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Today’s Edition
🚚 Hyperlocal Last Mile Delivery for Rural Areas
⏲️ Founder Friday with Suntorr’s Gene Ligman
📎 Microsoft’s Clippy is BACK… sort of
🤵♂️ Ultimate Solution to Wedding Parties
💡 Today’s Minimum Viable Idea
🚚 Hyperlocal Last Mile Delivery for Rural Areas
IDEA: Rural areas are home to about 20% of Americans which is about 66 million people. There are countless challenges to last mile delivery in sparsely populated regions. Some of which are poor infrastructure, logistics, limited workforce, and long distances between deliveries. Some living in rural areas have to pay a premium shipping fee of up to 200% for goods to be delivered to their door. With all of these issues, there is a massive opportunity to step in with a lower cost solution and build trust with underserved populations.
PRODUCT: Create central delivery hubs in rural areas and contract with logistics firms to receive packages at those outposts. Employ local gig workers to deliver packages directly to the doorstep of rural recipients. To expand quickly and gauge interest in certain areas, place delivery lockers for a closer self-pickup option. Develop delivery route software to maximize efficiency and offer the lowest price possible.
MVP: Delivery service in a rural city set up as a central hub with delivery route logistics.
REVENUE MODEL: Transactional, charge delivery fees.
EXIT STRATEGY: Sell to a large logistics firm like UPS or Fedex to handle their rural delivery efforts.
⏲️ Founder Friday: Suntorr’s Gene Ligman
I had the pleasure of meeting Gene Ligman at a startup event in Lexington, KY, last week. Not only is he providing an incredible product for freeze drying businesses, he is helping solve the food crisis and providing nutritious solutions like never before. He also has a very unique take on what it means to be an entrepreneur.
Check out Suntorr’s website.
What are you working on now?
Suntorr has three segments of its business, one in full swing, one in early stage, and one in development:
Commercial Freeze Dryer Sales and Marketing. Suntorr has an exclusive agreement with one of the world’s best commercial freeze dryer OEMs. It is a small but growing company, just like Suntorr.
We help customers spec out what they need in order to move into commercial production of freeze dried products.
We provide a direct sales function to the clients.
We provide marketing activities to promote the brand.
We provide pro-bono engineering services to the OEM to help them innovate the equipment to better satisfy the challenges that clients face with equipment.
Freeze Dried Product Brokering. Suntorr helps clients to get their freeze dried product to market by connecting them with customers, whether wholesale or retail.
Currently have one contract for freeze dried ocean fish.
Working toward a contract for freeze dried trout and steelhead.
We give consideration to all who are interested.
Development of new technologies.
Suntorr is an engineering company with a deep domain knowledge in vacuum applications, of which freeze drying is only one.
We are currently initiating patent application process for two new technologies that could have wide spread impact on the world in the food products industry.
We have a key partnership with a major vacuum equipment supplier (Leybold) that is working on some technology we helped design. This relationship also enables us to develop custom solutions for some clients on a case by case basis.
Why did you want to become an entrepreneur?
I had reached as high as I wanted to go in my last position with Leybold but I needed to stretch, to face challenges, to grow as a person and as a professional.
Business owner checks these boxes plus more.
To say that I have had to stretch beyond my comfort zone is a gross understatement.
Was there a specific moment or a “that’s it” reaction that made you make the jump?
There was no Eureka moment for me, it was a deliberate move from employee to business start up.
I leveraged my domain knowledge from my career.
I had to pivot several times as I defined what sort of business I would create, and the business is still evolving.
By carefully choosing the business function, I avoided some major expenses.
I still have so many things to learn.
I recently hired my first employee to help take some of the strain off my days.
I will need to either hire more in the future to augment my business by getting people strong where I am weak, or maybe I find some outsources.
What is something that we should know about the early days of starting a company?
Stop listening to the echo chamber of CEOs and content creators about needing to have a passion. I mean what do you do if you don't have that? Most people don't.
Make sure you are in tune with what your customers want. That doesn't mean pander to them, it means listen to them. Ask them.
Jealously guard your optimism. There will be so many nay sayers. They don't know you, they don't know your customers, and they are frankly probably covering up their own incompetence or low self esteem.
Jealously guard your margins. You think lower price means more sales, not usually the case. You need to make money to make the whole thing work.
Running your own business is not high risk, it is less risk than working for someone else.
Make sure you pay yourself.
See number 6. above.
Is entrepreneurship for everyone? And what is something people should be 100% sure about before they start?
It is not for you if:
You love your 9 to 5
You don't like to stretch out of your comfort zone
You don't like making decisions
You don't want to be a leader/manager
You don't like people
You hate social media
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🚨 Startup News 🗞️
Publication: TechCrunch
Summary: Microsoft has introduced Mico, a blob-shaped AI avatar designed to serve as the friendly “face” of its Copilot chatbot. Mico listens, reacts, changes colors based on interactions and even hides an Easter egg: tapping it repeatedly turns it into the nostalgic Clippy. While users can disable the avatar, by default it supports voice mode, and in the U.S., Canada and U.K. it can store conversation memory and learn from feedback. Microsoft also introduced a “Real Talk” mode, where Copilot mirrors your tone and challenges your ideas rather than simply affirming them.
Spin: I am not sure if it’s just the nostalgia talking, but I love this. I am not even a PC user and this makes me so happy. The rational side of me, however, is wondering why this took so long. With the AI boom currently underway, and every big tech firm having their own chatbot, Microsoft could have made a major splash rolling this out a year ago. It will be interesting to see how users will react to the new Clippy. A lot of people were annoyed by a know-it-all paper clip showing up when you were already most frustrated with the product. Time will tell.
🚂 Motivation Station
🧱 Ready to run through a brick wall or do you need an extra push?
Today’s Motivation comes from The E-Myth: Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What You Can Do About It. Long title, but pretty short book. With startups, we have a lot more data on what has failed rather than what has succeeded. While that may seem negative, the author, Michael Gerber, presents these cautionary tales as the greatest learning opportunity for us to use to make sure our businesses succeed.
Listen to the Audiobook on Spotify.
🔥 HighDEA
Groomsmen Rentals
IDEA: Picture this: a guy who keeps a small circle of friends is getting married to a social butterfly who has stayed close to every friend from pre-school through grad school. She has 10 women she wants standing by her on her special day and the guy needs a few bodies to match that number. He doesn’t have any brothers or male cousins and he’s running out of time. Introducing groomsmen rentals.
Hire some aspiring actors or college frat guys who wouldn’t pass up an open bar and even out those numbers. You wouldn’t even have to pay that much since you’re already covering food and drinks. Bonus pay for memorizing facts to pretend they’ve known the couple for years, give a speech, or cry on command.
📣 We Want to Hear from You! 📢
If you want to be featured as our next Founder Friday…
Send us an email! Let us know what you’re building, what you thought about today’s newsletter, or whatever else is on your mind.