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----- Free startup idea ------

Title: A new kind of advertising company

Synopsis: Startup pays Stanford students to wear t-shirts and sells the ad space to companies that pays the startup to hand out its t-shirts. Students must submit evidence of themselves wearing t-shirt to stay on distribution list.

There are obvious ways to grow (expand to other schools, target advertising by age or gender, etc.)

The basic value prop is to create new ad space and sell it. Students get free t-shirts. Advertisers get brand awareness. You get money.

All I ask is that you take me out to lunch once you get off the ground!

Most of my startup ideas tend to be cheeky like this.



I've seen a few companies try to pull this off and personally knew someone who also attempted it and failed. Besides the chicken and egg problem they had a hard time proving to businesses that people were actually wearing the shirts.


I heard of a company that had QR codes on the t-shirts and paid per scan. (also, if its direct response advertising you can use unique phone numbers, unique web addresses, and other typical tracking methods.) There is an angle here if you understand the local printer business. The company I heard about was going to local jersey printing companies and sponsoring/subsidizing uniform and jersey printing for local high school sports teams and was working with brands like RightGuard. By tapping into networks of printers, they could bring major advertisers on board with real scale.


The startup could use a URL shortener and track individual t-shirt results. Like adsense for t-shirts.




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