Houston #10 - Houston now has more info! Also is their a need for a service to book influencers and directory app to complement Slack?
Find great problems to solve.
Hi there 👋 This is Houston's tenth issue and here are the five interesting problems that we found this week:
Finding and cold emailing micro influencers is still a pain
Even though there are multiple solutions apparently "There's are a ton and they all suck. The marketplace model attracts low-quality influencers. It's still a manual process for most brands." via Sari Azout
Finding someone to groom my pet is tedious
I wish there were Wag for grooming. In-home. Groomer brings a little platform that fits in the shower. Monthly subscription. Scheduled recurring by default, option to add emergency on-demand booking in between. TAM = $100/mo x # of Wag customers x 20% fully loaded gross margin via Jake Jolis.
For TV networks getting permission to use footage is a pain.
There's an opportunity not only to solve this problem but also create a marketplace for helping contributors get a royalty/payment for their work. "Behind every viral video is thousands of news outlets asking for permission to re-post. There has to be a more efficient process." - Blake Robbins
Buying office supplies and one-off licenses as a startup is expensive
I think that it makes no sense that no one has created a company that aggregates a lot of the demand that startups have for everyday things (anything from office supplies to catering to software licenses) and just allow startup to quickly jump in and get a better deal if a certain # of startups need it (buying in bulk). This might be a good idea for a YCombinator company because just with the YC companies you have enough volume to make it probably make it worthwhile.
We need an excellent directory app to complement Slack! Finding people within large companies tends to be a lot of work
Once your company scales it's hard to figure out
Who do I talk to for X Y or Z? (navigation)
Who can make that intro well? (credibility/importance)
(racking brain) Who do I know? (recency)
A potential solution might be a directory to complement Slack. Inspired by Vikram Rajagopalan.
Quick Community Updates:
We're launching a new experiment! Houston+ is a weekly addition to Houston where we go more in-depth into the market opportunity, current solutions, and potential challenges of every problem we publish on Houston.
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That's it for this week! If you're enjoying Houston+ please forward this email to a friend. Let’s find more great problems to solve ❤️