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.

💎 Marketplace for second-hand clothing

Vinted is a dynamic online marketplace dedicated to the buying and selling of clothes, shoes, and accessories, and its subreddit r/Vinted is growing exponentially. In 2022, Vinted generated €371.4 million in revenue, 51% higher than in 2021. Serving as a hub for fashion enthusiasts, it offers a platform for users to declutter their wardrobes, discover unique finds, and engage in sustainable shopping practices. By fostering a community-centric environment, Vinted not only promotes eco-friendly fashion choices but also provides an avenue for individuals to monetize their pre-loved items.

Opportunities

• Fashion Authentication: Buyers of second-hand fashion items want to know whether the items they buy are authentic or cheap copies of the original brand. One could offer a service where experts verify the authenticity of designer items. It might even be possible to leverage AI for this by training an image classification model on pictures of authentic products. A service like this could build trust among users and ensure that they are getting genuine products. One company doing this successfully is Legit Check with more than 100k customers.

• Sell-My-Clothes-As-A-Service: One could offer a hassle-free solution for individuals looking to monetize their unused clothing without the complexities of individual listings, negotiations, and transactions. Sellers would benefit from professional presentation, optimized pricing, and broader market reach, all while eliminating the time-consuming aspects of the resale process. ThredUP offers this type of service. The company reported $288.4 million yearly revenue in 2022.

💡Interesting things I found this week

• $350k MRR social media marketing tool that started bootstrapped.

• Number of AI patent filings is growing exponentially.

• Sales of plant-based meat alternatives continue to decline.

• $11k/mo marketplace for students to buy/sell lecture notes.

• Great podcast on “How To Start Your Own Podcast“

💎 Trending user-testing platform

Trymata is a digital experience intelligence company that started out as a usability testing platform. They offer a comprehensive suite of tools designed to provide insights into user interactions with websites and apps. Besides offering this all-in-one solution for web/app analytics, I believe that the majority of search traffic is coming from users wanting to sign up to their user-testing platform: there, one can sign up to test websites or apps and get paid for the testing time.

Opportunities

• User-testing service without monetary incentives: I’ve been on the buyer side of some of these platforms, to get users to test my MVPs and receive feedback. It’s never been worth my money: the users were folks who only wanted to make extra income; they were not actually members of my target group. Therefore, the feedback I received from them was worthless to me. That’s why I think there’s an opportunity here to help founders/product people get relevant feedback from people in their target group. Now the thing is, especially in B2B, you won’t get those users by paying them a few dollars for a 30-minute call. That’s not valuable enough for them. You’d need to offer them something else: an interview on your company's podcast, a case study on your blog, … something that’s of actual value for them/their company. I think a service that could find those users and connect them to the founders/product people could be a great opportunity.

• Accessibility Testing: One could build a platform dedicated to testing websites, apps, and other digital products to ensure they are accessible to users with disabilities. This includes those with visual, auditory, motor, cognitive, and other impairments. In my home country Germany, there have recently been laws introduced that require websites of government and public institutions to have an option for “Easy Language” (”Leichte Sprache”) to make their sites more accessible. More demand and regulations for accessibility probably open up opportunities for new products in that space.

💎 From 0 → $58k MRR by talking and listening to users.

I read an article this week, where Mac Martine talks about his journey from $0 to $58k MRR. What stood out to me was how important and powerful "discovery conversations" were in his journey. Mac emphasized the significance of directly engaging with potential customers or users to understand their pain points and needs. Instead of relying solely on assumptions or secondary research, he made a list of acquaintances and reached out to them for face-to-face discussions. During these conversations, he asked questions like:

• What does a typical day for you look like?

• What tasks are time-consuming for you?

• Which tasks do you dread doing?

• Are there any software tools you're looking for that might streamline your business?

The majority of the people he spoke to believed their processes were as efficient as possible. However, by persistently engaging in these discovery conversations, Mac was able to identify patterns and areas of potential improvement. I think this story underscores one of the key lessons you hear successful entrepreneurs repeat all the time: that talking and listening to your users is one of the most important activities for you as a founder.

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