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- Startup Sphere Weekly #19
Startup Sphere Weekly #19
An arts and crafts platform making $40,000/month. Plus, an ecommerce pet store selling for $1.59 million.
Vlad Verba
May 02, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
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Welcome back to another edition of Startup Sphere - a 5-minute weekly digest about businesses selling for life-changing amounts of money. If you want to support the newsletter, just forward this email to a friend who likes reading about startups and business, it would really help grow the newsletter.
Now, let’s get into this week’s listings 👇
AI support chatbot for businesses
Asking Price: $400,000
TTM Revenue: $190,000
TTM Profit: $127,000
The business for sale is an AI support chatbot that companies can integrate into their website.
When a customer visits the website, they can ask the chatbot questions. Theoretically, this would eliminate the need for a live support chat, since the chatbot knows everything about your website and can respond conversationally.
There have been a lot of examples of funny support chatbot fails, so there is an opportunity in the market to do this the right way.
The listing mentions that the founder(s) haven’t done any marketing for the tool and that all the growth has been organic. This may be a good opportunity for someone with paid marketing experience to come in and grow the company while having an existing user base.
The revenue chart shows a constant increase in ARR and the number of customers. However, the Google Analytics data shows a decline in website visitors. This supports my opinion that the hype around these AI-powered companies may begin slowly dying out.
Online courses for arts & crafts enthusiasts
Asking Price: $441,000
TTM Revenue: $484,000
TTM Profit: $101,000
This business is an online platform with courses geared specifically towards arts and crafts enthusiasts. This includes hobbies like decorating, crocheting, sewing, drawing, etc. The platform also gives users a variety of ways to learn, with step-by-step instructions and private masterminds.
From my personal experience, I know multiple people who enjoy arts & crafts and find it a therapeutic experience. This platform is a great way to take the stress out of learning yourself and help users have a more pleasant experience with their hobby.
The revenue chart does show some fluctuation, with some months earning as much as $93,000 and others making just $15,000. Overall the business has experienced exponential growth compared to last year.
Pet products e-commerce store
Asking Price: $1.59 million
TTM Revenue: $4,100,000
TTM Profit: $636,000
From my experience, the pet niche is often extremely profitable, since people love their pets like children and are always willing to spend money on them.
This business is a great example of that. It is a pet products e-commerce store making over $4,000,000 in yearly revenue.
The business is well diversified among multiple channels, selling its products across multiple channels (DTC, Amazon, Chewy). The business is also selling some valuable digital assets, namely an email list of 800,000 subscribers and a network of Instagram accounts with 6.5 million followers.
The business currently relies on a team of 4 virtual assistants, which clears up time for whoever takes over to make sure they can focus on business growth.
This is a great opportunity for someone who has experience running an e-commerce store and can continue to scale this business.
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Instagram feed integration tool for Shopify
Asking Price: $295,000
TTM Revenue: $129,000
TTM Profit: $94,000
This business is a Shopify app that lets merchants embed Instagram content into their store, allowing consumers to purchase Instagram-feature products, thus leading to more revenue.
The app currently has 275 paying merchants, with an LTV of $762. This helps keep the app profitable and gives room for paid acquisition channels.
The business has seen stable growth over the last 12 months, allowing the owners to invest in a “Built for Shopify“ badge, which certifies that the app meets certain Shopify standards.
With that being said, there are a couple of drawbacks to competing in this space. One, the competition is very high. Copy cats pop up left and right in the Shopify store. Two, Shopify has a track record of taking successful apps and simply cloning them to be an official Shopify app. This renders the original app almost useless (unless it can further continue improving on the experience).
Platform that tracks price history for audio plugins
Asking Price: $58,000
TTM Revenue: $12,000
TTM Profit: $12,000
This listing is a great example of how niching down can lead to a profitable business. The business for sale is a price-tracking tool specifically for audio plugins.
The website is currently monetized with advertisements and affiliate revenue (when they redirect someone to a store they are tracking). While I wouldn’t say this current product is extremely lucrative, I can imagine there is a big untapped market for audio plugin enthusiasts.
I do have some concerns about price tracking tools, however. Google Chrome now has a built-in function that allows you to track the price for a specific product, and even recommends websites where you can find that product for less.
Overall, this is a great opportunity for someone with a passion for audio plugins and knowledge of the space to grow a business within a well-defined niche.
Competitors include Audio Plugin Guy, AudioBazooka, and PluginDeals.
Best of startup Twitter (X)
Adrian built a TikTok influencer scraping tool (link)
Simply Analytics is looking for a remote developer (link)
Angus is making 26k/month with Bank Statement Converter (link)
Matt breaks down how to write a good email welcome sequence (link)
Cast your vote
Which business in this week's edition would you acquire?Cast your vote below and tell us why: |
Last week’s poll results:
🥇 [100%]: 📸 AI photography studio SaaS
🥈 [0%]: 💊 Pharmaceuticals pricing & analytics software
🥈 [0%]: 📺 Improved remote control app for Roku users
This week I launched a paid option for the newsletter. Subscribers get access to 2 extra business listings in the weekly newsletter, a weekly in-depth case study, and no ads. You can subscribe here and support the newsletter. Thanks all! Till next week 👋