💯 100 MVPs Down, 100s to Come

Joel Hansen -

GM Founders,

Welcome to Kernal: a vineyard of juicy startup ideas where opportunity is ripe for pickin' 🍇

In this week's news: Apple dropped a pay later bomb on the fintech fam, seed funding stays steady at $3B last month and the kids are almost on summer break.

We hit a pretty big milestone this week. 100 MVPs on the platform. So instead of rummaging through startup news and whipping up one-liners, we're gifting our precious newsletter real estate to some of the founders that've been hustling away. We're gonna spotlight:

  • who they are,
  • what they built and
  • how you can get involved 🚀

So lean back in your Herman Miller b/c today's breakdown is gonna be a Top Gun level thriller. ☕️

Today's Line Up:

  1. 🎉 We hit 100 MVPS; meet 15 of our favs
  2. 🎶 Tweet of the Week
  3. 👀 Skip

The first 2 are pretty lengthy so we're scrapping #3 to get you back to buildin'. 💪

🎉  100 MVPs Down, Meet 15 of our Favs

Posting a tweet is one thing. Writing a book, well that's another. Same rules go for startup ideas.

Anybody and their dog can talk about a big idea. But if you can:

  • write it down,
  • validate it
  • and build an MVP

Well, that my friends a dinner date we'd wanna cozy up beside. And today we're celebrating hitting 100, yes 1-0-0, MVPs at this home for startup ideas called Kernal. 🌱

The 100 ideas are a breakdown of:

  • 44 early MVPs
  • 10 Limited releases and
  • 47 public launches

Some of our favourite MVPs have ranged from media startups to deal flow tracking software. Podcast series to SaaS products. But it's 2022. We know talk's cheap. So how 'bout we just show you some of our favourites instead?

1. 📰 They Got Acquired: Alexis Grant

  • TL;DR: Media co that features acquisitions of online businesses between $100K-$50M
  • Speed: After 5 months of idea riffing, Alexis launched an MVP so she could feature deals that can be life-changing for founders but are never covered in big news outlets
  • Future: For 2022, she's been growing her team, media assets and podcast reach

2. 🎁 Group Gift Lists: Damon Bauer

3. 🤯 Acquiring Minds: Will Smith

  • TL;DR: After getting validation, Will launched the website: acquiringminds.co
  • Traction: Has hosted ~100 cool guests that run startups with $2m+ ARR
  • Ask: listen to an episode of his or reach out to him to be a guest on the pod

4. 💚 Tinder for Podcast Cross-Promotions: Casey Juanxi Li

  • TL;DR: Less humming and hawing, more holy shit she launched it
  • Traction: Casey has been on fire lately with her MVP: poddinglabs.com.
  • Ask: Test it out and let her know what you think

5. 🛠

  • TL;DR: Aishwarya is building a space where up-and-coming founders can source the top foundational concepts they need to grow their business.
  • Best Win of 2022? She answers "Getting promoted at work, exploring a new no-code tool for 100+NotTech, and being selected as one of the top 200 creators from India by the LinkedIn Team as a part of their creator accelerator program"
  • Traction: she will be running The Founder’s Foyer as a part of LinkedIn Creator Accelerator Program (first time) in India.
  • MVP: Here's a sneak peek of her first interview on Spotify

6. ✔️ One Tap AI: Tanveer

  • TL;DR: Tanveer has pushed this idea to $500 in revenue and a beautiful MVP that keeps picking up steam
  • Traction: Slide into his DMs if you have any feedback on the product: onetap.ai

7. ⏰ PastTime: Oded

  • TL;DR: Oded was sick of hearing "good idea" and built an MVP to start growing this concept
  • Biggest 2022 win: "Launching our new product (the POC was duct-taped and glued together), we managed in 5 months to deliver a seamless social group video discovery platform with deep tech (emotional sentiment analysis and facial recognition as well as text analysis capabilities) that works amazingly well.
  • Future Focus: In 2030, he wants to have 50 million seniors across the US, CA, UK, and AU connected to pastime, making it possible for everyone to have someone to talk to at any time, all the time.
  • CTA: Sign up your grandma and grandpa here: pastime.com

8. 👨‍🎓 Student Coaching Program: Artur MacLellan

9. 🗓 Cal-Sync: Mary Mateo

  • TL;DR: Mary's building a tool called Cal-Sync to put all your schedules in one place.
  • Quote: When we asked her what she's loved most about building in public she said "seeing people sign up for my beta test excites me"
  • Lesson: When we asked her what she'd do differently the next time she said "I would have asked for help sooner. I tried to do everything myself, but I’ve realized that it’s better to get help for things that aren’t my strengths or don’t enjoy doing."

10. ⛑ Credible.io: Wil Rork

  • TL;DR: Will wanted to take this further than idea so he put together a public website
  • MVP: More details to come soon, but here's the link to learn more

11. 💬 SideChat: Riz Nwosu

  • TL;DR: Talk's cheap, so Riz shipped a chrome extension. It's already got 102 users and an explainer video.
  • Lesson: When we asked him about using Kernal to validate his MVP he said this: "Launching on Kern.al was absolutely the right decision for Sidechat and it has proven to be a sound one."
  • On Building in Public: "With all the real-time and insightful feedback I have received, I couldn't imagine doing it any other way. As a developer, you operate and strategize in a vacuum. So it helps to get exterior validation of your strategy and thinking."
  • TL;DR: Wilson has moved from "good idea" to publicly launched with 100 users. 🎉
  • CTA: Go test out his website to grab your own owl link

13. 🚀 Rocket: Cameron Bogatez

  • TL;DR: Cameron wanted to help people from getting distracted
  • Direction: So he built a tool that turns your phone into an insane focus tool
  • CTA: Test out his website and let him know if it helps you focus longer

14. 💰 Dealflopro: Brian Watson

  • TL;DR: Brian got loads of feedback on his Kernal idea
  • Focus: Now he's got a beta product in motion and is iterating on feedback
  • CTA: Sign up on his waitlist here

15. 🤟 Duolingo for your Career on Slack: Lea Marolt Sonnenschein

  • TL;DR: With $185K of funding interest, 18 users and 7 interested builders, Lea is off to the races with her startup idea
  • The one-liner she's building: Duolingo meets Headspace for your career
  • Latest progress update: Beta launched and rolled out to 80+ users, working on a pre-seed fundraise and a big partnership in the pipeline.
  • CTA: Interested in testing her beta or sending an angel cheque her way? Comment on her idea.

These stories make our day. In fact, they remind us about what we're building. Kernal's a fun spot to jam on startup ideas. But seeing real MVPs come from these napkin startup ideas gets us so jazzed. 🎉

These are just 1415quick stories from the 100 MVPs built on Kernal. We can't wait to keep following the 100s more to come. 🚀

Do you have a startup idea you've been holding back? Stop teasing us. Post it up for the world to see. You never know what it could grow into...

Post Startup Idea

🐦 Tweet of the Week

Stay strong builders. Recession or not, this is our moment. 💪

Now go have a fun weekend.

Sayanora,

💚  Your Kernal pals

P.S. Liked our MVP breakdown? Reply to this email and tell us why. Then we can write more of them.