I’m back as promised with the new look newsletter - let me know what you think. I’d also like to ask for a favour, if you’re finding my newsletter useful please share it far and wide. I’ve got big plans for 2024 including in-depth guides and a community of UK founders. I’m excited for the year ahead and super thankful to all of you for giving me a shot.

In today’s email:

• The Main Idea - the news is changing. Mainstream media is widely distrusted, and this creates opportunities.

• Steal This Idea - if you think making conference badges doesn’t seem like much of an opportunity, you’d be wrong.

• In The News - a word of warning from the news this week, don’t make Hello Fresh’s costly mistake.

The recommendation: There are so many great newsletters out there and I thought you might be interested in some of my favourites. My first recommendation has to be James Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter. Every Thursday get a healthy dose of motivation and food for thought.

THE MAIN IDEA

The news is changing.

These last few years have seen big changes in how we get our news and who we trust to tell us the truth.

Social media is becoming a big source of news with 47% of UK adults using it, for 16-24 year olds this jumps to 71%.

Meanwhile, traditional newspapers are in decline.

Trust has also become a big issue, just 13% of the UK population say they have ‘a great deal/quite a lot’ of confidence in the press.

And wherever there are changes like this there are opportunities to capitalise on.

There are already few ‘disruptors’ in the UK news market trying to capitalise on this:

• The Knowledge - a daily email newsletter written by John Connell, the founder of the Week. It’s a great read and focus on a mix of factual updates, opinion pieces and generally interesting stuff from around the world.

• Tortoise - a ‘slower, wiser news’ founded by James Harding, a former BBC News director and editor of The Times. Tortoise seems to have pivoted into events and podcasts with significant investment in this area.

• The Know - a daily newsletter helping you ‘feel better about the news.’ Focused on delivering the key news whilst bringing something uplifting to the table.

So, where’s the opportunity here?

It’s easy to get lost in the fact that there are others actively pursuing this area, but this just validates a demand here.

We’re very much at the start of this changing picture and now is the time to capitalise on it.

There are all manner of opportunities here:

• Factual news TikTok channels aimed at Gen Z.

• Email newsletters targeting millennial financial workers.

• Daily, quick-fire news podcasts released early each morning for commuters.

Find a group of people you can speak to and deliver the news they want, in the way they want it, and you’ll build something successful.

Personally, I see one big gap here.

We’re all busy people, it’s important to know what’s going on but most of us don’t have 30+ minutes a day to keep up to speed.

Nor can we be bothered to navigate the clickbait headlines and biased reporting to get to the truth of the matter.

There’s opportunity here to deliver purely factual morning briefing that can be read (or watched) in under 5 minutes. 1440 is doing an amazing job delivering this for the US market.

STEAL THIS IDEA

Conference badges. Boring but lucrative?

I came across this business a while ago on Twitter (I’m not calling it X) after it was acquired by Andrew Wilkinson.

They provide a platform to auto-generate conference badges which you can then either self-print or, the easier option, have them printed, put together and shipped ready to go.

It looks like a great business and in 2023 was en route for $700k in revenue.

The opportunity here? It only ships to the US and Canada.

You could build your own version of this and target the UK with an obvious expansion opportunity into the EU. Or reach out to Andrew and see if he’s interested in a partnership to deliver the UK logistics.

IN THE NEWS

Hello Fresh and their costly mistake.

A brief word of warning from this week’s news.

Marketing is the key to any successful business, just make sure you stay on the right side of the rules.

Hello Fresh has just received a £140,000 fine from the ICO for sending 79 million spam emails and 1 million spam texts over a 7 month period.

And that’s it.

As always please send me any feedback (or if you just fancy a chat!) by hitting reply to this email.

Have a great week!

Adam