Founder's Compass: Week 4
Hello there and welcome to Founder's Compass, a good way to get oriented around the labyrinthian world of startups.
Tool of the week
You're designing a new website/identify and the first thing you pick are colors. You've got your set of about 5, they look pretty good. You use them to build your website and it starts falling apart really fast. Unreadable text, too little contrast, unclear boundaries.
Realtime Colors helps with this by offering a very easy website template that you can change the colors for (and even check the dark mode version) and check if everything falls in order.
Video of the week
Is design important? How simple can you really go? From the creator of the tool of the week, we also have the video of the week (going really short, at just 2 minutes).
What will the future look like? The new generation of apps and platforms, the User Experience and interactions? Amazing video to scratch the surface of this topic.
Startup Idea of the week
New Brick Factory ๐
๐ฃ๐ฟ๐ผ๐ฏ๐น๐ฒ๐บ:
Building a house is becoming more expensive every day. The recent building material crises showed us how fast the whole economy can be affected by a low supply in this industry. Pair that with the unrelenting use of concrete, a material that is slowly becoming unsustainable to produce and hard to live with (super heavy compared to its strength, low tensile strength and again, high cost).
๐ง๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ด๐ฒ๐:
Construction companies, developers, independent house builders ๐ทโ๏ธ
๐ฃ๐ฟ๐ผ๐ฝ๐ผ๐๐ฒ๐ฑ ๐ฆ๐ผ๐น๐๐๐ถ๐ผ๐ป:
A factory that produces mutiple new-age bricks to replace the use of concrete and traditional bricks (made out of the ash from burning coal). Some examples of these bricks are: Hempcrete (hemp plants + concrete), plastic waste bricks, K-Briq's (made of 80% construction waste), timbercrete (sawdust + concrete).
These new bricks are not only more sustainable, but have varying properties, keeping your house cooler or warmer depending on your choice.
๐๐ฒ๐ป๐ฒ๐ณ๐ถ๐๐:
โ Similar manufacturing process to traditional bricks so easy to set-up a factory.
โ Can directly replace traditional bricks in the construction process.
โ Scalable model: You can sell the bricks internationally, as all of them are lighter than concrete so it costs less to ship.
๐๐ต๐ฎ๐น๐น๐ฒ๐ป๐ด๐ฒ๐:
โ High Setup costs: To start any type of factory, you need equipment and a space. That gets expensive really fast.
โ High prices: Producing this type of bricks is still more expensive than traditional bricks thanks to the scaling effect. You'll get the full return on this on a longer timeline (7-10 years).
โ Sales-driven business: Producing the bricks is not the hard part. Selling them is really the big effort for this, as the orders are usually high-ticket and longer term projects. It will be hard to be competitive.
What would you do differently to get this startup off the ground? Do you think this would work? Let's talk in the comments ๐ค
Some news as well
Is technology going to save us? A quick look at tehno-optimism.
War on youtube Ads blocker has begun. (or has it ever stopped?)
That's it for this week's edition. Stick close for the next one.
Pssst... Are you looking to generate awesome ideas like the one above? You can work with us and create a hackathon for your team: https://creativemotion.io/creative-labs/
If you already have an awesome idea and an awesome team to boot, don't shy away and apply to our accelerator: