Startup Sphere Weekly #8

Welcome back to another edition of Startup Sphere and thank you for being a subscriber!

In last week’s edition, I had a poll asking which business readers would buy if they had the money. The AI-powered quiz platform was the winner 🎉.

Without any further ado, let’s get into this week’s businesses.

iOS app for editing baby photos

Asking Price: $250,000
Monthly Revenue: $4,000
Monthly Profit: $4,000

People love their babies (I would hope) and they love showing pictures of their babies. This app helps users take and edit baby pictures.

Users can remove and swap out backgrounds, take progress pictures for a timeline, create automatic albums, and more.

The listing also mentions that the business has a database of 30,000+ new parents, along with the baby's name, gender, and birthday. This data can be valuable for making lookalike audiences.

It can even be useful in starting a related business in the baby niche, like an e-commerce store. There can even be an opportunity to upsell a canvas printing service through the app since people love getting canvases printed for their babies.

Some competitors are Precious and Baby Pics App.

👉 View the listing here

AI-powered language learning platform

Asking Price: $500,000
Monthly Revenue: $46,000
Monthly Profit: $18,000

Language learning has been becoming more and more popular. Duolingo even had one of the best Super Bowl ads a couple of days ago (in my opinion).

The business on sale is a language-learning platform powered by AI. This gives them the edge by giving learners more personalization, and thus helping them learn their language faster.

I don’t think it would be easy to compete in this crowded space, where a company like Duolingo is killing it on almost all fronts. However, I have heard on forums like Reddit that users think Duolingo is too easy and doesn’t actually teach the language very well. So this may be a good opportunity to jump in, offer users a challenge, and show some features that Duolingo doesn’t have.

I think influencer marketing would work well for a business like this. For example, you can partner with a travel influencer who uses the app to learn languages when they are abroad.

Some competitors are Speak, Duolingo, and Univerbal.

👉 View the listing here

Webflow design agency

Asking Price: $150,000
Monthly Revenue: $11,000
Monthly Profit: $4,000

This listing is simple - a Webflow agency that makes beautiful websites for its clients. Is this boring? Yes. Does it make money? Also yes.

This is a great example of a no-frills service-based business. There is one clear offer, and there is a demand for it. Agency-style businesses are often considered to be the best first business to start because you only need to focus on 2 things: client acquisition and the service you are providing.

Competitors include Flow Ninja and Finsweet.

👉 View the listing here

Weekly Poll

My Choice: Given the funds I would purchase the iOS app for baby photos. Parents are obsessed with their babies and love taking pictures of them. It is also an industry with never-ending customers since babies are born every day. I am also a fan of the first-party data that a business like this provides, giving the owner a lot of opportunity to expand into other baby-related businesses.

Thanks for reading this edition of Startup Sphere. If you know someone who likes business, tech, and entrepreneurship, share this newsletter with them. Thanks again, see you in the next one!

— Vlad Verba

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