Request for Startups — December 2017
Happy holidays! Here are 7 free startup ideas around themes/concepts I’ve been thinking about for a while. These are ideas I’ve been going back and forth on for the past year or so but just found the time to crystalize. I also want to point out that as many in the tech ecosystem jump to what’s sexy and new, it’s easy to forget fundamental problems in large industries that have stodgily dominated the economy for decades.
If any of these sound appealing or interesting to you (or you’re working on them!)— please reach me at aashaysanghvi[at]gmail.com or @big_aash on Twitter.
API for Medical Billing Records
Recently, Andreas Vandris shared the story of Remedy, a well-funded SV company that helped consumers negotiate their medical bills, with me. This company ended up shutting down because they did not have clear and simple access to data on medical billing and expenses. You can read more here in Fast Company.
The article from Fast Company makes it clear that in order to break down the complexity of medical billing for patients, companies need access to an easy-to-use API. If a compliant, robust API existed that allowed healthcare-focused apps to access billing records, developers could build all sorts of tools around analytics, reimbursements, negotiation, expense tracking, etc. Just as Plaid and Stripe have targeted fintech developers to build better user experiences for financial services, an API for medical billing could do the same for healthcare platforms and services.
Energy Consulting Marketplace
I just wrote about the “unbundling of McKinsey,” and this idea is born from that framework. In 2015, global energy consulting spending was estimated at almost $15B. This represents a significant opportunity for a digital marketplace to consolidate a fragmented supply, enable easier talent discovery through matching algorithms, and serve customers with a better experience, starting with low-end disruption.
Energy has many unique characteristics that a few, generally hard-to-find people are positioned to solve such as regulatory issues, region-specific energy resources, and value chain solutions for different types of assets.
Integrated Restaurant with OpCo / PropCo Model
This idea stemmed from a conversation I had with a friend and mentor, Tom Rutledge, who works on fixed-income origination at Magnetar Capital. He believes that many of the financial engineering techniques that have been used in the world of asset-backed securities (read Guggenheim’s report for an in-depth primer) can be utilized for technology companies. Tech companies have traditionally been relatively asset-light on their balance sheets, but as software companies plunge into other industries, they’re accruing more assets.
I think this model could be particularly useful as the technology industry thinks about delivery-first kitchens and integrated restaurants. By owning the value chain, from app to meal prep to kitchen — you theoretically can provide great value and convenience to consumers at scale. The problem is that it’s expensive to get there. Maple and Sprig found out the hard way. The capital intensity of running a restaurant combined with the growth expectations of a software company creates problems in the early days.
Here’s a quick rundown on how asset-backed securities and the operating company / property company model works. A credit group would purchase a pool of assets from a company who currently owns them and fund the purchase of those assets through the sale of secured notes to private investors and institutions. The SPV (special purpose vehicle) that’s created to purchase assets would function as a property company; in the case of integrated restaurants, it would own the revenue-generating assets like the real estate and the kitchens in order to allow the technology business to work as an operating company.
Full Stack Commercial Bank
From 2009 to 2015, the FDIC only approved charters for 3 de novo (new) banks. However, in 2017, regulators have started to warm up to granting new bank charters and might have processed 10 new ones in 2017 (Here’s the source). This de-regulation presents an chance for fintech entrepreneurs to build something special — a digital native and API-first de novo bank.
In 2013, venture-backed Standard Treasury launched in the United Kingdom as a challenger bank, attempting to build a “programmatic banking platform from the ground up.” At the time, the UK environment was (and still is) friendlier to new banking platforms. For example, Monzo has gained traction recently in the UK as well.
Full stack banks have had less success in the U.S. A company named Daltic failed in 2013 because they did not successfully acquire a bank charter from the government or an existing financial institution. Standard Treasury ended up joining Silicon Valley Bank, but I like their story because one of the founders, Zac Townsend, outlines the importance of a full-stack bank in several posts from a few years ago:
- APIs, App Stores, and the Era of Mass Customization in Banking
- Startup Banking’s Looming Leviathan
- Building the Next Generation of Financial Infrastructure
- Standard Treasury as a Startup Bank
- The Path Not Taken by Simple (Bank) to Remake Finance
Here’s the takeaway: if a startup can own the technical and financial infrastructure from day one, they will build a banking ecosystem that can encourage the development of open applications and platforms in lending, payments, insurance, savings, etc.
Platform for Distributed and Modular Construction
This idea was inspired by the collaborative and distributed manufacturing furniture maker Opendesk, as well as the custom builder Cover. Opendesk enables a customer to shop for furniture designs through an online marketplace, get a manufacturing quote from a local maker within days, and receive the furniture at their door when it’s ready.
Cover is a venture-backed startup that stands with a few other companies emerging in the tiny or modular home categories. They offer custom built tiny homes and outhouses through their web platform where they research options and design (3 days + $250), get a building permit (4–12 weeks + $20k), and build the structure (12 weeks + remaining balance).
Here’s the rub. This is too similar to what a custom home builder would do (without much software!) in terms of both price and time. A technology solution needs to be a big improvement on both scales, and the way forward is through modularity and pre-fabrication. If you had an online marketplace with pre-approved designs customers could choose from and a network of manufacturers in places like Portland, Austin, Denver, etc. to assemble and build tiny homes and structures locally with working knowledge of zoning regulations — this could be cool. Kattera is a fascinating company in this space. Scalability is a concern here, but I still think this is an interesting concept.
Medical Device Pricing Database
I’ve been interested in medical costs and hospital infrastructure for some time now. A while back, someone pointed me to this paper (Transparency and Negotiated Prices: The Value of Information in Hospital-Supplier Bargaining) from the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. Their main argument is that hospitals that join a pricing database for medical supplies are able to gain more information access and can leverage it to negotiate lower prices on supplies and devices, bringing the cost of care down.
This academic work can be translated into a real-world software application that hospitals and care groups can pay a subscription for and even contribute their own data on pricing and costs of supplies. And a product could even go beyond just a database and incorporate payments and purchasing through the platform to enable a decentralized, digital-first group purchasing organization. Procured Health has a product in this realm, but it’s more of a data solution.
Website Builder for Commercial Real Estate Properties
Finding your next office is difficult. You often have to work through multiple sets of brokers, and there’s generally a lack of information to make an appropriate decision as a company. On the property owner or asset manager side, the data and software tools that can help you find a tenant that matches what your building needs are lacking. Additionally, owners and managers use a suite of outdated marketing tools without an analytics or data edge to attract tenants such as brochures, flyers, and expensive, custom-built Wordpress sites.
Similar to Squarespace, a property owner, asset manager, or leasing agent should be able to quickly fill out a form with leasing and property info, pick a theme, and choose a template to spit out a mobile-optimized, SEO-friendly website for their properties that includes analytics tracking (on what types of potential tenants are looking at the space) and lead capture, similar to Drift. They should then be able to manage quality leads through a CRM on the backend. Thus, if a company searches for “office space for tech co in ABC neighborhood,” the property site would pop up.
This tool is also interesting because over time, the platform would aggregate leasing information on dozens of properties across a city and could package this data and sell it to real estate investors.
That’s all for now! Again, if any of these sound appealing or interesting to you (or you’re working on them!) — please reach me at aashaysanghvi[at]gmail.com or @big_aash on Twitter.
