Find your million dollar ideas.
Every Sunday I send you three businesses that are already making money for somebody. You get the real numbers, what it costs to start, and the honest reason most people who try it are gone by month four.
Free. One email a week. Leave whenever you like.
I have watched a lot of people set out and do nothing.
The pattern is always the same. They read a list of ten business ideas on a Sunday night, one of them sticks, they buy the domain. By week three the folder stops getting opened.
It is almost never the idea. It is that nobody told them what it would cost, how long before the first dollar arrived, or what the thing looks like on the day it starts going wrong.
So this publishes the opposite. Every idea arrives with the money already worked out and a paragraph on exactly how it falls apart. Most weeks you will read all three and rule out all three. That is the point. Ruling something out in twelve minutes beats ruling it out in six months.
Hi, I'm David.
David
Web developer · Editor of Find Your Million Dollar Ideas
I am a web developer. For years my job has been building the thing after somebody has the idea. The booking system, the checkout, the dashboard, the landing page they swear will change everything.
That work puts you somewhere unusual. Clients hand you their pricing, their traffic, their conversion rate and their bank anxiety, because you cannot build the thing without seeing them. I have watched businesses I built go from a spreadsheet to real money, and I have watched others quietly stop paying the hosting bill nine months in.
After enough of both you stop being impressed by ideas. The ones that survived were rarely the clever ones. They were the ones where somebody had done the arithmetic before writing a line of code, and knew who would pay and roughly how many of them there needed to be.
So this newsletter is the thing I wish those clients had read first. Every idea arrives with the money worked out and the failure case stated plainly. And one rule holds it together: if I cannot point to where a number came from, I do not print it. When something is a reasoned guess, I label it a guess and let you weigh it yourself.
- Day jobWeb developer, building for other people's businesses
- PublishesEvery Sunday, without exception
- SourcesPublic filings, live listings, operator interviews
- NeverPrints a number it cannot trace
Three things, or it does not run.
A real business
Someone is already doing this and getting paid. I name the operator, the niche, and how they charge. No real example, no story that week.
The actual numbers
Cost to start, margin, time until money shows up. Where a figure cannot be verified I say so rather than filling the gap with something plausible.
Your first move
One thing you can do this week to find out whether it is real. Not a business plan. Usually a single conversation with somebody who would pay you.
Six entries, completely unlocked.
Nobody should buy a database they have never read a line of. These six are open to everyone, all fifteen fields, including the parts that argue against the idea. If they are not useful, the other forty-four will not be either.
Commercial Real Estate Daily
HighA daily market brief for CRE brokers and asset managers.
Invoice Automation for Trades
HighTurn a contractor's job photos and voice notes into a sent invoice.
Regional Construction Bid Brief
HighA weekly digest of public bid opportunities for one metro area.
The Vertical AI Teardown
HighA weekly breakdown of one AI product's pricing, wedge, and defensibility.
The Boring Business Broker Brief
MediumA weekly teardown of one real SMB listing with the seller-financing math.
Cohort Course for a Boring Skill
HighA four-week live course teaching one unglamorous, well-paid skill.
Fifteen fields, and one of them is why this fails.
Every idea is written to the same shape. That is the only reason the database is useful rather than merely long. Sort it by what you can afford to lose, how soon you need income, and how many hours a week you honestly have.
People tell me they read the risk paragraph first. It is the field that talks you out of things, and it is the main reason this is worth paying for.
- One-line pitchOpen
- Startup cost bandOpen
- Time to first revenueOpen
- Year-one revenue ceilingOpen
- Vetting confidenceOpen
- Why it works right nowMembers
- Unit economics, worked outMembers
- Biggest disqualifying riskMembers
- Your first thirty daysMembers
- Where the evidence came fromMembers
Manufacturing Supply Chain Weekly
MediumA Monday brief on tariffs, lead times, and supplier risk for mid-market manufacturers.
The money math, the failure case, and your first move sit behind the paywall
See the plans →Fifty ideas you can actually sort through.
Read it Sunday. Start Monday.
The Sunday email
Three ideas land with the numbers already run. Twelve minutes with a coffee.
Filter for your life
Sort by what you can spend, how fast you need income, and the skills you already have.
Read the risk first
Start at the failure case. Most weeks you rule everything out, and that saves months.
Run one small test
When something survives, a single concrete move is waiting. Usually one conversation.
Three ways in. Cancel any of them.
Free
$0
The Sunday email and six full entries, so you can judge the work before paying for any of it.
- The weekly dispatch
- Six entries, fully unlocked
- One idea validation a day
- The other 44 stay locked
- No back issues
Insider
$9/month
A second issue midweek, every back issue, and unlimited runs of the validation tool.
- Everything in Free
- The midweek deep dive
- Every back issue
- Unlimited validations
- Database still locked
Pro
$24/month
The whole database open, every field, updated monthly as entries are added and corrected.
- Everything in Insider
- All 50 ideas, nothing hidden
- New entries every month
- Filter and sort the full set
- Export to your own tools
The awkward questions.
Am I the only one getting these ideas?
No, and be careful with anyone who claims otherwise. Every subscriber sees the same entries. Information is not the scarce thing here, following through is. That is why each idea ends with one concrete move rather than a business plan.
How do you actually check any of this?
Every entry carries a confidence rating and a note on where the evidence came from. High means public revenue figures or verified competitor data. Medium means the demand signal is strong but nobody has disclosed numbers. Speculative means the reasoning came from a pattern that works elsewhere, and you are told that up front. Better to mark something Medium and be right than mark it High and sell you a guess.
Why is Pro a subscription instead of a one-off payment?
Because the database keeps moving. New entries go in monthly and old ones get corrected when better evidence turns up. Buy it once and you are stuck with whatever was known on the day you paid.
I have no money and no technical skills. Is this for me?
Partly, and here is the other part. Filter for under $1,000 to start and no specialised skill required, and you will still have real options. But several categories genuinely need capital or code, and pretending otherwise just to keep you subscribed would be dishonest.
What if I hate it?
Cancel from the link at the bottom of any email. No phone call, no survey, no downgrade flow built to wear you down.
This does not sell ideas.
It sells the next ninety days.
Free to join. Upgrade only if it earns it.