🏀 How to Slam-Dunk Your Startup Idea

Joel Hansen

Feb 10, 2023 • 5 min read

Hey Founders,

☕️ Welcome to the Kernal newsletter: your go-to chef that dishes up your builder burger with extra founder fries and a side of startup salad 🍔

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🏀 How Alexis Slam-Dunked Her Startup Idea
🔥 Fresh ideas you'll wanna skim
😏 Top tweets of the week

🏀 How Alexis Grant Slam-Dunked Her Kernal Idea

If it wasn't in your bathroom calendar, February 7th, 2023 was a bit of a big deal in Kernal land. It was They Got Acquired's 1st birthday! 🎈

As a fellow Kernaler, you should be stoked because:

🎈 Alexis Grant was one of our early users
🎈 She's built her entire startup out in public (rare)
🎈 She shared a sh** ton of advice in her 1-year recap you can steal

Here's a screen share of what her Year 1 stats looked like 👇

🙌 $83K revenue (+ $80K grant) = $163,000
🙌 5,174 deals in our database
🙌 4,581 newsletter subscribers
🙌 53 stories published on the website

According to the founder, Alexis Grant, here's the good and bad:

The Good

👍 Overall direction: Alexis is pretty proud of the team being on the right track since launching
👍 Founders we've helped: she wrote "we've helped thousands of founders understand the sale process"; with their content and even over video calls. Alexis herself said she's had conversations with 88 founders looking to sell. "Helping them take the next step forward", she wrote, "This is the most meaningful part about what we're building"
👍 Had fun: "I'm enjoying this build, which means I'll be able to stick with it for the long haul"

The Bad

👎 Keeping expectations in check: required constant mindset shifts
👎 Personal challenges = business challenges (had some sick spells)
👎 Profitability: "So we did cover our expenses, just not all with revenue", she wrote. With $83,000 in revenue and an $80,000 grant, they still finished with a strong year one in our Kernal books.

Looking Forward

For Year 2 Alexis wants to "build on the foundations we created over the past year". In other words:

Keep telling stories
Keep launching reports
Keep reaching founders

If you want the full reflection of her Year 1 building in public (including the nitty-gritty) grab that here. If you're a founder curious about exiting your startup well, subscribe to her newsletter here.

Now lets get to the startup ideas, shall we?

✨ Startup Ideas ✨

"The pre-hype playlist T-Swift skims before performances" - Axios

Wanna build or invest in a startup idea? Click below to up-vote and comment on your favourites.

We're mixing up our style so reply at the end and let us know what you think of it. Or we may just kick you off the newsletter. (joking.., but should we?)

Startup Idea 1: Collect feedback on things that matter - it’s like a board of advisors, for you and your friends

Why we like it: Addresses the need for personal growth and improvement by tapping into the collective wisdom and experience of trusted friends and advisors

View Feedback for Friends Startup Idea

Startup Idea 2: Tinder for trekking trails

Why we like it: Unique that Strava has already validated this market. The founder already has a site up and running plus there is plenty of subreddit and hiking FB groups out there to consolidate outreach.

View Tinder for Trails Startup Idea

Startup Idea 3: An App that charges you $5 if you don't tweet twice a day

Why we like it: certain people thrive off negative reinforcement. The founder points out in their startup idea that thousands of people are trying to grow their build in public voice. But few have accountability. This would monetize quickly and serve that niche audience.

$5 Fee for Not Posting Tweets Startup Idea

Got a startup idea of your own? We wanna hear it. Quit sitting on your hands and start sharing it with your fans.

Tap that button below and let's get you rolling.

Share a Startup Idea

✉️ In our Inbox

Sneha Said What? Sonia teamed up with Kernaler Sneha to feature the top hacks she leveraged to scale her ideas in the early days
Bob the Builder: Lenny built his own chatbot using GPT-3. Steal his playbook
Hold up: Kernaler Jakob re-launched Product Explore (aka a gold mind of startup ideas)
CEO'ing for Dummies: Houck wrote a kick-ass blog on How to Be a Top 1% Startup CEO
LFG: Milly passed $20k ARR with her startup idea