Good morning,
Startups waste £5k on lawyers for basic NDAs. Remote teams lose 10 hours per week to timezone chaos. Creators leave £50k on the table because they can't manage brand deals.
Today: Three ideas that solve annoying problems nobody's fixed yet.
💡 IDEA #1: Automated NDA Generator & Tracker for Startups
TLDR: Every startup needs NDAs. Nobody has a good system for generating, tracking, and managing them. Build the tool you wish existed.
The Problem
Startups send NDAs constantly - to contractors, investors, potential hires, partners.
Current options all suck:
Pay lawyers £500-1,000 per NDA (too expensive)
Use generic templates (legally risky, not customized)
Track in spreadsheets (breaks when you hit 50+ NDAs)
Use DocuSign (great for signing, terrible for tracking who's under NDA)
The pain: "Did we get an NDA from this person?" becomes a 30-minute email archaeology project.
The Numbers
5 million startups globally
Average startup sends 20-50 NDAs per year
Legal spend on NDAs: £2k-10k annually
Market opportunity: £500M+ (just NDAs, not broader legal tech)
How It Works
Smart template builder (answer 5 questions, generates custom NDA)
Send directly from platform (DocuSign integration)
Auto-tracking dashboard (who signed, who didn't, expiration dates)
Alerts when NDAs expire or need renewal
Search by person, company, or date range
Export for legal review or due diligence
Business Model
Free: 5 NDAs/year (get people hooked)
Starter: £29/mo (50 NDAs/year, basic tracking)
Pro: £99/mo (unlimited NDAs, team features, legal review add-on)
Enterprise: £299/mo (custom templates, API access, white-label)
At 1,000 customers averaging £60/mo = £60k MRR
Why This Wins
Lawyers are expensive. Templates are risky. Spreadsheets break. You're the boring middle ground that actually works. Every startup needs this but nobody's nailed it.
Go-to-Market
Post on Hacker News: "I built the NDA tool I wish existed." Target YC companies (high NDA volume). SEO for "startup NDA template" and "NDA tracker." Partner with accelerators.
💡 IDEA #2: Remote Team Timezone Coordinator
TLDR: Async work is broken because nobody can figure out when people are available. Automate the scheduling nightmare.
The Problem
Remote teams waste 10+ hours per week on timezone coordination:
"What time works for everyone?" email chains
Calendar tools that show YOUR timezone, not theirs
Manual conversion (is 3pm EST 8pm GMT or 9pm?)
Meetings scheduled at 2am for someone because nobody checked
The tools exist (World Time Buddy, etc.) but require manual lookup. Nobody does it. Meetings get scheduled badly. People suffer.
The Numbers
35% of US workforce now remote
Average remote team: 5-15 people across 3+ timezones
Time wasted on scheduling: 10 hours/week per team
Willingness to pay: £50-200/mo to fix this
How It Works
Slack/Teams integration that:
Auto-detects each team member's timezone
Shows availability overlaps in real-time
Suggests meeting times that work for everyone
Converts times automatically in messages ("3pm your time" = different for each person)
Blocks "bad hours" (no 2am meetings auto-scheduled)
Calendar sync shows who's awake/asleep right now
The magic: Type "/findtime 30min this week" and it auto-suggests 3 slots that work for everyone.
Business Model
Free: Up to 5 team members
Team: £10/user/month (unlimited team size, calendar sync)
Business: £20/user/month (analytics, admin controls, API)
At 500 teams averaging 8 users = £40k MRR
Why This Wins
Everyone hates timezone coordination. Existing tools require manual work. You make it automatic. Simple wins.
Go-to-Market
Launch on Product Hunt. Post in r/remotework and remote team Slack communities. Partner with async-first companies (GitLab, Buffer, Automattic). Bottom-up adoption: one team uses it, tells other teams.
💡 IDEA #3: Creator Sponsorship CRM
TLDR: Influencers lose money because they can't manage brand deals. Build them a CRM that tracks sponsors, rates, deliverables, and payments.
The Problem
Creators making £50k-500k/year from sponsorships manage everything in:
Email threads (impossible to track)
Spreadsheets (break constantly)
Memory (forget to follow up, leave money on table)
They're losing 20-30% of potential revenue because:
Can't remember which brands paid what rates
Miss renewal opportunities
Forget to send deliverables
Don't track ROI for brands (so brands don't renew)
A proper CRM would make them £10k-50k more per year. They'd happily pay £100/mo for it.
The Numbers
50 million creators worldwide
2 million making £10k+/year from sponsorships
Average creator works with 5-15 brands simultaneously
Current solution: spreadsheets + email (terrible)
How It Works
Creator dashboard that tracks:
All brand relationships (contact info, rates, history)
Active deals (deliverables, deadlines, payment status)
Past campaigns (what worked, what didn't, ROI data)
Automated follow-ups (renewal reminders, payment chasing)
Rate card management (share with new brands)
Analytics (which brands pay best, which renew most)
Bonus features:
Invoice generation
Contract templates
Media kit builder
Performance tracking (views, engagement per sponsor)
Business Model
Starter: £49/mo (up to 10 active brand relationships)
Pro: £99/mo (unlimited brands, team features, white-label)
Agency: £299/mo (manage multiple creators, agency dashboard)
At 2,000 creators averaging £75/mo = £150k MRR
Why This Wins
Creators are terrible at business operations. They need this but don't know it exists. Show them they're leaving money on the table and they'll pay immediately.
Go-to-Market
Partner with creator coaches and agencies. Post in creator communities (r/creators, YouTube creator forums). Sponsor creator podcasts. Offer free month + "revenue you're missing" audit. Bottom-up: small creators use it, tell bigger creators.
Your weekly haul of tools, links, and discoveries worth stealing.
Five more worth bookmarking, not just skimming.
A brutally practical guide to staying “default alive” as a tiny founder
https://www.defmacro.org/2014/10/03/default-alive-or-default-dead.html
(Defmacro)What selling a very small SaaS actually looks like (numbers included)
https://tinyacquisitions.com/blog
(Tiny Acquisitions)Why most early traction is fake — and what real traction looks like
https://longform.asmartbear.com/traction-is-not-customers/
(Jason Cohen)A founder diary that quietly explains why slow growth compounds
https://www.curiousfounder.com
(Curious Founder)The economics of niche software nobody brags about on social
https://www.softwareideas.io/blog
(Software Ideas)
📖 Founder Story: How Calendly Went from Side Project to $3B
The Beginning: Tope Awotona built Calendly in 2013 as a side project. He was frustrated with back-and-forth email scheduling: "Does 2pm work?" "No, how about 3pm?" "That's taken, what about Thursday?"
The Insight: People don't need a better calendar. They need to eliminate the scheduling conversation entirely. Send a link, other person picks a time, done.
The Growth:
2013: Launched with freemium model
2016: 1M users
2020: 10M users, bootstrapped to profitability
2021: First funding round ($350M at $3B valuation)
2024: Still growing, dominant in scheduling
What You Can Steal:
Solve the annoying problem, not the exciting one
Freemium works if product is simple enough
Calendly didn't innovate on calendars - they eliminated the need for scheduling conversations
Boring problems have huge TAMs
The remote timezone coordinator is the same playbook: eliminate the timezone conversation entirely.
💭 Final Thought
The best tools solve annoying problems, not exciting ones.
NDAs aren't sexy. Timezone coordination isn't innovative. Creator CRMs won't get TechCrunch headlines.
But people pay £100/mo for things that save them 10 hours and £5,000.
Annoying > exciting when it comes to retention and willingness to pay
That's it for today.
Building one of these? Reply - I read everything.
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Tomorrow: Voice AI, Local Services, and B2B Payments.
Connor
P.S. Next week: Saturday deep dives start. First topic: "Audience Is Not Demand."