Problem: When you don’t know what you don’t know, it’s difficult if not impossible to know how to start learning and/or what to learn.
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Solution: My cousin always jokes about the “University of YouTube” — the place where every piece of information you could ever want to know exists. However, the problem with this University is that it has no course catalogue. With a wealth of information online, this business would make a bet that the next generation of educators will not be lecturers, but master curators. Those who are able to comb through thousands of untagged videos, PowerPoints, and websites to create a syllabus of new value and content are the educators and learners that would thrive.
This business would provide a search engine where you can search for a topic you’d like to learn (i.e. “Venture Capital Level 1/2/or 3”, “Creating a Private Equity Fund”, “Marketing 101”, and more) in addition to a platform for users to create their own curation categories. Given the rise in remote learning, I truly believe that the future of learning won’t necessarily be hinged on what school you went to or who instructed you, but instead based on what you know and your ability to effectively apply these skills on a day-to-day or case-by-case basis.
One individual who’s bullish on this phenomenon is Chris Cantino who argues that Newsletters will become a marketplace through 5 features, (1) Native carts/checkouts, (2) Curation as a service, (3) Superapps/Mini-Programs, (4)Last mile democratized for indie curators/affiliates, and (5) Vertical value adds. The cause of this trend? Retailers searching for niche micro-communities.
One player is in this space is MailBrew (a personal daily digest) which is currently making $107k in ARR and Patricia Mou who is currently making $5 in ARR from her weekly curation digest.
The market for this business is actually quite large. As reported by PR NewsWire and Absolute Market Insights,
The content curation market is expected to gain significant lift with the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) powered content curation. The utilization of AI plays a major role in content curation to reinforce content marketing strategies. Companies focus on different platforms to achieve data-driven content marketing at a scale with minimum effort. For instance, Scoop.it, a content marketing software company, has developed a technology named Hawkeye database, which is a content intelligence technology that helps in the identification of trending topics and the top-performing influencers to curate, create and distribute content to engage with the audience. This AI-powered platform aids in obtaining/deriving actionable insights to eliminate ambiguity from the content creation process. The Hawkeye platform measures the content for quality and performance. Content curation market was valued at US $ 524.85 Mn in 2018 and is expected to reach US $ 2,427.60 Mn by the end of 2027, owing to the integration of AI and content curation which is among the key factors anticipated to drive the market growth over the forecast period.
Monetization: Advertising from search results and/or professionally curated learning online.
Contributed by: Michael Bervell (Billion Dollar Startup Ideas)