GM, this is Needs to Exist (aka NTE), serving up a startup idea that turns retirements and business closures into your next big growth engine.

NTE Pro – $99/year is like getting backstage at the biggest startup concert. Over 5,000 ideas, riffs, and remixes the crowd will never hear unless you’re in

Your head’s a kitchen full of half-baked recipes. NTE Zero to One is the chef that grabs one, adds the missing spice, and serves it hot.

Check out all the past newsletters here

Here’s what we’ve got for you today.

• Daily Idea - Exit Triggers Entry

• Push the Button?

Spotting Business Transitions Beforehand

Inspired by the Startup Ideas Podcast

Heads up: this one’s fascinating but questionable so we’ll lay it out, and you decide if it’s smart or too cold-blooded. With NTE Zero To One we can talk it through

Ok, don’t judge but we built a quick prototype of this.
Here’s the mock site so you can poke around.

The One Liner

Turn retirements & obits into business goldmines.

The 140 character tweet (or X) version

Clients only switch vendors when forced. What if you spotted retirements, closures… even obituaries… and scooped their clients first?

The Longer Story Version

The Problem
Most businesses lose customers the same way relationships end:
Not because of fights, but because somebody… disappears.

💀 The dentist retires.
💀 The repair guy shuts down.
💀 The accountant kicks the bucket.

And suddenly, all those loyal clients who never shop around are up for grabs.
Right now, that opportunity just floats away… until some competitor gets lucky.

That’s dumb. Why wait for luck?

The Solution
What if you built an algorithm that sniffs out these “vendor death moments”?

• It scans obituaries, retirement announcements, even “going out of business” signs.

• Tags them by industry (dentists, HVAC, local accountants, niche B2B).

• Pushes leads straight into your CRM.

Boom: A gold rush every time a competitor exits the game.

Examples:

• “Dr. Smith, 72, beloved small-town dentist, has passed.”
  → Instantly, every patient in that town needs a new dentist.

• “After 40 years in business, Bob’s Tractor Repair is closing.”
  → That’s a lifetime of loyal farmers suddenly searching for help.

• “Beloved accountant Susan retires.”
  → Whole book of tax clients, ripe for acquisition or takeover.

You don’t have to be grim about it. Frame it as “continuity of service.”
You’re the hero keeping things running.

How We’d Build It

Stage 1: The Scrappy Heist

• Scrape obituaries like Ocean’s Eleven pulling a casino job. Use Apify or even janky Python scripts.

• Add cheap NLP (MonkeyLearn) to separate “beloved grandma” from “local dentist with 1,200 patients.”

• Push the data into Airtable or HubSpot via Zapier.

• Sit back, crack a beer, and wait for the first “Dr. Bob, 74, retires” alert to hit.

Stage 2: The Growth Hacker’s Toybox

• Expand beyond obits: LinkedIn “retiring soon” posts, county “business closure” filings, and even auction listings for “liquidation sales.”

• Drop in Cohere Classify or Anthropic’s Claude for sharper industry tagging ,no one wants false alarms (“guitar shop closed” ≠ 300 HVAC clients).

• Outreach stack: Clay + Instantly.ai auto-crafts emails that sound human, offering a “smooth transition.”

• GTM move: Pitch this to industries where loyalty is extreme (dentists, vets, accountants, funeral homes - poetic, right?).

Stage 3: The Evil Genius Build

• Predict closures before they happen: track signals like the owner’s age (public records), hiring freezes, or Yelp reviews that stop updating.

• Vector database (Pinecone) + LlamaIndex to surface patterns like “Owners named Frank over 65 in Ohio with no website = 90% chance of retiring in 2 years.”

• Wrap it in a SaaS dashboard with juicy alerts. Example:

  • “🚨 Dr. Smith’s 480-patient book of business is now in play.”

• Monetize two ways: sell alerts to competitors or run the roll-up fund yourself, snapping up mom-and-pop shops like Thanos collecting Infinity Stones.

Why It Needs to Exist
Because most businesses spend millions trying to steal clients who aren’t even looking to switch.

This flips the game.
You stop wasting money shouting into the void… and instead show up exactly when loyalty breaks and buyers are desperate for a replacement.

It’s not about being cold-blooded.
It’s about being the first responder at the precise moment the market creates free demand.

Right now, those signals are hiding in plain sight.
The only question is: who’s bold enough to use them?

Don’t forget to check out the mock site.

Build not just faster... smarter

A Message From Our Partner

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You don’t need another “big idea”

You need a shove. The kind that takes your half-baked concept and throws it into the real world before you can overthink it.

That’s what NTE Zero to One is.
The playbooks, tools, and people who won’t let you chicken out.

$49. That’s less than you spent last weekend “networking” over IPAs.

👉 Sign up. Ship something. Laugh later about how long you almost didn’t.

Would You Push the Button? 🕹️

Picture this: You’re standing on a stage.
Spotlights. Audience buzzing.

In front of you is a giant, glowing red button.

The host leans in and says:
“Push it, and you’ll never struggle for clients again.
Every time a vendor retires, shuts down, or (yes) passes away, their loyal customers become your leads. All automatically fed to you. A constant stream of fresh opportunities.

But… the button works by scanning retirements, closures, and obituaries.
So, do you press it?”

The Case Against (The Angel on Your Shoulder 😇)

“This is gross. You’re literally turning obituaries into marketing signals. Imagine someone’s spouse Googling their loved one’s name and bam, your CRM just got fatter. That’s not just cold-blooded, it’s ice-in-the-veins capitalism.

Also, people will hate you if they find out. PR nightmare waiting to happen. One Medium post and you’re ‘the Grim Reaper’s SaaS.’ Why not just let people grieve, retire, or close their business without trying to monetize it?”

Fair. Nobody wants to feel like a vulture circling the sky.

The Case For (The Devil on Your Shoulder 😈)

“Hold on. Let’s drop the moral panic.
This is not about exploiting grief.

Think about it: customers are loyal until their vendor disappears. Then they’re desperate for a replacement. That’s when continuity actually matters. Wouldn’t you rather those clients instantly find a trusted option instead of scrambling in chaos?

Doctors retire. Dentists shut down. Accountants pass away. These transitions leave customers hanging. You could frame it as helping them land softly.

And the roll-up angle? Genius. Buy out the vendor before they vanish, keep the lights on, and everyone wins. Less ‘vulture,’ more ‘lifeguard.’”

The Real Question

It’s not “is this evil?” It’s “what do you do with it?”

Every startup sits on this line:
Uber was “sketchy taxis.”
Airbnb was “strangers in your house.”
Facebook was “rate your classmates’ hotness.”

Ideas that sound questionable often hide the biggest opportunities.

This one is no different.

Would you run it as a SaaS lead-gen tool?
Would you fund a PE-style roll-up strategy?
Or would you keep scrolling, thinking, “eh… too dark for me”?

👉 The button is right there. Would you press it?

🍔 The Secret Menu

Some startup ideas are too weird for the regular menu. That’s why we keep a back page only insiders see.

This week’s secret specials:

🍔 Drone Solutions for Humane Animal Relocation
Why call animal control when a drone can politely escort your backyard possum to a new neighborhood?

🍔 Selective-Memory AI Therapist
An AI therapist that forgets on purpose so you can finally overshare without worrying it’ll come back to haunt you.

🍔 Time-Locked Memories: Future Nostalgia Unleashed
Group chats sealed like time capsules. Five years later, you open the vault and rediscover your past selves in glorious, awkward detail.

That’s just the sampler plate. The full menu? 5,000+ startup ideas you won’t find on the chalkboard.

👉 Join NTE Pro. Get the keys to the kitchen.

Your brain’s full of half-baked hacks

A Message From Our Partner

Glide is the kitchen that turns them into apps.

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One More Meme