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.

With that, let’s get started with this week’s finds.

💎 Reward platform with 1.9 million visitors per month

LootUp is a platform dedicated to offering users various opportunities to earn rewards. They got 1.9 million visitors last month, and with the search traffic exploding, it seems like the platform is doing really well. LootUp provides a lot of activities such as taking high-paying surveys, completing offers, playing games, shopping online, watching videos, and more. Once users accumulate enough points, they can redeem their rewards for cash via PayPal, gift cards, or cryptocurrency through BitPay. The promise of instant rewards and the low cash-out threshold of just $1.00 makes it highly attractive for users looking for quick and easy ways to earn.

Opportunities

I think people can successfully build platforms in the same space but with a different twist to it:

• Educational Rewards Platform: One could build a platform where users earn rewards by completing educational modules, attending online classes, or helping others with their studies. A potential business model could be to sell access to the talent on the platform to companies who are looking to hire for specific roles.

• Localized Reward Platforms: Another opportunity could be in creating a platform similar to LootUp but focusing on local businesses. Users could earn rewards by shopping at local stores, reviewing local restaurants, or participating in community events. The local businesses could pay for the promotion they get out of it.

• Health and Fitness Rewards: Build an app where users earn points by achieving fitness goals, participating in virtual marathons, maintaining a healthy diet, or even meditating. Similar apps in this space are Charity Miles or Evidation.

💡Interesting things I found this week

WTF happened in 1971?

From $0 → $100 million → $0 in 5 years.

Interesting ways how people make >10k/month.

Founder of MyProtein shares lessons from $500 million exit.

💎 Popular cloud-based programming tool

CodeSandbox is a cloud development platform that aims to streamline the coding process for developers. They offer a bunch of features to enhance developer productivity and collaboration, such as the ability to provide cloud development environments that can be resumed in just a second, and microVMs where users can run their code without any limitations. Cloud development environments that resume almost instantly can be super helpful for developers, as they eliminate waiting times developers often face when setting up their development environment.

Opportunities

• Collaborative Coding School: Someone could take advantage of this mass migration into the cloud by leveraging the live coding and collaboration features of platforms like CodeSandbox to create an online coding school. Kind of like a coding boot camp, but online and therefore much cheaper. Students could learn in real time, with instructors making live edits and corrections to their code. Check out LeetCode which offers a collaborative coding environment where users can solve problems together.

• Template and Framework Marketplace: Given that CodeSandbox allows users to start projects using templates, there could be an opportunity to create a marketplace dedicated to high-quality, industry-specific templates and frameworks. I myself use boilerplates/templates all the time and am happy paying for high-quality ones as they save me a ton of time and allow me to focus on what’s actually important. Checkout code.market, a marketplace in this space.

💎 Freedom of information act

This week, I learned about the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). It’s a United States federal law that mandates the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased information and documents controlled by the U.S. government, state, or other public authority upon request. It was mainly designed to make government agencies more transparent.

The FOIA is commonly known for being used by news organizations, but actually, those only account for 10% of all requests being issued under the FOIA. The majority of requests are made by businesses, law firms, and individuals. These businesses use the information gathered under the FOIA to get a competitive advantage by identifying arbitrage opportunities. Some ideas on how businesses already do this or could potentially do it:

1. Government Contracts: Entrepreneurs can request information about government spending on various projects. This information can provide insights into pricing, vendors, and other details that can be advantageous when bidding for future government contracts, which can be huge contracts that run for many years.

2. Market Research: Businesses can use FOIA to gather data on industries regulated by the government. This could provide insights into market trends, regulatory challenges, and potential business opportunities.

3. Real Estate and Infrastructure: Companies in the real estate or infrastructure sectors can request information about government land use, zoning decisions, infrastructure projects, and more to identify potential investment opportunities.

4. Education: Apparently some businesses get access to student information from public schools and the market affiliate products to them. One example I heard of was a business getting student information from nursing schools and then monetizing them through some kind of affiliate offers.

For someone living in the US, this might be worth checking out!

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