đ Hi and welcome to todayâs edition of Venture Radar â where we uncover real internet businesses making real money, and break down how they do it.
In todayâs write-up, weâre sharing curated articles, posts, videos and business we found interesting on building boring and underrated businesses. Letâs deep dive into it.
đď¸ CURATED RESOURCES FOR FOUNDERS
The founderâs guide to building in public (20+ real examples)
A practical playbook for growing your startup by sharing progress publicly. Learn what to share, where to post, how often to show up, and study 20+ real founders doing it right. Includes templates and prompts in a Notion-based pack. (Get Access Here)
Marketing for founders: a practical playbook to get users
A no-fluff guide for founders who want users without ads or agencies.
Covers distribution, outreach, messaging, SEO, and demand testing â all solo-founder friendly. Delivered as a Notion-based resource you can use immediately. (Get Access Here)
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𼡠STEAL THIS BUSINESS IDEA
Brand Consistency Checker
People have subjective judgement. And mistakes happen.
Especially as teams and orgs grow.
Do big or even mid-sized companies really even have a consistent brand voice across all of their surfaces?
Of course, they have consistent brand guidelines⌠but how can you be sure those guidelines are being followed in the same way all the time?
Is each marketing manager interpreting them the same way?
Probably, realistically, not.
Itâs not a problem any one person or simple system can solve.
But LLMs could.
Imagine where you can feed your brand guidelines into, and then it integrates with your creative tools (Canva, Figma, etc) and also your customer-facing surface tools (social media schedulers, email comms, etc) to validate if something is on brand or not (and how to fix it if not).
It would both increase consistency and also reduce the need for human reviews, directly saving time and money that could be more easily mapped to the P&L.
If I were building this, Iâd start with social â thatâs where mistakes are most costly.
SMS Assistant For Event Organizers
Managing IRL events in the moment is fun but chaotic.
What you want attendees to take away from an event is how special it was. One of the best ways to do that is to be attentive to their needs as a host.
However too many times hosts arenât able to focus on elevating the experience for guests and, instead, get bogged down solving small problems, answering simple questions, and managing ops.
A lot of those simple tasks could be offloaded to an LLM-based assistant who everyone at the event gets access to via text. That leaves the host free to do the things only they are uniquely able to do to elevate the experience.
You could charge event organizers a SaaS-style subscription fee or, more likely, use usage-based pricing.
Opportunity: Email Lead Recovery Tool
Email spam is rising (always, but faster these days due to LLMs).
Ironically, thereâs probably also some actually useful emails that get incorrectly categorized as spam.
I check my spam folder every month or two for this reason.
But if the emailâs time sensitive (especially warm leads), Iâm out of luck.
You canât fix this problem for Gmail, or Outlook, etc. But you could build an LLM-based tool that analyzes what else is in your inbox and then uses that, along with industry-level patterns, to automatically pull those out of spam and put them back in your main inbox.
đ REDDIT
He made $2,900 in 2 weeks from a Mac appâwithout ads or followers
A solo dev launched Wallper, a macOS app that lets users set 4K animated wallpapers. No login. No subscription. Just something he built for himself and decided to ship.
He had no followers, no ad budget, no audience. Just posted on Reddit, Twitter, and Product Hunt.
In 2 weeks:
4,530 users
352 paid customers
$2,900 in revenue
12,000 website visitors
$0 on ads
What worked? Simplicity. Utility. Showing the journey. No growth hacksâjust building in public and giving people something cool.
Itâs smallâbut it changed his direction. (More Here)
Running a business looked cool on Instagram. In real life, it gave anxiety and debt
From a Reddit conversation where founders shared the harsh truths of entrepreneurship. On Instagram, building a business looks like freedom. Beaches. Laptops. Vibes.
But in reality? Itâs anxiety, maxed-out credit cards, and lonely breakdowns no one sees.
One founder put it perfectly:
âItâs pretending everythingâs fine while silently drowning.â
Others chimed in with their hardest lessons:
âI skipped meals to pay my team.â
âHired friends. Regret it deeply.â
âNo one warns you how lonely it gets when sh*t hits the fan.â
âPeople closest to you become the quietest critics.â
âYou WILL face your worst traitsâand have to evolve through them.â
One comment hit especially hard:
âYou expect friends to be your first customers. Instead, theyâre the first to doubt you.â
This thread wasnât about complainingâit was a collective therapy session for entrepreneurs tired of pretending itâs all easy.
Running a business is rewarding, but the internet rarely shows the parts that make you question everything. (More Here)
đď¸ SIDE HUSTLES & BUSINESSES
Real people making $10K+/month: how they actually do it
From a Reddit thread where someone asked how to escape the 9-5 grind and make consistent income.
Drain cleaning business: $75Kâ$95K/month revenue with 20â25% margins. Unsexy but essential.
Claw machine route: Placed in restaurants and trampoline parks, nets ~$25K/month, mostly passive.
Party rentals: Bounce houses and water slides bring in ~$18K/month, later outsourced to college kids.
Custom jewelry business: Started with lab diamonds, now replicates high-end looks via CNC machines in Dubai.
Media company: Built a niche content platform (news, podcast, newsletter); monetized with ads and now hosting events.
Bookkeeping: Low overhead, started solo and scaled to leave a $100K/year sales job.
Healthcare services: Hired therapists/psychologists and runs the backend. High-margin, people-based business.
Tiny home builder: Designs and sells tiny mobile homes using recycled materials; now scaling into communities.
Commercial real estate syndication: No capital of their ownâearn equity and cash flow by sourcing off-market warehouse deals.
Garage door business: Niche, high-need service. First month: $13.5K gross, $9.7K profit.
Estate sales operator: Left corporate job to run estate sales full-time.
AI product seller: Runs multiple online AI-assisted businesses, each doing ~$3K/month.
Growth operator for creators: Helps influencers monetize their audience with funnels, copywriting, and email flows. Charges $2â3K/project + rev share.
Logistics insider tip: Use industry knowledge to start your own logistics company or solve pain points for your current clients.
He made $18K in one month renting bounce houses on weekends
A Reddit user shared how he built a solid side business setting up bounce houses and water slides, earning $18K last month alone.
Itâs weekend-only, physical workâbut with high demand during school breaks and summer
Started with $7K: 2 bounce houses, a 4x6 trailer, and a 2001 Subaru Forester
Now owns more units, operates in New Jersey, and handles state inspections and liability insurance
Startup cost today? Closer to $10K, plus local permits and insurance.
But once set up, itâs steady cash from party bookings and event rentalsâespecially during peak seasons. (More Here)
He built a Threads-only scheduler and hit $1K MRR in 12 months
When Threads launched in July 2023, Luca Restagno saw a gap. A year later, he launched BlackTwistâa simple post scheduler built just for Threads.
It hit $1,000 MRR in year one.
Ignored every other platformâfocused only on Threads
Avoided feature bloat by keeping it niche
Rode the wave as Threads crossed 200M+ users
Simple playbook: take a proven SaaS model, apply it to an emerging platform, and move fast. (More Here)
The $3M faceless YouTuber is doing it againâwith pets
Jason Gryniewicz, creator of Daily Dose of Internet (20M+ subs) makes $3M+/yr, just launched a new channel: Daily Dose of Pets.
Same simple formula: no voice, no clickbait edits, just wholesome, high-quality clips.
Within a week:
2 videos
1M+ views
116K subscribers
Itâs probably already making thousands in ad revenue.
The lesson? Once you nail the format, you can repeat it across niches: pets, cars, kindness, tech, sports, travel...
Distribution is easier when you own the blueprint.
She made $200K+ giving stuffed animals a second life
Charlotte Liebling was volunteering at a charity shop when she noticed something: most donated stuffed animals were tossed or repurposed as dog toysâdespite being full of sentimental value.
So she built Loved Before, a âsustainable soft toy adoption agency.â
10,000+ toys sold
$20â35 price range = $200K+ revenue
Raw materials? Free
Now stocked by Selfridges and Bloomingdaleâs
Sheâs been running it part-time since 2018. But it proves a bigger point:
You donât need to invent something new. Just notice what others throw awayâand give it new meaning. (More Here)
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