👋 Hi and welcome to today’s edition of Venture Radar — where we uncover real internet businesses making real money, and break down how they do it. Here’s today at a glance -
Side hustle & business
$2.8M/year from an AI Excel tool — built with no code.
Up to $4K/month from dog walking — no qualifications needed.
He made $9K in one month posting AI-generated kitten videos.
He earned $980 last month solving his own travel headache.
He scaled a niche video service into a $5M/year business.
Business ideas you can steal
AI data cleaner for ecom product catalogs.
Second opinion as a service (starting with taxes).
From Reddit
How to realistically make $100K/year (without dropshipping or AI fluff).
He made his first $1,370 from a desktop AI tool, after fixing one simple trust issue.
This indie founder’s ASO tool just hit $850/month by balancing build & marketing right.
17-year-old solo founder makes $307 in 2 weeks from AI journaling tool.
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🗃️ SIDE HUSTLES & BUSINESSES
$2.8M/year from an AI Excel tool — built with no code
David Bressler is the solo founder of Formula Bot, an AI-powered tool that converts plain text into Excel formulas — and it now earns $2.8 million per year. What’s wild? He’s not a developer. He built the first version using Bubble (a no-code tool) over a weekend.
Launched with no code, scaled solo
Hit $20K/month in year one — now $230K+/month
Solves a common pain: writing formulas in Excel or Google Sheets
AI Gold Rush 2.0: companies expect employees to use AI tools to stay lean
Built for utility, not flash — and people pay because it saves them time
David’s advice: intent to buy AI software is at an all-time high. Companies are cutting costs, pushing adoption, and building internal AI stacks.
If you missed the first gold rush, don’t miss this one. The play? Build useful AI tools that solve small but painful problems.
And yes — you can do it solo, without writing a single line of code.
He scaled a niche video service into a $5M/year business
Sam Shepler went from running a general video agency in college to building Testimonial Hero, a focused, productized service making $5M per year.
The insight? Instead of offering everything, he “unbundled” one of the most valuable services clients loved, testimonial videos and built an entire business around just that.
His first agency peaked at $750K in revenue before selling
To generate cash fast, he picked one high-demand offering and productized it
Testimonial Hero now earns $5M/year doing one thing really well: remote customer testimonial videos for B2B brands
It’s a great blueprint:
Look at what agencies are already doing
Pick a single, high-value service
Productize and scale it with systems
Start small. Focus hard. Go deep.
Up to $4K/month from dog walking — no qualifications needed
Natalie, based in the UK, earns up to £3,000 (~$3,800) in just three months by walking dogs through the Rover app — no special training, licenses, or degrees required. She charges ~£15/hour and often walks multiple dogs at once to boost earnings.
Uses Rover to find clients (though the app takes a 20% fee)
Others report earning more via alternatives like Petme, which take smaller cuts
Easy to start — just need reliability, love for animals, and free time
And it's scalable: One Redditor started solo, then grew their dog-walking and pet-sitting business to $9K/month revenue with 3 part-time employees.
Profit varies depending on how much they work personally, but even hands-off, the business nets around $2.3K–$4K/month.
No fancy tech, no VC funding — just real demand and a service people trust.
He made $9K in one month posting AI-generated kitten videos
Garilao, a 21-year-old college student in the Philippines, earned $9,000 in a single month running FUNTASTIC YT — a YouTube channel filled with bizarre, AI-generated cartoons featuring a kitten and his dad. Despite the videos being low-effort and nonsensical, they’ve racked up millions of views.
Channel has ~600K subscribers, launched in October
Videos created in 1–2 hours using ChatGPT (for scripts), KlingAI (for visuals), and basic editing tools
Top video has over 2M views — proving that goofy, colorful AI content can go viral
May 2024 earnings: $9,000 from YouTube ads alone
This is peak “AI slop” — content that’s fast, cheap, and weirdly entertaining. And clearly, it works.
We’re still early in this space. If you can blend speed + creativity + niche appeal, AI-first YouTube may still be wide open for you.
He earned $980 last month solving his own travel headache
Muiz Rexhepi was tired of the offline chaos around booking buses in the Balkans — no websites, no apps, just phone calls and crossed fingers. So he built GoBusly, a simple online bus booking platform. It started as a personal project, but last month it brought in $980 in revenue from real users.
Scratched his own itch as a frustrated traveler
Built the first version himself without plans to “start a company”
Platform helps locals and tourists book Balkan bus trips online
Revenue started coming in organically once others discovered it
Muiz’s story is a classic reminder:
If a product already exists in other regions (like bus aggregators in India, Latin America, or Europe), you might just need to localize it for your area.
Big pain + zero digital solutions = perfect startup opportunity.
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🥷 STEAL THIS BUSINESS IDEA
Steal this business idea: AI data cleaner for ecom product catalogs
Ecom founders are drowning in messy spreadsheets. Product names, descriptions, sizes, SKUs, colors — all jumbled, half-complete, and scattered across suppliers and sales channels. And yet, nothing ships or sells until that data gets cleaned up.
The opportunity? A tool that connects to their product feed and uses AI to clean, standardize, and format it — automatically.
No more hunting for missing attributes. No more copy-pasting into Shopify or Amazon. Just plug in your catalog, and let the system fix everything in real time as it flows between systems.
You’d start with:
SKU normalization
Auto-formatting sizes, weights, and specs
Standardizing product titles, categories, tags
Detecting missing data and prompting AI-based fills
Integrations with Shopify, BigCommerce, Amazon, Notion, Airtable
Charge per SKU or per store. Upsell real-time sync, multi-language descriptions, or channel-specific optimization.
Ecom is competitive, and founders will pay if you help them move faster with fewer errors. They’re not buying software — they’re buying sales velocity.
This could be your quiet $100K+ MRR SaaS just from saving people time on stuff they already hate doing.
Steal this business idea: second opinion as a service (starting with taxes)
Wealthy founders and profitable companies leave money on the table every year because tax advice is highly subjective — and most only get one version.
One founder pays 3 accounting firms to prep his taxes, then files with the one that saves him the most. ROI positive. No IRS issues. Just smart arbitrage.
The opportunity? A second-opinion-as-a-service platform that compares multiple tax strategies — so clients only file with the best one.
Start simple:
Pick a niche (US business owners making $500K+)
Work with vetted firms open to referral fees
Offer second opinion reports for free to start, then take a % of tax savings or flat fee on success
Pitch is easy: “We’ll review your return for free and only make money if we help you save more.”
Long term, expand into second opinions for R&D credits, estate planning, even health insurance or legal strategy. Rich people always want to double-check — especially when it costs them nothing.
Become the service that quietly saves your clients six figures — then start charging for the privilege.
How to realistically make $100K/year (without dropshipping or AI fluff)
From a Reddit post where users shared grounded, practical ways to hit $100K/year without shortcuts or gimmicks:
Sales jobs with real commissions
High-ticket sales (cars, HVAC, insurance, software)
Some car sales reps said you can hit $125K+ at top dealerships
Requires sacrifice, constant learning, and a thick skin
Freelancing or consulting
One user earns $150K through coaching + freelance consulting
Would rebuild by combining content, client work, and a paid community
Focused on solving real B2B problems like broken CRMs or ops inefficiencies
Service-based business
Classic "man with a van" model: book 3 small moving gigs, rent a truck, scale up
Hire help as you grow, keep working 7 days a week
Can scale to $100K+ purely through hustle and local demand
Real estate or trade work
Licensed real estate agents and investors hitting six figures in year one
Trades like HVAC, painting, fabrication, and repair services are in demand
Hands-on, but with high income ceilings if run as a business
Combining job + side hustle
Hold down a $50K–$60K job and stack a side hustle doing services (lawn care, detailing, cleaning)
Aim for 2–3 jobs a day at $100–$200 each
Weekends become profit machines
Niche B2B services
One user landed 3–5 clients as a fractional COO in a niche vertical (behavioral therapy practices)
Charges $2K–$4K/month per client → $100K/year with just a few clients
Built backend using freelancers, then planned SaaS expansion
Creative influencer ideas
One person created an AI influencer account to attract brand deals
Uses tools like Aura and Kling for realistic visuals and music collabs
Leverages attention arbitrage into UGC + affiliate revenue
What people don’t recommend:
Options trading (too risky unless you're already an expert)
“Get-rich” guides or automation spam
Blindly jumping into sales without knowing the grind it takes
Most upvoted mindset shift:
“If you want to make $100K fast, go where the money already flows — and be ready to work harder than anyone else is willing to.”
He made his first $1,370 from a desktop AI tool, after fixing one simple trust issue
A Turkish indie dev launched AI Renamer, a desktop app that renames files based on their content using AI. His first Reddit post went semi-viral (180K+ views, 700+ upvotes), but got just one sale. Why? People didn’t trust the cloud.
He listened: added support for local models in March.
Relaunched on Product Hunt and finally started making sales.
In 5 months, he made $1,370 from the app, his first paid product ever.
He used Polar for payments (since Stripe isn’t available in Turkey) and learned that monetizing didn’t require a company or a complex setup. That first $1 erased years of hesitation.
People don’t just pay for tools, they pay for trust. Solve the fear, and revenue can follow. (More Here)
This indie founder’s ASO tool just hit $850/month by balancing build & marketing right
From a Reddit conversation where someone shared how they grew their SaaS, GrowASO, a platform for mobile app store optimization to $850 in the last 30 days.
For 12+ months, progress was slow, but consistent effort paid off
He found the right audience (indie app developers) and showed up where they hang out: Reddit, X, YouTube
Did free app audits, shared content, and offered free tools to build trust and traffic
Switched from only yearly plans to monthly plans—this alone boosted conversions
Biggest takeaway: don’t over-optimize on just dev or just marketing. You need both. (More Here)
17-year-old solo founder makes $307 in 2 weeks from AI journaling tool.
From a Reddit conversation where 17-year-old Yasin Ahmed shared his indie hacker journey after launching Alpha Journal, an AI-powered journaling tool for crypto/forex traders.
Built the entire product solo: frontend, backend, UX no funding or team
Launched just 2 weeks ago, already has 44 users (28 active), and $307+ in revenue
Started coding at 14, dropped out of school at 15 this is his first real product out in the world
His advice: it’s not perfect, but it’s real, and it’s growing. Just start. (More Here)
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