Competitors include apps like Rizz. 

👉 View the listing here

SaaS designed to uncover contact-level data for anonymous website visitors

Asking Price: $525,000
Monthly Revenue: $15,000
Monthly Profit: $10,000

This SaaS tool offers a solution designed to uncover contact data for anonymous website visitors. From my understanding, whenever someone visits a website, the tool can derive their contact info, such as email address. I can see some use cases where this would be particularly useful, mainly for B2B companies selling high-ticket services. From all the collected data, the SaaS also has a database of 135 million contacts. The company charges from 99$ to $3,000 per month. So it seems like it would make more sense to go for the higher-end B2B clients. It is built with React and Azure. I’m not exactly sure how AI plays a role in the tech of the business, but I also don’t fully understand the tech stack. Competitors include 6sense, Leadinfo, and Lead Forensics. 

👉 View the listing here

That’s all for this week. See you in the next one!

Vlad (@vladverba)

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