Ben Rubin
Appearances
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
Crypto not crypto, blockchain is a fantastic solution to the idea of how do you enumerate value on the internet and trust for it in a way that is, just by science, trustworthy. And I think that ultimately benefits the receiver of the value that you're creating online and you. in an open market that people can in transparent way acknowledge each other's value and trust.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
the type of behavior and the type of connections that I'm making, I actually think it's kind of powerful. And I know it sounds super geeky and dystopian, but I'm really coming to that not from the point of we should be walking around with a score on our back, but more like, how do we feel much more comfortable knowing that this is going to be a great date. This is going to be a good match.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
This is going to be something that's worth my time. This is going to be something that I do not want to dishonor the commitment that I made to see this person tonight or whatever. And that I actually think that As humans, we work really well when there's structure and accountability for the most part, even if it's just self-imposed.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
And I actually think that there is, and I might be just projecting a lot of things here, but I think that there's an opportunity here to do the same thing, to create a dating backend, if you will, with some sort of a client that actually allow people to connect, get together and leave a sort of footprint with protecting their privacy.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
that can then infer and then other people who are building clients around it can then infer and use that, whether for other dating ideas as the backend graph for it, or actually for other types of connection that manifest in different ways.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
And yeah. And just to nuance this, so it's not like, I don't think people, I think it's so emotionally indoted. So I don't think people should score other people. But what I do think is like, if there was no way for you to expose from privacy, everything is hashed and it's just like this technology called ZK proof.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
But like, let's just say that the user doesn't see what's happening in the backend and their privacy is protected. you can tell that based on your previous matches, the likelihood for this person to respond in general or in this case is 10% and not 80%. What is the likelihood of this person to actually go on a date, on the second date, on the third date?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
This is not we scoring one another, but this is just data as it is. Time to reply, time to follow up, the likelihood to do a first date and a second date, and actually allow local computations on a client based on other proofs to say, Look, Greg, here are 10 matches, like... We, nobody, no human ranked them.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
This is just based on the matches you had before and you went on date and the matches they had before and went on date. The likelihood of you going to a second date with this person is 5%. And this other person, actually, if you have a first date, then the likelihood of you going to a third date is 90%. Where do you start?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
You know, and, and I think these is not even one another just, um, given, given some
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
ranked ranking to one another this is just here's the data you know and just putting that data uh online i think is is interesting if you can keep you know the privacy you can protect the privacy of the people and i think you can so dude let me tell you a quick story so literally an hour ago less than an hour ago i got a text from someone we both know okay she says
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
What you're saying is... That's what I'm saying.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
Yes.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
And it's okay for it to be biased. By the way, we're all biased. But wouldn't it be interesting to get the dimension of like based on your matches and their matches and the people that you went on the first date, the second date, and third date, and the people that they went through this app on the first and second date, the likelihood of you going to a first date is 10%.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
The likelihood of you breaking up in three months is actually 90%. Like And the reason I bring reputation and open protocols to this is because if that's a standard that other dating apps can write into, it doesn't matter if you're on Hinge, on Raya, on Tinder, or anything, right? It's just like... It's a set. It doesn't matter where you profile.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
It's just a set that says time to reply, time to go on date, likely the first, second, third date on community relationship broke up, you know, no scoring, just looking at the data based on actions, you know? Yeah. And that is, I think, so cool. Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
For proof of concept, I would start with just a set of smart contracts that is on an L2, basically on it. layer that is much cheaper on top of Ethereum where you can actually create this protocol, like just exist on Ethereum and without starting a whole new backend infrastructure. And I think you can actually POC it like that. You will have to be somebody who knows how to do an SDK and publish it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
But I think if you can build an SDK from A to Z and publish it, and curiosity around the Web3 space, I would build an SDK that essentially all it does, it helps other developers integrate it to the actions that users are doing on their clients, you know, on their Tinder or any other. And when an action happened verifiably locally, your SDK gets the kind of confirmation that it needs.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
One of the interesting thing is integrating it with pass keys, right? You got pass keys on the phone. You can store locally in the local encrypted drawer of the iPhone that you can only open with your face. You can store there the key that allows for the signature for the local action, right? So you can actually...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
almost verified an action has happened with somebody's face, which is kind of cool. Go and sign that transaction on the backend on that protocol that you created, that is a smart contract. And now all of a sudden,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
you have this permissionless open set of encrypted users and like hashed users and hash action that maybe on the hash action, only the developers of that implemented have the key to understand what is the action. And for the hash users, only the user have the key to know that this is who they are. And yeah,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
That way you kind of keep everybody shielded, but you also create this great database of action that actually happened locally and the likelihood of the second action to happen. And I think that's great. That's actually something one person can do.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
To be honest, I studied architecture school and I still build digital spaces. And I mean, the crypto side of, you're right, I am backed by crypto investors and I hire crypto engineers and we are in the crypto industry, but By all accounts, the job of what we're building is to build intimacy in the internet without making it smaller.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
Cause like if somebody is selling ads somewhere and they're like, wait, wait, wait, can we pay? Can we pay to know? Like if somebody saw that ad and we, we take it like, what's the likelihood of them doing something completely random and something else somewhere else. They will pay also for that kind of information. Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
I'm trying to take it slow.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
Yeah. The lookalike based on the... No, lookalike on the graph. No, for sure. Like, yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
They're selling watches with batteries? That's not real watches.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
One of the thesis behind the protocol and the client that we're building, our protocol that we're building called River. And the idea is to create an end-to-end encrypted social messaging protocol that is essentially built on the graph of trust or the graph of motivation. And the bet is that the more there is off-chain proofs that are going on-chain
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
The more we can validate online in a way that is open and trustless, I guess, that somebody did the actions that they said they did, the more that we're creating a new graph that is around motivation and alignment of interest of what we stand to gain and lose. And that warrants a new type of communication product that is not organized around. I'm a watch salesman.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
I sold a lot of watches and you're like, I'm a watch buyer. I bought a lot of watches. Therefore, we should all come to this forum and engage, which is not a good idea because one of you is going to lose their pants. Right. So. In the kind of.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
Work that we're doing now, which is to build this kind of digital spaces of communities that are permissionless and people can come and trust that the right people are in the right place and the wrong people are not in the place. It provokes the imagination of what kind of
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
And blockchain is just a technology that we're using to create a set of communities that are permissionless, meaning anyone can join, but they organize around a new type of graph that is trust. And we'll get into this, but I just wanted to jump in and say like, you know, That's true that if it's walk like a duck and it talks like a duck, it's maybe a duck and it quacks like whatever the saying is.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
Community that is permissionless, that everybody can join, is organized around the idea of trust between sellers and buyers, specifically of luxury goods that have an enumerated or like an identifying ID. In that case, you think about luxury watches. Each of them have, and even Prada today have RFIDs on all the clothes, right? You can actually scan those things. I've been playing around.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
Have you ever seen this thing called Flipper? No. What is it? Is this thing recorded like with a video? I can bring it here. Yeah. Yeah. Well, basically Flipper is a purpoise.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
This is this thing. Some people use it for nefarious stuff. But it can scan all of those RFID stuff, you know, RFC, RFID, all of those. And it can scan it and then replay it. So you can actually, you can go to my fob of my elevator and copy it and replay it and write it somewhere.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
But what's interesting with this and those readers is like, you know, you can basically verify that this is that because Prada shirts have now RFIDs, right? Some watches have RFIDs, you know, those things don't need batteries. And there's no way for you to read that signal without like, you have to be next to it to read that signal.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
So that means that you can create the type of backend that verify that somebody has a certain watch next to them. Not only this, you can enforce the existence of this item as something called, basically call it like an NFT. I'm sorry for, I know that word has a lot of bad baggage, but just think about it as a piece on the internet that is tied with that item that cannot be replicated.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
And for sure, in a mathematical way, you can prove that this is the one. And you say, hey, like in order for me to buy it from you, this is going to go to an escrow that also exists in a permissionless way. with my money in a permissionless way. When I get it, the only way for me to get it is when I get it in my hand, the only way to
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
secure my reputation is to release the funds from the escrow to the seller and receive that that nft sorry again for the for that word but like we release that that digital image right no because i feel like digital image that is verifiable to me and in that way i have um didn't lose any of my reputation as a buyer and the seller didn't lose any of the reputation of, uh, the seller.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
Not only this, maybe we can both, uh, uh, rank one another, right? And how good was that? Just thumbs up, thumbs down. How good was the experience, right? Then all of the sudden you start getting this, uh, uh, publicly available and permissionless and secure database of who has what watches. It includes also the transactions of the... the money itself.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
So it's highly, highly cost prohibitive to betray it, right? To be a bad actor on it. And now instead of going through, you know, million different forums and blogs and try to verify who is who and what's what. And I'm hearing, you know, there is like horror stories where like some, some of those, not horror stories, but like,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
Some of the people who sell online have great reputation in a specific site and some have in another site, but they not share the same inventory. So one will post on behalf of the other in their inventory to increase. You know, it's kind of a collab, you know, and you kind of you don't control that. Right. But it also opened another avenue where like.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
you want to, you have, you have a watch that you want to sell to me like somebody, but you don't know who they are and what it is. Okay. Show me, show me your, your, your, show me that watches like, uh, you know, NFT. And then you can see like, okay, who owns it? It's you. What's the, what's the credit?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
What's the reputation, you know, and you can actually feel relatively secure to do this transaction without the, uh, Because right now, all these marketplaces, they take arbitrage to create the illusion of trust, right? So they take their 20% or 10% of the transaction because they are, you know, Chrono or other places where people buy watches.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
But we fundamentally see our job as here and what we do is how do we create a more intimate space? And blockchain just is a way to get people to trust that the other side of the people on the keyboard actually have the same things to lose and the same things to gain by the information that they're sharing together.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
But if you can verify that a watch and the seller are in good condition and the seller is a good seller and the watch is in a good condition and there is a good layer of trust there, then you can actually maybe make the market a little bit more efficient and remove the third party that, you know. So that's that's essentially the idea.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
And then all of a sudden, when you tie to like the work we do with with River and like You can actually put the most interesting watch owners that probably have those interesting watches together in a group chat. People give just them right entitlement so they can trade with one another.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
So the fun thing is that you don't, they don't need to do a lot with River. So I'll explain. The way people should think about when I say river, you should think about it as imagine if the backend of WhatsApp was an open protocol that is owned and operated by the groups. So anyone can build clients on it. Anyone can maintain it. Anyone can improve it and operate it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
That means you, you, me, anyone, not just us, the builders of the protocol. If somebody wanted to create a community, a permissionless community where the people who have the most interesting watches can trade them and have reputation and they take maybe certain amount of fee just to facilitate it. What I would do, I would do, there's just one thing that they should do is create the smart contract
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
that people can interact with and use the unique identifier of the luxury item to receive from the smart contract the digital representation in the form of NFT that basically says this person actually secured here in an encrypted way secured here, all the information that's needed as an owner for this Rolex. Let's say you just do it for Rolex or something like that. Okay, cool.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
Now you have this smart contract that produce signatures for, it's still, prone to mistakes because it's self-attestation. However, because it's a two-sided market, people can give each other reputation, which means that accountability will happen if you're assuming that people are going to use it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
like I'm saying, I actually have this watch, then for me to receive the money from you as the buyer, it actually goes through the smart contract and released only after you verified that you got the watch and I received the digital signature. Okay, great. Now that you have that, you can say, now that you have...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
And I think that's where the internet is going and where a lot of value is going to come, especially as it's expanding in the speed of light. And with AI, like in 10 years from now, it's going to be really important to know this person on the other side really did what they do? Do they really have the same amount of, you know, podcast listeners? Do they actually live in Miami?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
before you did the sale, that you have that digital signature that proves that you have the luxury watch, you can create a town. You can use... River has a client called Towns, which is basically, you can think about it like Discord and Slack had a baby. And this is a way of us as the builders of the protocol to create like a... a business card for the protocol and show people what they can do.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
And you would create a town that says only allow people that have this, uh, uh, uh, that have the digital signature of the, that verified that they have, you know, that they say for tested that they have, uh, the luxury watch in and only give them, uh, um, uh, a right access into, into the group.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
And the way it looks like is that if you have a big community or like you have some followers or you know people who have some followers that are in the watch community, they will publish a link to the town. The town is available to anyone to come in if they own a Rolex. How do they do that? You go to the smart contract that you wrote as a builder. You put all the information as an owner online.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
to receive the digital signature, the NFT, and then that gives you the permission to actually enter the group chat. So you don't need to build a lot. You just need to build the smart contract that takes the information that a Rolex owner would have, only the owner would have, you know, and do
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
the kind of computation needed to create the signature that is then stored encrypted and sent to you the NFT with that item. Now, I wish the watch companies themselves did it. I think it works even better with the RFID stuff, like things like Prada and other stuff. But I think it's a great start because then...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
I feel like somebody as a watch owner, I would go open the box, write all the details on your website, receive the NFT, and that will give me an access to the group chat. And now the group chat is like a bunch of people that you know what they own. You know everything. you know that they have those things. And I think that's pretty cool. And that's a great start.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
Yeah, I rambled a little bit there.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
Did they actually go to the school? Did they actually, you know, all of these things are going to have some sort of way online to verify that they happen. And I think that that brings a new type of graph, uh, that, uh,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
What concert, Greg?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
Yes. And even if you take it further, you can even say like, hey, if you already bought a Rolex and you have the details of the Rolex, you get in free. It's the people that are curious or people who couldn't prove that they already, from an ethos perspective, believe in the value of watch. They don't have a luxury watch because they didn't do this proof.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
They are the one that should be paying 20 bucks to be part of. And if you have a watch to sell, you just make the proof and come on in. And if you don't have, then put your money where your mouth is.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
You know, it's actually a combo of the two previous ideas, the dating and that. Because it is, teaching is such a, it's like a one-on-one relationship or one-to-few, right? And there is something about the likelihood of an action for you to go to the second class and the first class and the second class, like how consistent you are with a teacher. which is kind of similar, right?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
To what we talked about with the reputation with dating, like arguably without attesting to the quality of Greg, you as a person or your partner as a person, I can just say, you know, that if I had a way to observe how much, how many days, how many unique days you're spending time in person and just say, what's the streak?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
It's important for us as builder to be curious about and see, can we create a better internet when we are not organizing people based on self-attestation, but actually based on the things that they have done and experienced? And can we create better conversations like this and much more grounded conversation? So short stories. Yes, I do a lot of things in crypto, but I'm definitely not motivated.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
and how long it's been consistent, if I had this database on all the relationship in the world, I will probably just by that can infer what are good relationships and what are not, what are ones that are people continue to engage it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
And you're right, it's not gonna capture all the codependency relationship, the weird ones stuff, but it will speak to some form of quality that keeps both people engaged. And my point is that we don't know who is a good teacher and who is a bad teacher.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
But if we could know that, like, look, according to students that look like you and teachers that look like this person that you're considering, there is high likelihood that you're going to retain in this class just by observing recurrency. Therefore, You know, this is a good match. And I brought it here because, you know, there's a lot of people that have
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
desire to receive feedback and be coached. And there's a lot of people that feel qualified to do that. And a lot of people that are qualified to do that, right? It's not our business to judge or decide for them. But I think there is a huge gap in which how do you know which one is for you and how they're going to get the best out of you.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
And I think just like if you just implement the same thought that we had with the dating, but to recurrence of going to somebody's class, you can effectively do this for coaches and for the topics and the teacher. So I think that's, that's interesting. This is what.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
Well, I think so. And the way it's like combo with, with the luxury stuff is like, you can do the same thing where there is like, uh, you put the money through the smart contract. You save it after you watch, after you saw, after you had the class, then there is some reputational aspect. And that's kind of like, it's the combo of, uh, like the goods and the repetition.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
And that's the layer that we're missing on the internet to take it to a place where accrual value by individual is much more transparent and efficient. The products we're getting for people are better because there is accountability because when you make money, you want to make the product better. You want to retain your customers. You want to make sure that they're happy.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
Also relationships.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
And I think what I'm trying to get at here, what I'm trying to get at is a lot of bad tutoring is the actual, the relationship, the fit between the teacher and the student, right? So now what you have, what we have now, because we don't have a way to judge that reputation of the fit, because there's no shared open databases that people can make, you know, those products can make.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
The motivation is not crypto by itself. The motivation is how do you create a group of 10,000 people or 100,000 people where they're there because they have the same things to gain and the same things to lose. And that's the kind of conversation they have. And I think the internet become much more powerful like this.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
decisions or help users make decisions because of that you have an inefficient market where the most excellent teachers in the world who by definition capture a lot of students because they're the top of the top now they have much more beaters on their time and the price go up because they have but the argument here is that
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
Instead of Greg going to Tony Robbins and get like, you know, world-class one-on-one coaching because Tony Robbins, you know, is, you know, considered world-class. My curiosity is this is because Tony Robbins, regardless of his relationship with Greg, is a, you know, number one in his field. Let's call it like this, just for the sake of the example.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
The outcome that Greg is getting from having a teacher that is relationship agnostic, but the teacher is number one in the world. I'm curious about that outcome if I gave you A teacher that is half as good as Tony Robbins, but is world-class fit to you.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
And that's what I'm trying to say is that we have, because we don't have time to take surfing lessons from a thousand teachers to find the one that is great from us. Now the best surfing teachers in that area are getting their prices jacked up because normally a lot of bidders on this time will just bid more to get in line, right?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
But what if we can put you in touch with the person that you have higher likelihood to succeed with even though they might be less of a great teacher as the other person. That's the inefficiency that I put. And it's the same with dating.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
It doesn't matter, guys. It doesn't matter. And it's a shame that I almost need to feel embarrassed when I speak to people who are not – when I speak to an audience that is not necessarily – because a lot of the – Because there's so much good in it. The idea that the Internet was built so fast, was built so fast, and with the idea that people wouldn't pay for it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
And now we have groups of people online that are creating value every day. And because the inception of the Internet was from the state of mind that, oh, people won't pay for it, the people who create this insane value on the Internet, they work hard.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
two times harder to repackage some of the attention that they're getting and selling it in some inefficient way where they need to prove that they're worthy of your credit card and stuff. And I think that... that must have been the way we needed the internet to start in order to get a lot of people on board.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
But it is a time for us to say the internet need to be accessible for everyone, but it shouldn't be necessarily free. There are people who are honest people who are doing day-to-day work on the internet
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
to bring value to their community and their job is just you know it's it's not as rewarding as it should be it's thankless it's exhausting you know and they need to almost like hustle to just be rewarded for the kind of value that they're bringing in and you know crypto not crypto
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
Blockchain is a fantastic solution to the idea of how do you enumerate value on the internet and trust for it in a way that is, just by science, trustworthy. And I think that ultimately benefits the receiver of the value that you're creating online and you in an open market that people can in transparent way acknowledge each other's value and trust.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
And that's the layer that we're missing on the internet to take it to a place where accrual value by individual is much more transparent and efficient. And the products we're getting for people are better because there is accountability. Because when you make money, you want to make the product better. You want to retain your customers. You want to make sure that they're happy.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
You want to make sure that they're coming back. You want to make sure they get a V2 and a V3 and a V4. And you are much... Why? Because when you do that, you make more money. You know? So... That's my romance with blockchain and social and why I'm infatuated with that as a medium to work in right now.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
Um, you, uh, on me, um, it's at Ben RBN, uh, on, on Twitter. Um, The River protocol is river.build. You can go and look at what the protocol, there's all the documentation there.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
If you're just curious about like, oh, how can I create simple, you know, reputation, smart contracts, which is, I feel like the idea we've been talking about, like that thing is literally a hackathon thing to do the thing that we talked about with the teachers, right? And then you can just,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
go on towns, towns.com, which is the, the, the client that we built for, for river and anyone can build a client for river actually. And if you created that smart contract on reputation, you can create a town that is gated by that reputation.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
All of a sudden, uh, uh, now you have, uh, uh, a social place for people who did the action, uh, and have that kind of reputation of teachers and tutor and, and students to have a place to come together and discuss and knowing that, you know, They're talking to the right teachers and the students are talking to the right teachers and teachers are talking to the right students.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
And also, to the monologue that I had right before that about value accrual, space creators on towns, they have ways to charge for that in a way that is transparent and on-chain. You can Just say like, hey, this space costs a certain amount of money a year or for whatever you set it. And that's also going to benefit you as a builder and a community facilitator if you choose to do that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
So you got river protocol, you got towns, and yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
And to your point, everything exists in a balance. So when you look at the things that are like, you know, not the hottest things right now, you have to ask yourself, okay, How do they compare? How do they, and if at all, are they in dialogue with the thing that is hot? And what is the kind of energy that is balancing it?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
Because you can think about it almost like as one of the most interesting things as an observer, as a builder in the space. And you and I have been around the block, I don't know, for 13 years more doing what we do. I find it so interesting that AI is this, let's think about the motivation of AI, the set of ideas that it is. It's highly centralized. In order to run a service like OpenAI,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
But like all of the, all of the, those companies need to be massive and hold a huge amount of information, right? Not only that, it is also creating the type of content that is looking back and replicating itself to create above average answers, right?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
You want to make sure that they're coming back. You want to make sure they get a V2 and a V3 and a V4. Why? Because when you do that, you make more money.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
So AI is this kind of like, oh, the internet had got to the place of maturity, both on the computation level and the centralization level that it can actually become its own being and self reproduce. And on the other side, you have crypto, which is actually working on the opposite direction, which is how can you enumerate identities and make proofs and,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
As you think about what's going to be the balancing act when somebody can load up all the content of Greg Eisenberg, all the voice of Greg, all the photos, all the things that he wrote, everything, and create something that is... maybe even create podcasts, you know, and do this interviews. Right.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
And like, uh, and, and, and, and, and, and even with your permission, even with your permission, Greg, just like extend yourself a hundred times or a thousand times. That is almost, um, that is almost, it begs the question of like, okay, so when do I know though, this is the real Greg that I'm talking to the real Greg. And what are the ways to prove online that I'm talking to the actual guy?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
And another thing that is interesting to consider is that, I don't know why, but I have this instinctive belief that all derivative assets eventually increase the value of the original asset. In a way, pickleball, just the more pickleball is out there, the more the value of 10 is going up. The more there is, you know, ERC20s, coins, the more the value of Ethereum goes up.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
The more knockoffs to Prada, the more the value of Prada goes up, you know. LVMH doesn't exist without the Zara and H&M and things like that, right? Manhattan doesn't exist without the barriers around it. So derivative assets, when they go up, they fundamentally increase the value of the original assets.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
So now you have to, when you think about AI and replication and replication in the speed of computers, which is what AI is doing, and AI you have to ask yourself, what is, if things are going to move so fast, these derivative values, what are the things that are now going to be exponentially more valuable?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
And I actually think it's like two friends holding hands, you know, looking at sunset, having a coffee, like that is the derivative value that that is that original asset, sorry, that all these derivative assets. So I actually think that actually having time with Greg one-on-one,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
with Greg Eisenberg, or online, but with the real Greg, it's going to grow exponentially higher when the image and replication of Greg through AI is going, you know, thousand X. And those things need a way to be identified on the internet, right? So
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
Blockchain technology is a way to enumerate and verify things on the Internet is actually a very interesting counter balance to what AI, the power of AI, you know, and how we as human understand how to navigate between what's real and what's a replication.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
One of the fun things I get to learn as I started dating You know, exploring how models of communication and the idea of a trust-based graph. I call it motivational graph, but I don't know if it's going to stick. But I feel like capturing...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
through blockchain like what the user has done off chain to on chain is almost like capturing the motivation and we couldn't really capture motivation uh before we just like had people just say like oh i got you know ben's number therefore i should see him on whatsapp or i have this person's username therefore i should follow them or like i self-identify as somebody who go to
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
this class in this college, so I should be exposed to this group of people. But it really becomes interesting where you actually need to do the action in order to facilitate the relationship. So one of the fun things that I've learned is there's something called PO-OP, which is actually a way to, in person, verify that you have been somewhere. And I do think that putting like a...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
reputation graph for for dating where and it sounds i think like there's a part of me that's like it's just like a revolting against this idea um but i also hear the most insane horror stories you know between people who go on dates and maybe it's just like a new york thing i don't know but you know we don't have enough accountability i mean and maybe that's the point of
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
this entire part of my journey in my career right now in how i want to you know uh build the communication world you know world of products that i want to see in the world is like we don't have enough accountability and and and owning up to the way we communicate and interact online and
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
This is not to say that we need to punish people for behaving badly, but I actually think we need to reward people for being good stewards of healthy and nuance and mature conversation that holds opinions and is open to feedback and to give feedback, right? I'm recently single after a 10-year relationship, and I've started to be out there, go on dates.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
You know, some pieces of the puzzle of all this feedback that I'm hearing, not feedback, but I guess like, you know, your friend, your single friends are saying like, oh, dating so hard and online dating so hard. And I start to see some of the behaviors that they talk about. And, you know, I have arrived to a conclusion that I think I would have been a better person
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
participant in the dating market, I guess, if I had fewer choices that have reputational outcome. And I think the same way to other people that I've engaged with. And I think that
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 crypto startup ideas: dating app, luxury watch marketplace, tutoring platform
If we can create the kind of data set that is rewarding people for being more intentional with the connections that they're making and how it gets manifested in an actual date, and then that goes back onto this open protocol. And there are ways to like, with keeping privacy, you can still show different kind of proofs of,