3 Things: Supply/Demand Imbalance Tracker, Move Concierge, Shark Tank for Food

Happy Sunday and a very warm welcome to all the new subscribers! I’m thrilled and honored to have you as readers and truly appreciate your thoughts and feedback 🙏. Each edition of 3 Things will contain a dive into 3 rabbit holes I’ve found myself going down recently. Subscribe to get each week’s edition straight to your inbox and if you enjoy it, please share (I suck at self-promotion so can use your help)! This past week I’ve been thinking a lot about:

• Supply/Demand Imbalance Tracker

• Move Concierge

• Shark Tank for Food

1. Supply/Demand Imbalance Tracker

When looking for interesting market opportunities, consistently good places to look are areas where there is outstripped demand vs. supply or areas where an imbalance is predicted in the future. At any given time, there are dozens of areas where consumers or businesses are looking for products, labor, or services, and the supply just isn’t there. Over the past 2 years, we’ve seen tremendous price spikes in commodities like timber and gas due to issues with the supply chain and geopolitical turmoil where demand outpaced supply. We’ve seen a massive chip shortage that has affected over 169 industries ranging from cars to video game consoles to desktop computers. Recently, wheat futures have gone from ~$750/bushel in February to $1277 due to the war in Ukraine, a country that produces around 10% of the world’s wheat. Right now on the labor side, there is way more demand for mental health professionals than exist which is causing an extreme shortage of therapists and 3+ month wait times to see a psychiatrist in the case that you need antidepressants or anti-anxiety medications (or the myriad other reasons you may need a psychiatrist). Looking to the future, there is a predicted shortage of nurses that will amount to 44,500 in California alone by 2030 as we start to see the baby boomers age.

These are just a few examples of areas where there are major gaps between supply and demand. Someone should create a place that aggregates research and data from across industries and categories and creates searchable trackers as well as content related to supply and demand imbalances (both real-time and future predicted). The business model would be very similar to CBInsights (which does $100m in annual revenue) where the company does a ton of research, writes reports, creates charts/infographics, and provides newsletters. Some of the content would be provided for free to bring in large-scale traffic and help build awareness, and the rest would be premium content for paid customers. This data has a lot of value for numerous parties including financial institutions like PE, VC, and other traders who all have deep pockets and the willingness and ability to pay decent amounts for this type of research. Since this type of content is so topical, it would also be easily picked up in mainstream media which could help build virality and brand recognition.

2. Move Concierge

Moving sucks. Every time. Yet despite the pain, around 10% of Americans, or 15 million households, move each year (with 3 million households moving out of state). It doesn’t matter whether you are moving 2 blocks or 200 miles, the things you need to do to move are the same, and there are so many things that go into a move once you’ve already decided on where you’re going and when. You have to get boxes, go through your stuff and figure out what you want to get rid of, and hire movers. You might have books you want to donate that need to go to a local library. Your clothes need to be dropped off at GoodWill or Salvation Army, or sold at a local second hand clothing store. Any furniture that you don’t want needs to be given away, sold, or disposed of which can be challenging if the items are big and heavy. You need to change over utilities, water, and garbage bills. And these are just some of the things you need to think about and deal with when you move.

A company can be your 1-stop shop for everything related to moving, very akin to a wedding planner. They will come audit your current place as well as your new home and purchase the appropriate boxes, bins, and packing supplies. They’ll hire and coordinate with movers, get rid of all your giveaways to their respective locations, help sell all of your sellable items on various platforms, and schedule bulk trash pickup with the city. On the day of the move, you can go do whatever you want and they’ll make sure there is adequate parking for the movers and that they have everything they need and do a good job. They’ll know where you want all items placed and ensure that things end up in their correct locations at their destination. They can also order any items that you need for the new location including having groceries ready for you when you arrive and items like paper towels, toilet paper, garbage bins, bedding, and more. The company would charge a flat fee depending on the size and complexity of the move and could also get kickbacks from the moving companies and potentially other institutions that they do enough business with.

3. Shark Tank for Food

The TV show Shark Tank, which is the American franchise of the international Dragons' Den (which originated in Japan as Money Tigers (マネーの虎 manē no tora)), first premiered on ABC in 2009. Entrepreneurs come on the show to pitch the “Sharks” (Daymond John, Barbara Corcoran, Robert Herjavec, Kevin O'Leary, and Mark Cuban) on their business and the Sharks can choose whether or not they want to individually invest. The companies who present range from Doorbot which became Ring and was purchased by Amazon for $1B in 2018 to Scrub Daddy which makes sponges (you’d think a sponge is a sponge, but they are pretty great, I have to say as a customer) to the dating site Coffee Meets Bagel. Shark Tank has been nominated for and has won numerous awards over their 14 seasons and has a viewership of over 4 million per episode currently, despite peaking in Season 6 at 9+ million viewers per episode (before the streaming wars began).

A company could take the general model of Shark Tank but apply it to food and take a lot of learning from social media successes across TikTok and YouTube such as the viral food trends like pancake cereal and corn ribs or the genius celeb endorsed drop of MrBeast Burger. The company would essentially become a media organization that would host a show where celebrities act as judges to select the best food entrepreneurs who are looking to launch restaurant or product concepts. On top to that, the company could run their own ghost kitchens and do drops of each of the “winners”. They’d hire an entire team of people to run campaigns on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram and have the infrastructure set up to launch each new food concept, including partnerships with all of the ordering and delivery services (or hell, maybe you start your own if it gets big enough). In addition to celebrity judges like the Sharks, you could also have a network of celebrities or influencers who could get matched with each restaurant or food concept to be the name attached to the brand and get paid to endorse while the brand leverages the influencers followers. Since food trends are always changing, this could be a concept that continues to maintain relevancy.

That’s all for today! If you have thoughts, comments, or want to get in touch, find me on Twitter at @ezelby and if you enjoyed this, please share with a friend or two!

~ Elaine