Hey all,

Matthias here, creator of the Founder Finds newsletter. Every week, I spend hours researching business opportunities and trends and summarise my findings in this short-form newsletter.

Let’s get started with this week’s finds.

💎 Exploding community of single parents

This week’s exploding community: r/SingleParents. This subreddit grew by more than 10x this year alone.

There are more than 10 million single parents in the US alone, and that trend continues to grow. With such a large and growing demographic, it’s natural that these folks face problems unique to their situations. Here are two opportunities I found when reading through the problems they were talking about.

Opportunities

• Single parents dating app: r/SingleParents has its own flag for “Dating and Relationships” where members discuss all sorts of problems around dating and the loneliness they face as single parents. Helping single parents find their significant others could be a big opportunity for entrepreneurs. In fact, the Match Group (home to Tinder, Match, OkCupid, et al.) seems to find this an attractive niche as well: in 2022, they launched Stir, a dating app for single parents. The app already has 25.000 ratings on the app store. Pricing for the app starts at $20/month, and the $40/month tier being the most popular option. With such a big customer base and a relatively high price point, they seem to be doing pretty well! Sensortower estimates Stir’s monthly recurring revenue at $300k, which seems reasonable when doing some napkin math (let’s say 50% of the 25.000 people rating the app are still customers, each paying ~$30/mo. That’s already $375.000/mo). One could launch a competitor to Stir, focusing on what existing customers complain about in the app store. Two things I found users complain about:

  • match functionalities are limited (you can’t create a very detailed profile. Apparently you’re pretty limited to age, gender, and location).

  • selection of members (too many creeps on the app).

• Single parenting media: members of r/SingleParents reach out to others for advice about parenting a lot. “How to handle problems with the other parent?” “How do I get child support?” “What if my kid only wants to live with the other parent?” These problems are unique to this demographic, and apparently, single parents don’t find answers to them elsewhere. What one could do is create a media company around these topics (could be a blog, newsletter, podcast, etc.). A quick Google search revealed that raisingchildren.net.au drives more than 2 million visitors per month, and kidshealth.org even more with 9 million visitors per month! Parenting advice seems to be in high demand. However, both of these sites are tailored to parenting advice in general and only offer a few blog posts targeted to single parents. One could create a much better offering tailored to single parents specifically.

• Marketplace: while researching this topic, I also came across care.com, a marketplace that connects families and caregivers (think babysitters, housekeepers, etc.). What’s absolutely mind-blowing is that Care generates more than $190 million in annual revenue. There might be an opportunity to create a similar marketplace, but targeting single parents directly.

💡Interesting things I found this week

Patrick Campbell reflects on going from $19k to $200m net worth and the champagne problems coming with it.

This founder makes millions hauling gravel for the gov't.

Game publisher grows 1,200% over the past decade.

Interesting data product on theme parks.

Data on trending domains published by Cloudflare.

💎 Trending fintech company: Sunbit

I’m not an expert on fintech at all, but I’ve been noticing this trend of “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) options. Sunbit is one of the fintech companies offering this type of service and as you can see above, they’re quite popular right now.

In a digital age where consumers demand more convenience and flexibility, the growth of BNPL services is likely to continue. Companies like Sunbit are front-runners in this sector, providing their users with quick and easy options to finance their purchases. Their business model usually revolves around providing point-of-sale financing for consumers, where they charge merchants a fee on the purchase amount, and customers interest fees on the loan amount (up to a whopping 36%).

Opportunities

• Target niche markets: Currently, most BNPL companies target a broad market. I don’t see many companies focusing on specific niches, so chances are that there are underserved markets out there. For example, one could target specific demographics, industries, or types of purchases like BNPL for medical services, education, or travel and hospitality.

• Education and financial health: With the rise in popularity of BNPL services, they also attracted lots of critics. Most of the criticism revolves around BNPL services leading consumers into debt. One could focus on providing educational resources about responsible spending and credit to help their BNPL service build trust and a positive reputation. Adding features that help users track their spending, set budgets, or receive alerts about upcoming payments could enhance the value proposition.

• Sustainability or social causes: Aligning with social causes or offering a sustainable aspect to your BNPL solution could be another path to explore. For example, a small part of the interest could go towards a social cause chosen by the customer, or the platform could commit to sustainable practices in its operations.

💎 The billionaire copycats

I heard about the Samwer brothers very early on in my entrepreneurial journey. Many Silicon Valley-type entrepreneurs would talk down on the three German brothers because of their business model: they identified companies that are growing exponentially in the US and copied their business in Germany. They:

• copied eBay and sold to eBay for $43 million

• copied Facebook and sold to Facebook for $100 million

• copied Groupon and sold to Groupon for $170 million

When I started out, I would always parrot the Silicon Valley types, saying that the Samwer brothers lack innovation and so on. However, over the years I came to understand that just copying the ideas wasn’t what made the Samwer brothers (and other copycats) successful.

There were tons of other copycats of sites like eBay, Facebook, and Groupon, but none of them copied as successfully as the Samwer brothers. Doing a bit of research, I think what made them stand out is excellent execution and access to capital. Just copying an idea doesn’t guarantee success; executing flawlessly and having the capital needed to grow rapidly is what made them stand out.

What I find interesting to ask myself:

If a copycat of my product came up, how could they kill me? Thinking about this question shifts perspectives and helps me understand where my strengths and weaknesses are. Answering this question doesn’t mean I have to improve or outperform potential copycats on all those. But it’s a great way to understand where my competitive advantages and weaknesses are.

That’s it for today! If you like what you read, I’d love for you to share the newsletter with anyone you think would enjoy it. They can subscribe here.

Best,

Matthias