Idea
Main Street: 'you're missing $10k in tax credits' as an acquisition wedge
Julian holds up Main Street as a fast-growing, non-flimsy version of the give-away-money playbook. Its ad tells small businesses they're leaving ~$10,000/year in tax credits on the table, and the free-money optics become a wedge to collect emails and happy customers it can monetize later.
“So the ad Main Street can run to people is, did you know that you're not taking advantage of an extra, say, $10,000 in tax credits every year for your business. It's like, whoa, if I'm a small business making it month to month, that's huge. And so again, they found a business model that can act as a means to at least optically without being a scam, either give you free money in a sense or credit back. And it functions as the ultimate acquisition wedge in a sense, which then becomes how they grow so darn quickly.”
Steal thisFind an unclaimed entitlement (tax credit, refund, rebate) your customer is owed, claim it for them, and use that free money as your acquisition wedge.
Idea
Clone a hot SaaS as a human-powered service for under $20K
Suli's million-dollar play: find a sexy, well-funded SaaS like Main Street (R&D tax credits), buy its Google ad, market a cheaper version with a beautiful website, and do the work with humans in the backend, reaching hundreds of thousands in ARR within a year.
“Like I'd go and buy the Main Street Google ad. Whenever somebody searches for Main Street, I would go put up my own service and market it as cheaper than Main Street in some way, have human beings that go do all of the work in the backend and have a beautiful looking website. And I think all of that will cost less than 10 or 20K, and in a year you'll have hundreds of thousands of dollars of ARR”
Steal thisBuy a funded SaaS competitor's brand keyword, undercut on price, and deliver with human labor first.
Idea
Main Street: auto-find tax credits, then pay founders cash upfront
Shaan describes Main Street, which connects to a company's books and payroll to automatically claim R&D and government tax credits — and now fronts the cash instantly (e.g. $10K now, makes $20K off it). He expects to regret passing on it.
“they look at your payroll and your QuickBooks and they say, oh, you're eligible for this because you have one developer working out of Idaho. Did you know that there's Idaho state credit for engineers that are hired in Idaho? And they'll just do it for you. And now they're even doing it even better, which is like they just look at your stuff and they just give you like an instant money. They'll just be like, hey, here's $10,000 now. And they might make $20,000 off of it”
Steal thisAutomate a painful paperwork process, then advance the customer cash upfront and capture the spread.
Idea
Main Street: a hub that claws back government incentives for SMBs
Amoruso flags Main Street, a fintech that consolidates opaque government grants, credits, and opportunity-zone incentives for small businesses. It integrates with payroll systems like Gusto and saves the companies it works with roughly $30,000 a year on average.
“they save like on average companies they work with like $30,000 a year, I think. And so they're kind of like your central hub for those kind of government incentives and just navigating that world, which is often just very challenging for small businesses.”
Steal thisProductize an opaque, paperwork-heavy savings area (grants, credits) into an automated hub wired to payroll, and take a cut of what you recover.
Idea
Main Street: 'free money' by automating R&D tax credits
Ryan Hoover describes Main Street, a portfolio company whose pitch is literally free money: most startups don't know they qualify for government grants and incentives per engineer hire, the application is painful, and the payout takes months. Main Street plugs into your QuickBooks or payroll, automates the whole filing, and takes a small cut of the recovered cash.
“a lot of startups and companies, including like myself, up until now don't realize that you can actually get government grants and incentives per engineer hire and other things like that. And one, people don't know about it. Two, it's a pain in the ass to actually apply for. And three, you then have to wait for the government to send you money like several months in the future. So they basically, you plug in your QuickBooks or your payroll and it just like automates that entire process for you. They take like a small sliver of that money. And so it's like literally free money, which is like a crazy sell.”
Steal thisFind a government rebate or credit businesses are owed but rarely claim, automate the filing on top of their existing accounting data, and take a slice of the recovered cash.