Hey Founders,

☕️ Welcome back to the Kernal newsletter: your community alarm clock that beeps at you in the face each morning until you go launch your startup idea. You hate the noise, but you love the results.

📰 Latest news: Substack launched its own Twitter feed. Amazon’s CEO dropped his annual shareholder letter. Y Combinator’s latest founder class was long on AI. VC funds invested $59B globally in Q1. Fyre Festival 2 is in the works. Outcome Health (valued at $5.5B) is the latest fraudster in town. And it’s absolutely gorgeous in Toronto today (where we’re writing this from if you care to know). ☀️

Enough chatting, let’s get jamming. 👇

Partner of the Week: FuelBlock

Meet Fuelblock: the tool that lets you spend less time searching and more time closing. How? By delivering warm leads to your inbox every month.

Their users grow their revenue by being sent a list of SaaS startups that just raised millions in funding and have signalled they’re looking to outsource. FuelBlock then emails this list of folks to their customers for intros. It’s genius.

Meet Jean, the co-founder of Fuelblock. He's passionate about building a SaaS startup that founders and has done his time as an employee at several tech brands. He always knew he wanted to start his own thing one day, and Fuelblock is where he’s going ALL IN.

Use Kernal Coupon code: “NCF20” to get:

• 20% off monthly subscription for 6 months ($359 savings)

• Orrrr 20% off a yearly subscription ($862 savings)

🍽 Today's Menu:

• 500 fastest growing SaaS Categories to Build In (get the list here)

• Fresh startup ideas to vote on

• Top tweets of the week

📈 500 Fastest Growing SaaS Categories

If you’ve opened this newsletter before, you know how bullish we are on telling you to validate your startup idea before you build it.

But if you’re new in town, turn down your AirPods and listen up:

“Nobody’s gonna use your startup idea if it doesn’t solve a pain they have”

And as my old Uncle Gary used to say “The proof is in the pudding”

AKA: instead of wishing about something, go find a direct experience that validates your idea.

In this case for startup ideas: go follow the search trends.

Since a lot of you are building SaaS ideas, we pulled together 500 of the highest-searched SaaS startup ideas (from our friends at Category Surfers) that the world wants to see built.

Here’s how we’d go about building one of them:

1. Choose 1 of the top 500 ideas that you feel curious about

2. Post a napkin startup idea pitch on Kernal

3. Go email, LinkedIn DM, Twitter DM a few friends to share you’re looking into how to build an MVP

4. Email Kernal ([email protected]) that you’re looking for niche feedback

5. We’ll feature it in our newsletter next week

6. Get to 20 up-votes

7. Keep iterating on niche feedback

8. Share a rough MVP with your top followers

9. Start exploring a paid plan with help from our community

10. Then email [email protected] to get featured on our social media when you hit 100 users

11. Rinse and repeat

So, now you probably want the full list of 500 startup ideas to make your next move. Well, all you gotta do is click below.

Now, the main course meal you’ve all been waiting for…

✨ Startup Ideas of the Week✨ 

• We all want a better WFH office setup. Imagine if you could go online

• And pick a WFH office setup “Look A, B or C”

• Then a team of pros comes to set it up for you for $1,500.

• Could be paid by your big tech firm or a greater investment for the next decade of your remote work life

WDYT? Upvote or comment on the idea below.

• The platform could suggest matching families to cooks

• Could include certain specialties (vegan, nut-free etc)

• Could offer premium levels and be health conscious

• Who wouldn’t pay for this?

Alexis Grant shared the startup idea but it’s up for grabs if you wanna comment below.

Sean Raftery was inspired by a recent trip to the bookstore when he rediscovered my joy of just looking at covers to find interesting new books. Then it hit him:

• No mechanism replicates that experience digitally

• Discovery now is mainly driven either by a retailer's algorithmic recommendations or by an influencer.

• MVP idea: a wishlist housed in the app or a connection to the Goodreads API to add to the user’s "to read" list.

• Monetization strategies before an exit could include sponsored placements in the recommendation algorithm, community access (book clubs around the brand), or advanced features behind a paywall.

WDYT? Would you help build, pay for or invest in the idea? Prove it by tapping below.

💡 More Startup Ideas

Got a startup idea of your own? Get it up already so we can feature it next week.

Smash the button below and let’s get you rolling.

📩 Founder Gems In Our Inbox:

• Podcast on the magic of 1 person newsletters with Polina

• a16z dropped their 2023 State of Crypto Report

• Mindjourney’s all the hype. Here’s a free guide on how to use it

• How to write a great investor update 

• How the President of Shopify found mentors in his hometown

🐦 Tweets of the Week

Enough scrolling. Go have an 11/10 weekend.

💚 The Kernal Fam

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