Startup Connect

• A place for founders to find the SaaS business idea they want to pursue, along with an advisor to help.

Founders

• First-time entrepreneurs who want to found a startup but haven't found the idea yet

• Folks looking for a side hustle that doesn't require VC-funding (ex bootstrapped micro-SaaS)

• College / grad students looking to start a company

Authors

• People who have startup ideas but can't be the founder themselves

Key features:

• Business Briefs. Get an overview of the business and product concept, with competitive differentiation and user insights called out.

• Business Tagging. Filter ideas by business model (ex B2B, D2C), industry (ex. travel, fintech), or funding model (ex. bootstrap vs VC-backed).

• Author Profiles. Learn more about the people writing business briefs and see what businesses they're advising / have advised.

• Product Waitlists. Sign up for the waitlist of an idea that you'd want yourself. Ask authors how big a product's waitlist is to understand the demand.

• Charge the authors for a membership (ex $299 / year) or by brief published (ex. $99 for each brief).

• Perhaps founders would pay a membership as well (partially to filter for how serious they are).

• Have a way for either side to apply to have the fees waived to improve equity / inclusiveness.

1. Seed the marketplace with some solid business briefs to attract founders to validate if this could work.

2. Ensure 2-3 startups raise a round of funding. Use them as case studies to attract more founders.

3. Slowly add more business brief authors (vetting them manually).

4. Open up both sides (authors and founders) once the kinks are ironed out.

5. Start charging to monetize.

• The biggest competitor would be coming up with a startup idea yourself, but founders may choose Startup Connect because

  • They're not sure if their ideas could work, and don't know how to validate

  • They'd want an experienced advisor to be with them from day one

• Trends has some great content to spark startup ideas, but they don't go so far as to spell out a business / product plan.

• Polywork has an interesting way of finding people to collaborate on a side hustle, but it wasn't immediately clear if they'd do things like find a founder / engineer to help with a startup idea.

(TBD - user research not yet started). Key areas to explore:

• Would founders want to find their idea this way, vs come up with on their own? Would they have the same passion for the business?

• How would VCs feel about funding an idea the founder didn't come up with?

• How do you stop an idea from being stolen, with no credit given to the author?