Greg Isenberg
Appearances
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
The next idea, Shopify for X. I think Shopify is an $80 billion company. And when you have an $80 billion company, there's just opportunities to unbundle it. So what's Dani's idea? So she says, there are all these no-code tools. They're either too limited or too complex. What you need is a product-specific tool. Shopify is no-code e-commerce. Then you would also build no-code marketplaces.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
So I don't think... The point is, I don't think the reason why HQ Trivia...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
died is because the format didn't work and i think someone my prediction is someone's going to bring back the hq trivia format and apply it to a new niche maybe it's dating and it's going to work in 2024 25 25 2026 so hq dating you know i i think that live dating like this is interesting to so many people uh i love this idea uh And yeah, you've got to come up with a catchy name.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
You've got to make it interesting. I think you start in Los Angeles or New York. It has to feel almost like a reality TV show because you have to want to get to know the characters. But I think this idea, HQ dating, is a great idea. And I think the bigger idea of HQ trivia for X is a trend that I'm certainly paying attention to. And that's about it. That's about it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
So those are some of the more interesting ideas on the list. I'll include the list in the YouTube bio. Sorry, in the YouTube description. These are a few ideas that are just really, really good. Danny, like I said, Danny knows what... She knows... She's got that juice. She's got that juice. So if you enjoyed that, like this YouTube video, comment on the YouTube video, I read every single comment.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
Some of these ideas, I might be like, you know what? I wouldn't Maybe it's a good idea, but it's one of those ideas I wouldn't do. Too much work. So without further ado, let's go into Danny Grant's 139 ideas. Let's pick the most interesting ones or the ones that just speak to me. And let's go through this together and see what we got.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
And the likes and comments actually make a difference. So I know it's crazy to say, but people are not able to see this video if you don't like and comment. So I appreciate every single one of them. I'll see you in the YouTube comment section. And please subscribe for more of these videos, for more of these Startup Ideas podcasts. I hope you loved it. I had fun recording this.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
I'm going to go and open up a Figma and just start jamming on some of these ideas. So have a good one and I'll see you on the next one. Later.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
All right, so this idea, idea number one, is there a product doc format just for writing product specs? So you can create Jira's inline, you can have common threads inline, et cetera. This is pretty darn good idea. There is Google Docs, of course, but there's nothing specific for product specs.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
So I can imagine a Google Docs for product specs for PMs that people would be willing to pay $20 a month for. So I actually think that there's something here. I really like this idea. It's not the simplest idea to do. You have to create software. I don't think really anything like this exists.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
I mean, of course you have product templates, but you don't really have a whole experience dedicated to writing product specs. How would I actually go and build something like this? Well, I'd build the MVP, probably outsource it to an agency to get the MVP up. And I'd partner with a creator. I mean, Lenny Richitsky would be the dream.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
So Lenny Richitsky, I think at this point, has the biggest podcast and newsletter for product managers. But who are the aspiring Lenny Richitskys? So I'd make a list. I'd go to perplexity.ai. And I'd say, who are the up and coming 20 Lenny Richitskys? And... And I would go and reach out to them. So I think this is a good idea. Pretty straightforward. Software. Catchy name.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
I probably wouldn't do this idea if I didn't have the buy-in from... two to three or four creators. So I would create the name, I'd create the mock-up first, and then I would actually go and see if I want to build it. All right, so that's idea number one. Idea number two, developer portfolio sites. So she says, help every developer create their own Danny Town.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
I assume Danny Town is her own portfolio website. So there's a company called format.com. And what they do is they're the portfolio builder for creative professionals. So basically what Danny's suggesting is build the format dot com, but for developers. Now, I know someone's listening to this and being like, well, that's GitHub. GitHub already exists. Yes, but it's not as beautiful as a format.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
This is such a good idea. This is such a good idea. Something like this needs to exist, should exist, will exist. How would I actually go and build something like this? Well, I'd build that. Okay, so a few weeks ago, I had Dani Grant on the podcast. She's someone who I really respect.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
And I do think that there's an opportunity to build that for developers. And Format's actually massive. They've got 50,000 plus people who pay to use it. And what do they pay to use it? Pricing was pulled up. They pay $11 a month annually or $24 a month monthly. So this is a huge business. If you assume that the average is, let's say, $15 a month, that's huge. We're talking $750,000 a month.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
in monthly recurring revenue for something that doesn't cost a lot of money. And why I love websites, website builders, is once you build it, chances are you are not going to churn. So these are beautiful businesses that don't churn very well. I think Danny's onto something with developer portfolio sites. I do think it makes sense.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
And you can probably take, again, you can take that Lenny Richitsky strategy, creator-led There are a bunch of developers who have a lot of followers and I'd work with them to create something that would be really cool. So I think the way I would actually build something like this is I would start by building one really awesome developer portfolio site.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
So I would reach out to some of these developers and say, hey, I'm a designer. I'd really love to design you your own developer portfolio site. And and create something unique, interesting, that they've hopefully never seen before. Get them super stoked about it. And once you refine that, maybe you do it for a few people, then that's when you have the product.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
And then that's when you get some of these influencer developers on board. And that's when you can actually go and build out an MVP, Minimal Viable Product, and start charging for this. So I really love this idea. These are one of the great cash flow ideas. I remember meeting the founder of Card, C-A-R-R-D.co, I think. He had a great business. They're one-page websites. He charges very little.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
I think it's like nine bucks a year or something. But he had a great business. He bootstrapped it. One guy, One guy living in Tennessee, developer, and millions of people use this. It's crazy. So website builders, I know you must be thinking like, oh my God, that's so 1999. But it works. It really works. And it works really well for different niches. So really good idea on that one.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
Quick ad break. Let me tell you about a business I invested in. It's called boringmarketing.com. So a few years ago, I met this group of people that were some of the best SEO experts in the world. They were behind getting some of the biggest companies found on Google. And the secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and AI that could help you outrank your competition.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
So for my own businesses, I wanted that. I didn't want to have to rely on Mark Zuckerberg. I didn't want to depend on ads to drive customers to my businesses. I wanted to rank high in Google. That's why I like SEO and that's why I use boringmarketing.com and that's why I invested in it. They're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30-day sprint with 100% money back guarantee.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
Who does that nowadays? So check it out. Highly recommend boringmarketing.com. So the next idea she has is a blog and a newsletter in a box. So help everyone set up their own AVC.com. So if you don't know AVC.com, it's a blog slash newsletter by Fred Wilson, who's a VC in New York City. He's been doing this for like at least 15, 20 years. It's super, super simple.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
I think originally his blog was on Tumblr. I'm not sure where it is today. But yeah, the idea around, does someone want to blog in a newsletter in a box? I mean, there is Substack, but Substack feels very newsletter first. I do think that there's probably an opportunity to build something like this and make it easy for people. Maybe the idea is just like you're an agency and you work on top of
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
all these different services and you just set it up for them. You use existing services. But I'm not a big fan of like, okay, let's go and create the next sub stack, but make it more blog first. Because I think that's really hard and you're competing against people who've raised tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
So don't like that idea, but do like the idea around we work with Beehive, we work with Substack, we work with WordPress. We charge a very small one-time fee to help you get set up for it. And you probably do... cold outbound to get people to do this. This is definitely a cold outbound, cold email, cold DM to get people and say, hey, notice that you don't have
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
a blog set up, I noticed you don't have a newsletter, you're missing out. I think you talk about, you use a lot of social, social credibility around, you know, so-and-so Lenny Richitsky didn't have a blog and newsletter and now he's making $5 million a year with his blog and newsletter. And he does it running on a, you know, a free substack and you can do the same.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
So I think the way to do it is you do a mix of the cold DM and then you use your content. You build an audience and you talk about these stories and then you funnel them to a really cheap offer. One-time offer. Why one-time over monthly for something like this? I just think that it's going to be a no-brainer for people. This is a business that... you might be able to start on your side.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
Sometimes you meet someone or you're listening to someone's podcast or you're watching them and you just know that this person's got it. They've got the sauce. They know where the world is going. And she had a few ideas that she shared. But afterwards, she sent me a list of 139 different startup ideas. And we never got a chance to go through them.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
The starting costs are quite small. So cheers, Danny, for giving us this idea. All right, let's talk about some ideas I don't really love. So virtual workspace, compete with Tandem. Tandem is a virtual... Let's check Tandem real quick. So I just checked out Tandem. I'm pretty sure Tandem was one of those apps that you can see other teammates in a third space.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
And it seems like they pivoted to more of a Slack plus video conferencing. So it's hard. To build what Danny is suggesting is quite hard. you know, a social app, basically making Slack more social. Um, first of all, you have to like build Slack. Um, so that's step one. And then, so you, you know, step one is building all the primitives, what people are used to.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
And then step two is like, okay, now I got to figure out how can I make this different and, and interesting in a social experience. So this is, this is one of those ideas where I think, you know, they call it a tar pit idea. It's an idea that seems good on paper, but like once you actually go and, uh, go into it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
It's actually a bad idea because there's so much investment that you need to put into something like this. And then you have to get people off Slack. You have to get people off Microsoft Teams. So don't love this idea at all. Other idea, whole world is a silent disco. The problems with Turntable FM is it was too early. Turntable FM was...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
was an idea where people create these virtual rooms and you play music and you can chat with other people who are in these virtual rooms. You had your own avatar. It almost felt like a game. So she says, now everyone is walking around listening to music everywhere and someone is going to build a network DJ station where the whole world is one big silent disco. I just think this is a cool idea.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
It's a really cool idea. I hope someone does something like this. I actually don't think it's that hard to do something like this. But getting people... It's not hard to build the thing. Getting the whole world to get off their current platforms is hard. And getting people to pay for it and dealing with the licenses of the music industry, not so easy. So cool idea, hard to execute.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
Okay, another technical idea, JSFiddle meets Twitter. So JSFiddle is basically, you can write code online, JavaScript, pulls in different libraries, and you can run it. all online. It's on IDE or anything like that. So it's very popular. Millions of people use it. But when you look at it, it's really focused just on developers to compile their code. It's not social at all.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
And you're starting to see a common denominator with a lot of Dani's ideas to be technical and social. And she ended up building something in that space, jam.dev. which is around bug tracking that's social and hundreds of thousands of people, I think, use it. But there's an opportunity here to basically take JS Fiddle and make it more like Twitter.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
So it's half writing code and half memeing and remixing. I think that there's something here. I think developers love memes. They love remixing. So I think the idea around compiling code and having a place where people can talk, meme, and remix some of that software is very compelling. The next idea, Shopify for X. I think Shopify is an $80 billion company.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
So I figured I'd hop on here real quick, go through some of these ideas. Some of them are kind of big venture-backed ideas. Some of them are profitable startups. And some of them will just get your creative juices flowing. And I'll tell you how I feel about these ideas. What would I do? How would I start them? And if I just think that they're plain garbage.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
And when you have an $80 billion company, there's just opportunities to unbundle it. So what's Dani's idea? So she says, Shopify for making an Airbnb-style marketplace. Shopify for making a messaging app. Shopify for making an Instagram-like app. There are all these no-code tools. They're either too limited or too complex. What you need is a product-specific tool.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
Like Shopify is no-code e-commerce. Then you would also build no-code marketplaces, no-code messaging app, no-code Instagram. This is such a good idea. This is such a good idea.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
This idea around marketplace for no-code apps, that if you listen to this idea on this podcast or one of these ideas, you can just go to the marketplace, duplicate the idea, and then just pay, let's say, a monthly fee or a one-time fee for a license to it. I love that. Now, I think Bubble is doing pieces of that. So maybe you just build on top of Bubble.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
But something like this needs to exist, should exist, will exist. So I think this is definitely the direction things are going. Okay, next idea. HQ Trivia for Dating. Live dating show, mobile HQ style. HQ Trivia, I think it was like 2018, 2019. Literally everyone was playing it. If you don't remember it, it was this guy, Steve Ratajkowski, I think.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)
Every single day, you'd get a push notification and he would do live trivia and they'd give away money. And millions of people played it daily. It was an incredible experience. And it ended up crashing and burning. in a large part because of... It was like a crazy story, actually. The founder unfortunately died, and they had growing pains too, and there were drugs involved. It was just crazy.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Like what makes this business really great for other people who want to create businesses with tiny teams is number one, you lock people into an ecosystem. Number two, the customer service is just exceptional. Number three, family business. Number four, it's niche. It's not for everyone. And they went after like the Tony Robbins of the world. And then last but not least, it's a dope name.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
This is beautiful. I'm obsessed with this. The cover art is just absolutely stunning. It's like one of those things where You want to buy it and just frame it and put it on your walls. It's absolutely amazing. And it's actually one per customer. So it says, due to demand, it is not possible to order multiple of the same item in one transaction. So I just love the scarcity of it, too.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
It does feel very community-oriented. This is a really, really good one. I wonder how much revenue they're bringing in for something like this.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
It doesn't even matter. It doesn't matter because the impact that this is making. It's so cool. It's so cool. This is so cool.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Yeah. This is too cool. This is too cool.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
All right. That was a good one. All right. I got, I got, I got, I got another one. When are we stopping? Like, is it, is it just like, we're stopping when, when it feels like we should stop.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
You're talking to the wrong guy.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
All right. So my second Tiny Team Award goes to AJ, the founder of Card, C-A-R-R-D. Are you familiar with Card?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
So if you go to C-A-R-R-D.co, it's basically these simple, free, fully responsive one-page sites for pretty much anything. So a card is I got to know AJ through Ryan Hoover from Product Hunt. So he launched on Product Hunt. He was just like, I just need a way to create a one page card, one page website in a really simple way. And I think other people probably want that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
He launched on Product Hunt and went viral within that community. All of a sudden, as a one man developer, he's doing I think at least a million, a million and a half of ARR. Wow. And you know the cost with something like that. I mean, not very much. And what ended up happening is a lot of causes, like social causes, started using it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
And a lot of, for whatever reason, like K-pop stars started using it. So it's just like cool because number one, it's cool because he's a tiny team. It's him. And I think one other person, it's cool because it got popular. Like he didn't really do any marketing. It kind of just like blew up from the Product Hunt community and then spread to, you know, communities that needed it most.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
You think they're bigger than they are, but they're smaller.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
I think the Black Lives Matter community used it a lot and that spread to other causes. And then K-pop stars started using it and that spread to other people who listen to K-pop. And I just thought it was cool that it's just some developer who created a one page. I think website builders are just cool too.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
It's one of those categories where it's like people have been building website builders since the 90s. It's like, do we need another website builder? I guess we do.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
So firstly, go onto Twitter and just put in card and search and sort by latest. What you'll see is like every second people are tweeting about their card websites. And I think one of the reasons why this works is it's a status symbol within certain communities to have a card. Yeah. So it'll say like when you create a card, it'll be... It'll be gregeisenberg.car.co.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Yeah. And it blows your mind and you just, you can't believe it. You're like, what? How is that even possible? Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
And within certain communities, like I mentioned, K-pop and causes, it's kind of like a flex.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
I honestly think that it was organically cultivated. It wasn't like AJ... you know, I think he lives in like rural Tennessee. So I don't think he has the most amount of K-pop connections, you know? So it just, from that Product Hunt launch, I don't know, it just sort of spread and they saw the product and it felt cool and interesting and they liked the name.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
I also think that their business model is one of the reasons why it works. So most people, most website builders will charge $10, $20, $30, sometimes $50 a month for access to it. Guess what car it charges?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
No, not that tiny.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Oh, actually, you're right. It is free. You can create for free. But if you want the pro features, like multiple sites, no branding, widgets, embeds, Google Analytics, forms, if you want to connect it to Beehive or ConvertKit, something like that. you do have to pay for the advanced features. And it's only, yes, only $19 per year.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Yeah. I mean, that's, what is that?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
It's a tiny amount of dollars per year.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
$19 is like half an espresso.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Yeah. Yeah. I'm happy you started talking about that because the comment section is going to be like so upset. And people get so upset about the prices of things.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
It's like for Dasani water. It's about $19.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
totally don't like don't say it's a joke and just keep doing that until people think we're viciously out of touch totally i like this i like that a lot yeah i mean 3800 dollars to be completely disconnected from reality and for the price of a coffee it's a no-brainer
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Or just lovers. Just some lovers.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Yeah. It's in the ballpark, right? With tip, it's around $3,800.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Yeah. I mean, I think they know we're... Well, are you wearing... What are you wearing underneath there?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
I mean, I was thinking about putting on pants, but then I was just like, what is the point?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Yeah. What is happening behind there?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Yes. I give the tiny business award to card.co. Congrats.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
All right. Let's dig in.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Yay! Okay, but I don't know that business at all.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
That is so good. That is so cool. So cool. That fires me up.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
That fires me up.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
And we make a magazine out of it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
All right, I'm going to refrain from...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
one upping you with another tiny team award i think dude no no i can't i can't i want i want you to have the last word on this one and we'll do another one of these yeah um here listen i think what you should do is maybe someone on your team should make a not shitty looking version one of these and like we send it to the to the people who want it as like a cute thing totally or we just send them
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
yeah my team tiny yeah exactly i'm six foot three okay i'm huge do you know how large my flip chart is yeah all right well jc this has been fun uh thank you and uh any any parting words um i'm so sweaty yeah the thing with suits is they really traps in the heat
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Yeah. Well, they say higher quality of life in Europe, but no AC. I don't know. Hard to deal with that one.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Totally. Did you see my tweet to Daniel Ek?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
No, he's like really hard to track down.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Yeah, he'll have no choice but to come on. Yeah, come on.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
All right, man. It's been real. I'll catch you later. Thanks, everyone.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Okay, and a flip chart, flip chart meaning one of those things where you're just kind of like a whiteboard?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
And how well do you think these guys are doing?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
So I'm looking right now, they charge for the King flip chart exclusive set. It's 13, 15 euros plus taxes. And that includes the foldable and portable flip chart. I think it probably includes a few refills and stuff like that. But I didn't realize it would be that expensive.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
The end. I also recommend people go to, when you go to their website, if you go to the Team of King flip chart, and we'll put this on the YouTube video, it's just a picture of um, T Ziana and Sandro, just like looking deep into your soul. Yes. And it's, it's perfect.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
And they just talk about like you, you start reading about the team and you really get a sense of like who these people are, why they, why they're doing what they're doing. It just feels so family business. And I feel like the trend around like the Amazonification of the internet. This is like the anti-trend around just like, this feels like you wanna support this business. Quick ad break.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Let me tell you about a business I invested in. It's called boringmarketing.com. So a few years ago, I met this group of people that were some of the best SEO experts in the world. They were behind getting some of the biggest companies found on Google. And the secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and AI that could help you outrank your competition.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
So for my own businesses, I wanted that. I didn't want to have to rely on Mark Zuckerberg. I didn't want to depend on ads to drive customers to my businesses. I wanted to rank high in Google. That's why I like SEO. And that's why I use boringmarketing.com. And that's why I invested in it. They're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30-day sprint with 100% money back guarantee.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
So there's something different about us today. We are wearing suits. Why are we wearing suits?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Who does that nowadays? So check it out. Highly recommend boringmarketing.com.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
They deserve this prestigious, very prestigious award.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
That's right. Exactly. So congratulations. I know you've been wanting this from the day you've been born, Tiziana and Sandro. So congratulations. And just from a framework perspective, I'm trying to think, so what makes this business really great for other people who want to create businesses with tiny teams is number one, you lock people into an ecosystem.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Number two, the customer service is just exceptional. Number three, family business is Number four, it's niche. It's not for everyone. And they went after like the Tony Robbins of the world. So then you look it in, you're like, I want to be a king too. You know, I don't, I want to be a king. Tony Robbins is a king. And then last but not least, it's a dope name.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
And what's that award?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Yep. I love it. I love it. I just love it. I love it. So that's award number one. I've got a tiny team award I want to give out.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
so for the second tiny team award ever to be given sip to that uh stardew valley oh my god what a fucking great i don't know if you want to beat that up but what we didn't know which ones we were going to bring to each other that is such a great one do you know about the story of stardew valley
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
So Stardew Valley is a farming game started by a guy by the name of Eric not try to pronounce it, Eric Barone or Eric Barone. I don't know if he's Italian. Maybe it's just the Italian flip chart got to me.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
It's the son of the flip chart dynasty.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
So for the purpose of this award, we're going to call him Eric Barone. He's the one man developer behind $300 million of earnings of Stardew Valley. So Stardew Valley started, I think he started building it in 2011. So it took a few years, but basically it's this farming game. And he was the sole developer for the game. And not only was he the sole developer, he was the sole designer.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
And what does that mean?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
He even crafted the music for the game. that not many people know that. And it was this really cool concept where, you know, so many games, the trends were first person shooters, MMOs, killing people, fighting games. He did the complete opposite and created this like calming farming game. And he, what I love about the whole story, besides that he's a tiny team and he did it,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
I mean, amazing that he created $300 million of value by himself, is the fact that, well, he just basically went against all best practices and all trends and just said, this is going to be a really cool game. I want to go and put this out here. And people said that it should be $60. He started charging $15. And you can even get Stardew Valley now for as cheap as $4.99.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Maybe once per lifetime.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
So his, his, you know, I just, I love people who have a POV and it's just like, this needs to exist. Plus I'm a tiny team chef's kiss. So congratulations, Eric.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
No, I have not.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
My take on this is that every person has a ignorance tax that they have to pay down. So no matter what your goals are, there's a price that you have to pay to learn to get to your goals quicker. And by living in San Francisco, New York, some of these places, yes, it might be two times more expensive to live, but you will, just by osmosis, pay down your ignorance debt way, way, way faster.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
I'm just trying to think. Okay, so what... job titles need this the most and i think if you if you think about some of these positions like teachers or dentists or even doctors even yeah doctors like they spend they basically decide that they want to be these people at age like architects architects hate their lives usually often
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
I just take a sip and I'm back where I need to be.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
So they might, you know, in their mind, like, you know, their parents or, you know, they had an uncle who was a who was a dentist. So they become a dentist. And then by the time they're, you know, in their mid 20s or late 20s or early 30s, they're like, whoa. I don't like being a therapist. It's horrible. People are just telling me their problems.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
So I think a lot of job titles where there's a lot of studying and prep and long hours, that's what I'd go after.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
I don't even know if civil engineering...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
Well, it's The Power of Mimemic Desire. Do you ever read that book? I've never read that book. I think it's a book.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
Yeah, it's called Wanting, The Power of Mimemic Desire in Everyday Life by Luke Burgess. It basically says that even if we don't realize it, we do things to try to mimic other people in our lives. And how we don't have as much, like we think that we're doing things, we're independent, we're human beings.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
No, Zin is the rage in America. It's basically like a, it looks like a piece of gum and people put it like on their lip. It's just like, it's a nicotine thing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
If we want to be a doctor, it's because we want to be a doctor, but we don't realize that it's 99% our environment and just us trying to fit in as people.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
Yeah. I mean, the way you were describing being in the middle of nowhere is exactly where I am now. I'm in like literally looking at it, you know, 95 acres of mountains and there's no one around here. I'm in the, I'm in Canada. And so I like to live my life from extremes. Miami is like, you're in it. And here I'm like, you're not in it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
And sometimes I find it really helpful to dip in and out of the extremes.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
So for you, you're going to come to San Francisco. You're going to get this dose or injection of...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
silicon valley into your veins and but you know you're going to be taking your flight home and on your flight you're going to be wow should i raise venture capital and you're a guy who's never thought about raising venture capital in your life and that's because if you spend enough time in san francisco you will think about raising around because that's what everyone does there for sure um so you know then then you're going to go down to la and
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
And, you know, on your flight leaving L.A., you're going to be like, oh, you know, I've always been thinking I should really get into vlogging. Because everyone wants to be famous in L.A. So I think the hack is you have to write your goals. Like, what are your goals? Personal, career. And then cities can help you get to your goals. But too much of one city could also...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
you know, kind of hurt personal goals or hurt other career goals. So I think that you should treat a city as just like a utility in a way, right? Like you get something out of it. And but I want to say one quick thing, which is I also don't think you should be one of those people that are constantly on a flight because if you don't have a home base, you don't have like a community.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
That's also just like a terrible way to live.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
No, no, this is great. My take on this is that every person has a ignorance tax that they have to pay down. So no matter what your goals are, there's a price that you have to pay to learn to get to your goals quicker. And by living in San Francisco, New York, some of these places, yes, it might be two times more expensive to live, but you will, just by osmosis,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
pay down your ignorance tax, ignorance debt way, way, way faster. And the question for you is, or the person listening really is, at this stage in your life and with the amount of money that you have saved up, is it worth spending an extra $1,500 a month or whatever it is for the premium to potentially get an extra client a month or learn about how VCs work or XYZ. That's what it is.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
Yeah, I think you could move out to the suburbs or live off the grid if... you build a big audience. Because then, what is an audience? An audience just puts you at the center of digital gravity. And then it's all good because you don't need to be in New York, you don't need to be in San Francisco. You're tweeting and you're getting a million views.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
So if you're starting out or you just want to accelerate your career, I think you want to do both things. You want to do the digital gravity thing and you want to build an audience. Uh, and that's kind of your insurance. And also with your fallback plan for when you do, you know, you've been in New York and you hit 30 and you're like, I'm tired of this. I need to help. Totally.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
Yeah. Who doesn't want that insurance?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
Well, that's what we do. That's what we do. We burrow. We burrow. You know, that's our style.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
I'm, I'm in, I'm in Miami, call it seven to eight months a year, eight months a year probably. And then three, three months summertime here and then maybe a month during the winter. So that's the other thing I like about here is it's got the craziest seasons of all time. It gets to like minus 45 degrees and like snows like 10, 10 feet. Um,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
And Miami is like, you know, like the complete opposite of that. And it's like hurricane season right now. So I don't know. I, I like, I like, again, I like the diversity. I like, uh, I find that I work, I'm actually more productive up here. Uh, it's a great place to write. Like think I'm in like a cabin in the woods basically. Right. So it's like so good for writing. So good for creativity.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
Um, and, uh, that's also just helpful. Like if I have like,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
I think we can end it here. I got to ask people to like on YouTube if you enjoyed this. Apparently liking for the algorithm is a thing. Please like it. Please like it and subscribe and then leave us a review on Spotify and Apple if you're listening there.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
And have a good one, everyone. Later. Should we sip it out? Let's sip it out.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
Hey everyone, if you're anything like me, you've got a ton of design work that you need.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
websites landing pages emails social assets you name it but you don't just want beautiful landing pages or beautiful websites you want the stuff that's going to convert you want the stuff that's going to actually drive value that's where designscientist.com comes in it's an agency that for one monthly price will do all your design work all your copy work all your engineering
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
and do stuff that actually scales your revenue. You don't need a designer. You need a design scientist. Let's go design scientist.com. I liked it so much. I invested in the business. So what you're saying is there's a bunch of careers that, I mean, most careers, honestly, people don't like. There's a subsection of people who don't like what they're doing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
And there's an opportunity to get those people to create content to attract those people and then sell coaching and other services to help them transition from what they're doing. To what they want to be doing. That's what you're saying.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
Time to sip. You haven't been on the show in like three weeks, so you're just like super, super electric about it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
It's a career coach on Zin, exactly. That's a good one-liner.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
You wouldn't be helping the kids who are in the schools, but you definitely would be helping... You want to fix the education system, dude? You're not exactly fixing the education system. But yeah, I hear you. I will say... Okay, check this out. So one of the first things that I do whenever I come up with an idea... is I go to Reddit.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
And I noticed that there's a subreddit called... I was on this exact subreddit today. You would be. You would be. Teachers in Transition. Okay. So it's pretty massive. It's 34,000 members. It's actually a perfect size. Top 3% rank by size. And one of the things I like to do is I go check the top posts. So this month, the top post...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
is a post that says, in case anyone questions why 50% of teachers leave in their first five years. And it's basically these text messages of parents just following up around report cards. It's so bad. It's like, I'm curious as to the interpretation of the grading rubric, right? And then there's 213 comments of other teachers being like,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
one of the top comments, I don't care about grades, quote unquote, and proceeds to rant about grades. So I think the way to build this is the way I would build this teachers in transition or whatever in transition is I would actually go and build the subreddit if it doesn't exist. Like go and build a subreddit, moderate the subreddit. I would try to collect as many memes as possible.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
And the memes is how you attract the audience. You just end up sharing memes for teachers, nurses, dentists,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
um that sort of thing get a bunch of you know thousands of followers and from there then that's when you create your high ticket offer and that's when you you know you sell them stuff and teaching was just an example because just there's a lot of people in my life who've quit teaching and found it very stressful and and the
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
Yeah, and basically gossip, you know? But it's, you know, if you're a teacher and you're in the subreddit, you read a post and it's kind of like real recognize real, you know? Like I see you other teacher, like I've been there, we've all been there. And if you can get that feeling, that's basically the feeling that you want to reverse engineer.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
No, nothing. My brain is never slow and is never stupid. It just hasn't happened ever yet.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
vertical sass you've probably heard the name and you're probably like yeah i wish i can create a vertical sass that prints millions of dollars well i brought on the number one guy who talks about vertical sass he's got the vertical sass bible and uh he spills all his secrets on the step-by-step way to create a vertical sass this is a guy luke safinos
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
So where do we start? Do we want to start with... Why vertical SaaS?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
Makes sense. Follow the money. That's the follow the money step.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
Does that make sense? It does. I'm just wondering if I'm, let's just say I'm building in the trade school space and I want to map out and I want to figure out who the competition is. Is there a way that AI could kind of do some of that heavy lifting? Have you tried that yet? Quick ad break. Let me tell you about a business I invested in. It's called boringmarketing.com.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
So a few years ago, I met this group of people that were some of the best SEO experts in the world. They were behind getting some of the biggest companies found on Google.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
the secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and ai that could help you outrank your competition so for my own businesses i wanted that i didn't want to have to rely on mark zuckerberg i didn't want to depend on ads to drive customers to my businesses i wanted to rank high in google that's why i like seo and that's why i use boringmarketing.com and that's why i invested in it
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
They're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30-day sprint with 100% money back guarantee. Who does that nowadays? So check it out. Highly recommend boringmarketing.com.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
Let's try it out just for fun.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
I'm going to share my screen real quick. What do you think I should prompt Claude Maybe in your space. What do you think I should ask?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
For machine shops in the USA.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
Walk me through what a machine shop's operation would look like end to end. Oh man.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
This is crazy. I actually didn't expect it to be this good, to be frank.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
Wow. Do we need to include? Do we need to qualify at this point? Do they need to be doing a million in revenue? Is that just complicating it? Or what do you think?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
Yeah, true. Let's let it rip. Because you know what you could do? You can also say... like in this list and you know, how many of these, how, how many of these softwares are like 20 or 15 years or older?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
I'm going to say list all the softwares here that are, isn't it older than five years or older than 10 years? Cause that's isn't, aren't those the ones that you want to disrupt? Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
We should try. Why not? I mean, we're not. Let's just try it. Let's just say, let's just use it like a real person. So we're going to say, I'm trying to come up with a vertical sass with my friend, Luke. And we actually for machine jobs. my friend Luke, and we have a framework. So the first is, um, what'd you say? Legacy?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
What areas of machine shops are still being run on pen and paper? I'm going to say basically that says there is an opportunity for software. Okay. Second?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
This is an excellent approach, identifying opportunities for vertical SaaS. Whoa, you know it's getting real when they do this over here on the right. where it starts writing out in a document.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
For people listening, on the right-hand side, there's an analysis. Machine shop software opportunities analysis. Area still using pen and paper. It literally just lists it out. Job tracking and scheduling. many smaller shop sales, whiteboards, and paper schedules, tooling and inventory, often tracked manual and log books, machine maintenance log, frequently kept in binders, notebooks.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
It's literally telling you where there's opportunity here for pen and paper. What do you think of the pen and paper section? Reactions?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
Does that work? Like people will do that?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
Yeah. Cool.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
know i just want to make sure that uh you know i'm building the right thing you know can i buy you guys lunches to let me kind of watch and see what happens perfect cool so pen and paper number two areas not leveraging ai predictive maintenance ai could anticipate machine failures before they occur
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
optimized job scheduling, AI could consider multiple factors to create efficient schedules, automated quality control, AI-powered computer vision could enhance inspection process, energy management, AI could optimize machine uses to reduce energy consumption. You get the idea here. Luke, what's your reaction to the areas not leveraging AI section?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
Yeah. And by the way, there's probably an opportunity to just design this using V0 and just... design a prototype or a framer website even, and just show this to a machine shop owner and be like, hey, if I built this, would this be of interest? Like getting their feedback. Cool. And then section three, areas using multiple horizontal solution.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
Project management, often common to gather general purpose apps, tools like Trello, Asana, spreadsheets, CRM. Many use generic CRMs not tailored to machine shops. Accounting and invoicing, general accounting software often lacks machine shop specific features, et cetera, et cetera. Luke, reaction?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
are all really great ideas. I honestly can't believe it. My issue is I don't know if these are validated ideas. I was thinking of going to machine shops to get their feedback IRL. But I hope you can save me a trip. Validate these ideas for me. Let's just see what happens. I don't have high hopes, but I was nice.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
This is insane.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
How important is building media being on social, like are the machine shop people of the world on social? Like what's your take?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
And I bet you, if you asked me, if you put me in a corner and you're like, Greg, how do I get the 1 million people who work in machine shops onto a newsletter? What I would do is I would do a daily funny machine shop meme email where you just start... It's like inside jokes. You hire someone who works in a machine shop in like Des Moines, Iowa.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. And then you have all these people who are your advocates. And it's like, oh, by the way, I'm like, I sell this software. And then, you know, you start building up multiple pieces of software. And before you know it, you know, the lifeblood of your of your software is this newsletter.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
You should, you honestly should. Uh, no brainer. Okay. So, you know, what else have, you know, where, where are we at on the scorecard?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
Cool. Yeah. And it's working like you're making millions of dollars a year in revenue. And through the process, I think, and that's why I wanted to bring you on is you've kind of figured out a playbook for the different types of vertical SaaS businesses, how to think about wedges, which is like a wedge product, which is something I really would love for you to get into.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
He's got a vertical SaaS business that prints millions himself. He's a vertical SaaS advisor to Atomic, which builds billion-dollar businesses like his and hers. this might not be the most exciting podcast I've ever done. It might actually be a little bit boring. And that's the point. Vertical SaaS is boring, but that's why there's so much opportunity.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
How to think about picking a market for your vertical SaaS. And maybe I'd also just love you to go through pricing. How do you think about pricing your vertical SaaS? So where do you want to start?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
I like it for a few reasons. One, it's follow the money because it's like, a proposal, you get it out there, and then you close the business, and then all of a sudden, Roofer is the hero because they helped close that business, which then, number two, increases the trust around the customer and the business.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
So I think if you're trying to create, it sounds like if you're trying to create a wedge product, think about how you could, like, what is the wedge product that could create the most amount of trust?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
I like it. We're running out of time, but I have to ask one more piece to the scorecard because I know people in the comments section are going to be like, you got to ask this. Pricing. How do you think of it? Jake, do you have a framework for thinking about how you price these things?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
How much money am I making you? And then could you give me a portion of that money basically is what you're saying. So that it's anywhere, what is it? Anywhere between 20 to 50%.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
Luke, this has been a masterclass. I'm about to hack on a couple of Vertical SaaS ideas this weekend or markets and ideas this weekend. I appreciate you coming on. Where could people get to know you, your writings, learn more about Vertical SaaS?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
And you don't want 100,000 people competing in vertical SaaS. We're keeping it small. We're keeping it a little small. I appreciate it. Thanks for coming on. And I'll see you around. See you around Miami. Awesome, Greg. Thanks for having me, man. Appreciate you. Later.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
And we do use AI to come up with some fun ideas. So watch the whole thing and take some notes. Enjoy. All right, I got my man Luke to come on and teach us about vertical SaaS, vertical software. And I know it sounds boring, but if you stick to the end of this, you're going to come out with a lot of knowledge. He's going to teach us the vertical SaaS Bible, and I'm excited to dig right into it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
Shh, don't tell anyone. But I've got 30 plus startup ideas that could make you millions. And I'm giving them away for free. These aren't just random guesses. They're validated concepts from entrepreneurs who've built $100 million plus businesses. I've compiled them into one simple database, compiled from hundreds of conversations I've had on my podcast.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
But the main thing is, most of these ideas don't need a single investor. Some cost nothing to start. I'm pretty much handing you a cheat sheet. The Idea Bank is your startup shortcut. Just click below to get access. Your next cash-flowing business is waiting for you. Questions there, does that make sense? Yeah, go back to that for a second.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
When you scroll on this list, what is one or two industries that you're like, whoa, there's something here and I need to dig in? And why?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
And what do you say to people who are like, wow, he's right. There is an opportunity in machine shops, but I live in Tribeca and I've never even visited a machine shop in my entire life. I don't know anything about it. Is there still an opportunity for people?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
So there's hope. There's hope for you. Okay, cool.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
I've never thought about it like this and it makes so much sense because I always think about it from the software perspective. So there was a famous blog post called The Unbundling of Craigslist. A guy named Andrew Parker wrote it where he visualized Craigslist and all the different pieces of it and how each part was getting unbundled into, I guess, vertical software.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
So for example, there were dating, people use Craigslist for dating and then dating apps came out. People used Craigslist for short-term rentals. Airbnb came out. And there's better versions of it. And I've actually written a post called The Unbundling of Reddit, which is kind of the same idea. Different subreddits, different vertical software.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
But this is kind of taking it and flipping on its head. It's saying, these are industries that have a huge physical component to it. Visualize it. And then thinking about, okay, where does software play a role in making this way more efficient?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $1M+ vertical SaaS business (step-by-step guide)
Hit that scorecard.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
Okay, last question before we move on to the next startup idea. Biggest thing you learned from Mark Zuckerberg shadowing him for hundreds of hours?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
All right, should we get into it?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
So where do you want to start?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
I was just doing some quick Googling. Girl Scouts, wow, they do over a billion dollars a year in revenue. They make more money than Oreo makes.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
It's crazy. That's crazy. Yeah. But so, so I'm, I'm in on this idea. I'm in like, I think, I think it's a great one. I think it would work. I think it resonates. I think the why now is here.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
Yeah, you share your ideas and I will... Yeah, we can just talk about if we like it, we don't like it, how we'd start it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
And if you were, so the only thing that challenges me on this idea is the funding piece of it. You know, it's like,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
I also wonder, I'm not a huge fan of cold emailing. But I imagine a lot of these teachers probably like you probably can get their email addresses. And if you did a really, really like tight, cold email campaign with like maybe like a selfie video from one of the girls talking about her experience and and then. you know, just very tight.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
I actually bet these people are not getting hit up that much with high value, like value add content that are actually going to make their jobs easier in a lot of ways, right? Like they're looking for this stuff, aren't they?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
In the past, I know you've... because you've been in media and you've probably done a lot of sponsorships. Do you have any advice for people on how to sell a Nike? Because people probably hear that and they're like, that's so out of reach. I don't even know how to do that. Quick ad break. Let me tell you about a business I invested in. It's called boringmarketing.com.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
So a few years ago, I met this group of people that were some of the best SEO experts in the world. They were behind getting some of the biggest companies found on Google. And the secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and AI that could help you outrank your competition. So for my own businesses, I wanted that. I didn't want to have to rely on Mark Zuckerberg.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
I didn't want to depend on ads to drive customers to my businesses. I wanted to rank high in Google. That's why I like SEO and that's why I use boringmarketing.com and that's why I invested in it. They're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30-day sprint with 100% money back guarantee. Who does that nowadays? So check it out. Highly recommend boringmarketing.com.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
This conversation is reminding me about like the first time I ever went to New York city as like an 18 year old, I'm from Canada. And when I was in some of these meetings as like a kid, basically, and I heard people talk, like you were talking, it, it, it, it shattered, you know, it shattered my world.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
Like it made me realize that thinking big and mindset is such an important part of making things happen. In our minds, we're always kind of like, a lot of us are like, yeah, it would be nice to get it. I don't know if I can actually close it. I don't know if I can actually get their email. I don't know if I can actually, but you're right.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
When you actually lay it out and you're like, okay, it's really just story and people.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
Before we move on to the next idea, because I need to hear your next idea because you're a legend. Can you give one quick story of someone who you met maybe in your early 20s or in your 20s that ended up being like, you would have never expected that person would be so valuable in your career?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
Yeah, because he trusted you.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
Okay, last question before we move on to the next startup idea. Biggest thing you learned from Mark Zuckerberg shadowing him for hundreds of hours?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
Okay, biggest thing that... non-obvious thing that you learned.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
So I totally buy the premise, by the way, like I especially buy the premise.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think the insight is correct, 100%. I think the insight around people are buying books from their favorite authors or new authors and it's an incredible experience. And even the best books, like the ones you mentioned, you kind of lose, you forget and you there needs to be a better way to get you in the habit.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
Now, I always think about, this is kind of old school with me, but I always think about who builds the best community in the world or one of them, or who's done a really good job, at least, of spreading the gospel, literally. It's like religion, like churches and stuff like that. And if you think about the Bible, literally,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
You know, in Christianity, for example, every Sunday, like you come, you listen to, you know, what what what you're reading or Judaism, every, you know, every. Every week you learn about a section of the Bible and that piece, that missing piece is what brings you back to actually reread the book, make it a part of your zeitgeist. And so I think that insight is so right.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
And the other insight that you have, which I think is really right, is the why now around AI provides an ability to extend. Now, the question I have is like, how does, what does the extension look like? Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
It's a great idea. It's a great idea. I think if I was doing it, if I was building an MVP here, I think the way I would do it is, first of all, I'd be selling to these authors. So I'd figure out what is the smallest thing that they'd pay for. So I'd go, I'd reach out to the, maybe not James Clear to start, but Bs and Cs first, get their feedback.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
then I would try to create an AI avatar bot, basically. And it doesn't need to be personalized from day one. I think to make it easier on yourself, whoever ends up building this, you could have it so that on day one after you finish the book, this happens. On day seven, this happens. And everyone's kind of In the future, you could personalize it based on your goals and other things like that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
I think with the rise of AI avatars and stuff like that, you can make something that looks like James Clear, that talks like James Clear, that feels like James Clear. That could be really exciting to people. Imagine having James Clear as your coach. That's so cool.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
Totally. And you can do a rev share. Like, don't even charge James Clear or whoever, anything. Just be like, yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
Totally. You gave us the sauce. These are two good ideas. A Zuckerberg story. Come on. This is better than expectations. Plus a cat. Plus a cat, a dog. If you're listening to this on audio, you missed out because the YouTube animal appearances were iconic. Sarah, where do you want to plug? What do you want to plug, if anything?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
Totally. Folks, you're sleeping on fiction. I'll include those links in the description so it's easier if you miss that. Go and do that. And Sarah, until next time, this has been a lot of fun.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
Don't tell anyone, but I've got 30 plus startup ideas that could make you millions and I'm giving them away for free. These aren't just random guesses. They're validated concepts from entrepreneurs who've built a hundred million dollars plus businesses. I've compiled them into a one simple database. compiled from hundreds of conversations I've had on my podcast.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
But the main thing is, most of these ideas don't need a single investor. Some cost nothing to start. I'm pretty much handing you a cheat sheet. The Idea Bank is your startup shortcut. Just click below to get access. Your next cash-flowing business is waiting for you.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
So your vision of this, is it like an online thing? Is it an in-person thing? How does it look like?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
Okay, cool. So yeah, I think the way... I think that makes sense. I think I would do it online. You put out the content online, but the challenges happen IRL, in schools. For example, my elementary school, for boys and girls, in order to teach entrepreneurship and charity, what they did was they handed us a bag of 20 chocolate bars and said, you need to sell these chocolate bars.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
Each chocolate bar, was two dollars each the catch was we had to sign a paper that said we owe the school 40 40 so all of a sudden as a kid i'm like oh my god i'm in debt 40 like it's such a horrible feeling and you know uh you hated it um but you learned a lot um around like okay um debt is not good yeah um okay, now I need to sell this thing. How am I going to sell this?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
And then there were some support structures around how to sell certain things. And then the money went to charity as well. So that could be an example of like, I can imagine like a monthly challenge like that so that people can go out in the world and learn as well.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
We got Sarah Lacey on the pod. She's an idea machine. I was emailing her before this. I was like, come with ideas. I'll give you 30 minutes. She's like, I don't need 30 minutes. I'll see you there in a few. Thank you, Sarah, for coming on the pod and sharing some of your ideas with us.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
Yeah. So I think that's a really good point around on the door to door sales piece. Like what is the equivalent of door to door sales in 2025? It's probably more like, recording a video and posting it online and, you know, setting up a gum road and learning about how to sell and build a product on the internet. You know, it's, it's almost like the startup ideas podcast, but for tweens, you know?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow
Yeah. And I think we can do better for everyone is, you know, I think.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
That being said, I think that whatever, if 10% of Gen Z reads now, I think in the next five years, 20% reads. And I think it's because it's the shift around anti-tech. But I do think that the vast majority of them are just going to be like, I grew up in a Call of Duty world. It's just hard for me to sit down and be in an analog world.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
So what is the math on these books? Just because I don't know.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Yeah. You know why it's called ideas and not startup ideas? Because when I have an idea for a startup, I need the least amount of time. The time between coming up with the idea and writing it down needs to be as quick as possible. So when I first came up with that note, I was like, I'm not writing startup ideas. It's going to take twice as long. Minimal number of friction.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
So what is the math on these books? Just because I don't know.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
And how long does that last? Is that just like, you know, for four months, it's 100 grand or 200 grand or?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
How many authors actually look at data first and then decide to write a book based on data?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
I was just on the phone with an operator.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
I'll tell you why. Because I was like, yeah, I'm looking to hire an operator. They have this idea for this business. And it's a great idea. And here's why it's going to work. And it's like a shoe in. And he goes, by the way, just so you know, no operator likes being called an operator. You know, like we're never call an operator operator. an operator. We're entrepreneurs. We build the business.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
An operator- It sounds like a cop. He's like, it sounds like I'm operating a crane. Like I'm operating a crane.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
But yeah, I think that not enough people take their ideas and find, we'll create basically a mini idea lab where they're like, okay, instead of investing, let's say, let's say you have a couple hundred grand of, of cash, which is like Ehrlich Bachman is the only example from Silicon Valley of like the ideas guy.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Exactly. So you take instead of investing, you know, into the S&P, you you find an operator and you use data to inform some of these bets. And you like this is a perfect bet where it's like, OK, if I'm going to invest five, four grand a month, three grand a month. share the upside, but this thing could potentially pay back 20 X and there's like IP in it. Yes.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Do you know what the multiples are on publishing houses?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
So it, let's just say it's seven X.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Let's make it difficult. Let's say it's 7.28x. Perfect. Perfect number. You know what makes it 17.28x? Is if you have technology. Also true. So if you're like, hey, you know, Penguin, we're this like up and coming publishing house that uses our own technology that scrapes
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I just need to keep going. Okay.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
And later on, the deals that you have with creators and streamers... Could also do. Right. That, you know, for the next five years, you could license their name for all these books. Mm hmm.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
We just promised startup ideas. That's why you need to... talk with your friends about startup ideas, right? And put it on the internet. And put it on the internet so you get feedback, right? Now we went down that rabbit hole. We know it's probably not a good idea. But it might be.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Honestly, like that was pretty damn good. I like it. Yeah. I mean a lot there.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
I also think that, yes, I do feel that way. But I also think that you got me thinking that there's a whole variety of competitive analysis tools that are probably great businesses to build. But the thing is you don't sell it. You use it for your own advantage. So you have things like Jungle Scout for Amazon, right? You have things, there's a tool I use called Gummy Search for Reddit.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
There's all these tools in a bunch of different platforms. First of all, there's a whole, like here's a prompt for people listening. Like what are competitive analysis tools for platforms that are up and coming?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
that haven't been built yet and then go build them and then just use it for yourself and train yourself and think about ideas for yourself like for example there's another one I was using called Etsy Hunt it just goes on Etsy it's basically Jungle Scout which tells you like how- You pay for those? You pay for them.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Yeah, people pay a monthly fee, but it's one of those things where the price discrimination is completely wrong. Like I don't remember exactly what Etsy hunt charges, but it's probably like less than 50 bucks a month. But if you create a killer, like there's some Etsy sellers who make millions of dollars a year.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Exactly.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
I think it's a good question to ask. Like whenever you, especially people like us who are on the internet and like write and do podcasting and stuff like that, like you have to, it's important to have like a theme. Like it would be pretty random if I created an OnlyFans competitor, for example.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Or account. Both of those would be out of your ballpark. You'd be like, I don't, you know, I don't, I don't get it, but I hope you're okay, Greg. You know, like... I'd be getting a text saying like, you good or something like that. You good bro. Yeah. So, you know, one exercise I do just for myself is like, I have like, this is my, this is kind of like my mission.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
This is my MO and this is like my lane or my two lanes I want to be in. And here's the portfolio businesses that support that, that mission. And I think everyone should have that. You have that with like writing and start writing and that like that category. But that's one of the reasons why I started this podcast, which is the comment section of this.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Maybe we might find someone who's like, yeah, I actually am passionate about lit RPG. I'm one of those people. If you want to do that, DM me. Yeah, DM him. There's probably someone screaming at their podcast listener right now and being like, these idiots. Yeah. Why am I still listening? There's hundreds of thousands. Lit RPG is like the biggest thing ever.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
And that's where I think having these, spinning up these like small idea lab teams make a lot of sense where it's not you, but you're advising and you're accelerating them.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
It's kind of like trends. We actually, we added a, so we have like a paid membership. It's $149 a month. And one of the things that people get a lot of value is this monthly, we go like, Hey, we were on Google trends and we were on Reddit and we found like these trends and here's like a couple of business ideas. That's cool. And it's a monthly email.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
And like some people have said like just that email alone, it's kind of like a show.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
That's a great idea. You totally should. And you know what the beauty about all this is, is it puts you- at the focal point of an industry. So all of a sudden, even with Community Empire, I just see people building these types of businesses now. And then all of a sudden, I can invest in them. We can acquire them. Trends for X. It's one of the reasons why I actually event businesses.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
So B2B events... is interesting because the host of the event ends up meeting everyone.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Yeah, no, I just like the idea.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
I'm not saying I'm doing it, but one of the best parts about the event business is that the host gets to know everyone in a particular industry. And there's a lot of value in being the gravity in a particular industry. And when you end up creating... What you would be doing here, which is really cool, is you're giving people an unfair advantage, basically.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
And whenever you give someone an unfair advantage... That's really good.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
We can do it for you too. That's one of the reasons why I built a bunch of agencies is because now my agencies are my idea labs. I have a design agency when I need designs. I have an SEO agency when I need SEO. I have an ad agency when I need ads. I have a community team when I need community stuff.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
I literally have everything and that's also one of the benefits of owning agencies but keeping, not growing agencies for the sake of growing it, keeping it like
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
And it's okay even if it breaks even. We talked about that a bit with the ghostwriting side. Even if it breaks even, even if your agency breaks even, it's not the end of the world because... you've compiled an amazing team who have this, who are gelling so well together. And then no agency works at 100% productivity. Good agencies work at 70% productivity at best.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
So realistically, if you're at 40 or 50%, you can use that 20, 30, 40, 50% on your own projects and you don't have to pay for it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Yeah. Thanks for, thanks for jamming. Oh, these are great. Yeah. And, um, where could people find you on the internet? I don't know. On the internet. Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
We'll, we'll link it in the, in the, in the show notes. So people just click there and.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Yeah, this was a lot of fun. All right. Thanks for coming on later. Boom. See everyone. It's the pod.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Okay. Quick ad break. Let me tell you about a business I invested in. It's called boringmarketing.com. So a few years ago, I met this group of people that were some of the best SEO experts in the world. They were behind getting some of the biggest companies found on Google. And the secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and AI that could help you outrank your competition.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
So for my own businesses, I wanted that. I didn't want to have to rely on Mark Zuckerberg. I didn't want to depend on ads to drive customers to my businesses. I wanted to rank high in Google. That's why I like SEO and that's why I use boringmarketing.com and that's why I invested in it. They're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30-day sprint with 100% money back guarantee.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Who does that nowadays? So check it out. Highly recommend boringmarketing.com.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
So that's exactly where my head went to, which was how do you build a SaaS tool that does that, except you don't want to sell that SaaS tool because you want to build the publishing houses yourself. So you build an internal tool.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Okay, I want to riff on this idea a little bit. So, first of all, lit RPG.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
I'd read it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Dude, that's what this is. Well, you know what it is. It's analog Twitch. Exactly. It's analog Twitch. Yes. So... Here's what I would do. I would partner with the top hundred Twitch streamers and be like, I'm going to create... Oh, that's smart.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Because what's going to happen is people are going to notice, people are using this tool and they're going to notice, okay, lit RPG, search volume is going up, demand and supply mismatch. There's going to be the AI rush to create... you know, people are going to create these books with AI and stuff like that. And it's going to be like low to medium quality.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
And it's like, what's going to separate you from them? Well, yes, it could be like a nice cover and actually doing it well with writing, but having a name in the audience. Yeah, exactly. The name in the audience and just be like, listen, um, you know, streamer, I'll give you 50% of the revenue and, um,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
All right, should we begin? Sure. Let's do it. Where do you want to start? Do you have any ideas for me? You got ideas?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
That's too many Tuckers for me, by the way. No, I haven't seen.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
No, no. I mean, whenever I talk to you guys, I always leave just like rejuvenated with ideas.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
And okay, question, is Gen Z reading books? Are they reading books?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
It was also acquired by a South Korean company. So I imagine a bunch of the readers are.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Yeah, from Asia. That's a thesis, I don't know.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
If we did, it would be concerning. Right. You could take us to prison right away.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
That's the, yeah, old person, young person test right there. So my thesis, no data to support this. I don't, just prefacing it. As most good theses are. My thesis is most of Gen Z haven't read a book, have not read a book, and... It's a great question. And, actually not and, but... I think that's going to change. There's now this new trend around like. Anti-tech. Anti-tech.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
And books are going to be this like. I'm reading this paper thing. Exactly. You're not going to believe it. It's counterculture. Yeah. Interesting. I mean, the reality is a book is super hard to compete with, you know, a video game where a video game Call of Duty is like optimized, like literally for.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Yeah, I know.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
I mean, you know this. You were a professional World of Warcraft person. These video games hijack your brain and you just get immersed in these worlds. Now, you can make the same argument that, well, a book could immerse you in these worlds. Yes, but it's just a lot more work. A lot more people don't go to the gym than go to the gym.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
Dude, I would pay $13,000 a month for the ability to have a YouTube channel because I'm attracting people interested in the same things I'm interested in. And I could create products that I can sell them and services and stuff like that. I don't have to live in New York City or live in San Francisco because I have a YouTube channel now and I have a podcast.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
Totally. You sent me a text. You're on. And you sent me a text with a bunch of, I think, nine really amazing ideas. So I want you just to get right into it. Let's go.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
be more productive using AI. And the biggest lesson we learned is people were asking for AI, but what did they really want? Automation. So I think that in the SMB space, there's huge demand for automation because what is automation? Automation is cost savings. And everyone wants to save costs. So it's an easy sell. So I think from a pricing perspective, what you need to do is
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
just figure out, okay, if I'm going to save these guys $200,000, how much can I realistically charge them? And that's like the mental model that you need to come up with.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
Yeah, that's the number, right? I mean, that's the way to think about it. And we're actually launching something in July in this space. And the beauty is we have this
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
Totally. And I think it's also... Spend time on figuring out what's your tone, what's your voice, what's your personality, what's your style, what's your structure, what's your format of the content, and then how are you going to basically bring a pipeline of ideas, of content ideas in, and then use that system to help you create a lot of that content. That's what the game is.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
Think of yourself as more of a... An editor than a writer. A curator. You're a conductor of the orchestra. You're not playing the flute.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
I mean, it doesn't exist yet. I think they're going to be going, I mean, they're going in that direction. Canva recently did, did you watch any of their, they did like a massive event where No, I didn't see it. No one on tech Twitter was talking about it. And that's the event. Forget WWDC. The Canva event actually had so much that if you're trying to create profitable startups, go watch it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
Go watch what they announced. Dude, some of these titles are insane. Yeah. It's wild. So they're definitely going into AI territory. And I could see them doing some of this. But I think that even if they do it, it doesn't matter. There's always going to be demand for, hey, I need this asset ASAP. And I'm worse than... I'm worse... Even if I'm good at Canva... I'm not the best at Canva.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
Do you know Design Pickle? Totally. Yeah. I mean, they're OG. Design... OG. Been around for, I don't know, 10, 15 years. They probably do... you know, 30 million a year in revenue. And from what I've seen, they generate a ton of customers from meta ads. I'm constantly seeing their ads on Instagram and they charge about $499, I believe, $499 a month. So it's very, very cheap to get in there.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
I think that if you're going to go build this, the way to do it is it's like $99 a month.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
Cool. I like this one. I do think that the pricing undercutting Design Pickle. Design Pickle, my guess is they have a ton of offshore talent. So the reason they're able to charge so cheap is it's offshore. But my guess is they're not going to create a $99 a month plan. They rode the offshoring wave. You can ride the AI wave. And there's a business here. A hundred percent.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
He's got a good name with it too. What is it?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
Yeah, I like this idea for a few reasons. One is founders are going to look at this as ROAS. They're going to be like, okay, I'm going to pay you $100,000 a year, but... the lifetime value of a customer to me is worth $25,000. So I just need four of these to work. So I love that. And I think that's a new trend, just looking at audience as ROAS, return on audience spend. So that's number one.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
And number two, everyone knows that being dependent on any of these one platforms is a bad idea. So everyone's trying to get off these platforms into email or text. So this is just selling schmuck insurance.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
This is selling schmuck insurance. Don't be a schmuck. Have an email list is like the tagline.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
Oh no. Did you hear about Roger? Oh, what happened to Roger? Oh, Roger got, Roger got, I thought it was a real person. Exactly. Roger's gone, dude.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
I like how when I was, first of all, are you even friends with a person named Roger? Do you even know any Rogers? I know a Roger. I hate him. I've never met a Roger I like. I don't know about you. Yeah, that's true, actually. I don't know what it is about Rogers, but they're polarizing. Put it that way. They're like olives. They're like olives. That's right. Rogers are like olives.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
But yeah, I was like, did you hear what happened to Roger? And I saw your heart drop. Dude, immediately. I was like, wait, who? Is it somebody we know? And I saw your heart drop because you're basically not wearing a shirt right now.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
A hundred percent. They're dirty, but not calloused. Exactly. That's right. All right. I like that idea. Very straightforward. Idea number five. What's idea number six? Okay. Six.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
And is he using AI to create the designs? Uh,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
So when I post to YouTube, me and my producer come up with a few title and thumbnail ideas. And then we kind of just... We pray for the best. That's basically it, right? So I think that there's an opportunity to, first of all, not just do only thumbnails, combine it with titles because titles are equally as important. And then putting data behind, oh, this title is... Yeah, and I knew you were.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
I knew you were about to go there. This speaks to you, right? This idea around, okay, there's a 75% probability that if you use this title, it's going to generate 25% more traffic because the search volume, the this, the that. And you can even, like I use vidIQ. and vidIQ has a ton of really good data.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
And this may be something that you like pitch to vidIQ or I don't know if they have an API or anything, but the data is available. Totally, 100%.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
Yeah. I like this. I also like, you know, it's just one of those things where more and more people just, and you said it yourself, they want to be creators. They want to be YouTubers. And it's interesting because now it's bleeding in bleeding into like the B2B space. There's so many founders I talk to now that are like secretly like
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
In the last 30 days on my YouTube, 263,000 views. And that's like long form. Insane. 31,000 hours of time. What's the ad revenue for that to give people perspective? I'm going to give it at the end. I'm not just going to give it to people. That's not how this works. That's not how YouTube works, bro. I thought you wanted to be a YouTuber. And then I added 6,300 subscribers in the last 28 days.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
And I made an estimated revenue of $3,000. Totally. $36,000 a year. Totally.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
I mean, that's a bonus business idea right there. You make a list of all the VC firms. And specifically, I mean, you start with enterprise B2B ones, and then you make the pitch that their founders need to be media companies and their businesses need to be media companies. And you try to sell it to them as a value add to their portfolio. Hey, we come in and we'll, we'll, we'll create content.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
We'll create videos. We'll, you know, do thumbnails. We'll do titles, like all the stuff that we talked about on this pod, but it's going to cost and your customer isn't the founder. It's, it's the people who raise a hundred million dollar fund. Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
I actually think of a better idea is your idea, like selling, selling to them and because they... They could easily write that off as an expense because it's deal flow, right? They're in the business of getting the best possible deals and they need attention and audience to do that. That's why people forget.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
But in tech Twitter, in the beginning, the people who had the most amount of followers weren't the entrepreneurs. It was the VCs. Totally. Like the Fred Wilsons and all those guys.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
Totally. Charging $3.99 a month, $3.99 a month. There's no real cost associated with it. His costs are his meta ads that he's doing. So this is a beautiful business. And I think just for people listening, don't just listen. Go take notes and actually do the thing. Because people are doing it. They're listening to this pod and they're cash flowing $10,000 to $100,000 a month sometimes.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
I love it. All right, man. What else you got for us? I think we're at idea number... I mean, I'm not even going to count those bonus ideas, but I think we're at idea number seven, right?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
Yeah. So I was thinking the same thing. You get to 20K a month and then what you do is then you take like 20K of your profit and you spend it on PR and you just get into like TechCrunch and all these places. And that's when you reach out to Canva and you're like, here's all these articles about us. We're doing 20K a month. We love what you're doing. We want to be a part of the mission.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
Is there an opportunity to talk about M&A? And then you sell it to them. Totally. And that's what you do. And that's the playbook for that one. So I like that idea. It's one of those sneaky small ones that could be big.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
Here's what I would do in this space because I think you're onto something. You're right that Scott's Cheap Flights has no soul anymore. In fact, it was rebranded to going.com, which come on, that's like, There's no soul to that name versus Scott's Cheap Flights. Like I connect with that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
So I was doing a little bit of research and I found out that there's a Canadian version of Scott's Cheap Flights. What's it called? I'll share my screen real quick. It's called... So the holding company... is called, I think, YDeals.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
And so what they do, which is really smart, is they own, for all the different Canadian cities, they have, so the airport in Montreal is YUL, so they own YULDeals.com. And Toronto is YYZ, so they own YYZDeals.com. Super smart. But if you look at the website, like 1998 vibes, and the guy claims that there's millions of Canadians that are subscribed.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
So there's an opportunity to reach out to someone like this and be like, how much? Because it doesn't feel like he's... I mean, literally, there's images of Travel 2000 and just... Toronto to Iceland.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
It totally has Craigslist vibes. It's Craigslist vibes. And whenever you see Craigslist vibes... You know they're printing money. You know it. You know it. They don't need to change anything. They've got something that's working. And there's probably an opportunity there. And if there isn't an opportunity to buy it, I think you can just clone a similar version and just bring it into 2024.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
Absolutely. And then you can, you know, if you have these lists, 20,000, 50,000, 75,000, you can also do like, okay, now we're going to do a weekly, here's what's happening in my city newsletter. You know, you can create different newsletters off that foundational newsletter. So it's like come for the deals and stay for like local news. So I think there's a lot of opportunity here.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
I think it's a sneaky big idea too. And then, yeah, it's about getting the right domains. Like, I don't know, LGA, LaGuardia, LaGuardiaDeals.com or something like that. And also, even if those are taken in the US and Canada, there's also other countries. Think more globally. And so there's a lot of opportunity in this one. I like it a lot.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
All right, we promised people nine official ideas, but you actually had eight on your list. I'm going to give... Not that I feel bad, by the way, because we gave a bonus like three or four. But I'm going to give one more. I have a notes file with all my ideas. And I add, I don't know, two or three ideas per week that just come to me.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
And I just pulled it up and I'm going to bring up the latest idea. And I'm curious. I'll just give it away. Screw it. So did you see this? Finaloop? No. What is it?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
so finna loop just raised 35 million dollars in series a funding which i didn't even know like series a funding 35 million no that's like yeah you know a typical series a is like five to ten million so it's it's a massive something is working um and basically what it is is uh E-commerce accounting software and service that never slows you down.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
So it's real-time bookkeeping for D2C, multi-channel, and wholesale.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
Totally. So you saw that. That fired you up. And then you came up with nine ideas just from that. And here you are. What's idea number one?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
So they've taken something, which is basically QuickBooks, which we've talked about in the past. Oh, my God. And they've niched it down to D2C and e-com. I love it. And I think the old... So Late Checkout uses a service called Bench.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
Bench.co. This is the old way of creating a startup. It's kind of like, we're cloud bookkeeping and it's going to be like 300 bucks a month and it's going to be great. But it doesn't speak to anyone, right? It doesn't speak to SaaS. It doesn't speak to crypto startups. It doesn't speak to... It's too broad. It's too broad. So here's my idea. My idea is... Okay, the idea is QuickBooks for X.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
Now, what are those different categories? I don't know. They're probably something like QuickBooks for SaaS, QuickBooks for agencies. Real estate. Real estate.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
My hunch is that for internet businesses, there's probably a lot of competition. So I would probably go towards like non... I wouldn't start with SaaS. I bet you there's something maybe a little bit similar. Nonprofits, this is what you do.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
How I'd start this is I'd list out... I think your QuickBooks idea is really smart. Just look at the extensions. I think I would write in a list what are all the different categories based on that and by prompting ChatGBT. And then I would go look for competition. I would say, what is the competition? I'd put that in my Google Sheet.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
And then I'd say, I'm not going after something with a lot of competition. I'm just not interested. At this stage in my life, I'm just not interested in going after companies that have raised hundreds or if not billions of dollars. Totally. And then I'd pick one based on, is it a growing trend? Does it have low competition?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
That's it, man. That's it. That's a wrap. Plus a bunch of bonus ideas. Cody Schneider, how are you feeling about this episode? Dude, I feel good.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
yeah cool so on YouTube comment if if you want to see that from Cody I know you want to see it and don't forget to subscribe on YouTube and also to follow what if you're listening on Spotify or you're listening on Apple podcast don't forget to follow because then then you'll know when Cody comes back on so appreciate it Cody thank you so much people can find you on Twitter and
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
Yeah, I love when you get just so excited about an idea like halfway through and I just see your brain just like, it's like you're a kid getting really exciting. Totally. Yeah. You love it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
Totally. Yeah, I think it's like a few frameworks. It's like, okay, this idea works. How do we bring it to another geography? Exactly. Okay, this is a trend here that's underserved. And that's why I love going through a bunch of ideas is because you're hearing, okay, it's starting to get into you. Okay, this is how I would approach the problem. It's not this specific idea that I want to take.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
Totally. And you don't need that many followers for it to be super impactful. Like I know guys, girls, whatever, who have five, 10,000 followers are making millions of dollars a year from that, uh, from that group. It's just the right amount of followers with, it's, it's not the right amount of followers. It's, it's the right followers. It's about attracting the right people and it opens doors.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
Um, you know, the way we met is kind of funny. which is you probably had like five or 10,000 followers on Twitter. And I was following you because you were, you were a real one. You were actually putting out, this is how I'd grow this thing. And I was like, oh man, in a world where, where Twitter is just like so sterile and manufactured, it felt so amazing to see what you were putting out there.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
And I would basically feature you in my newsletter with like, has, you know, 75,000 subs every single week. So funny. Right.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
I mean, it also, you know, I think a bunch of people listen to this podcast and just it's entertainment for them. It's like watching Shark Tank. Totally. I think there's that. But I also think that there is a group of people who listen to this podcast, like the SVG Collections guy, who are like, wow, I never thought of that. I'm going to go and do this thing. And it's going to be a success.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
And when it's a success, he's going to reach out. I mean, he reached out to us already, but... He's going to reach out to us and he's going to be like, thank you, Cody. Like you changed my life and I won't forget that. And then he's going to start his own podcast and he's going to, you know, pay it back. And so it does, you know, that's also just a cool part about doing this.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
So, and, and one, one thing that I've learned is be yourself. You know, when I, when I first started podcasting, I wasn't myself really. And it was only recently where I was like, you know, I'm just going to, how has that changed? Just, I'll give you an example. People always, you know, people say that, uh, I talk slowly or I have a calm voice. So what I would do is I'd counteract that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
And that would be, Like I try to put my Gary Vee hat on, you know, and try to get super, and it's just, it's not me. They're like, this guy, have you seen that meme?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
I was someone who, you know, I really wasn't. And the reason I did that is because I was like, oh, these are best practices. Therefore, I need to do it. As soon as I started being myself and also another part of that is talking about what I want to talk about, which is startup ideas, even though the best people in the world told me that's too niche. The best podcast is... This is insane to me.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
When I pitched this idea originally, they were like, it's too niche. And as soon as they said that, I was like, I'm going to be on to something. And you know what? There are people who are listening to this who are going to be like, I wish you would talk faster. I wish you did have more energy. I wish you did these... And it's like, okay, well... You're listening to me.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
You're listening to Cody because you like us, presumably. Or they just hate listening.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
It's an hour plus deep. And it's like, why are you listening to us? A thousand percent.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
And you know what's exhausting? Being someone who you're not is exhausting.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
So I'm guessing we got to run. We got to run. This has been great. Cody, thanks again for coming on. You also need a shave. We're doing a live stream, man. What was it? So we're going to get, we're going to give you a mullet. Is that what's happening?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
Oh, I'll do anything for, for Cody Schneider mullet. So we'll figure it out. All right, dude. Later.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
So- Hey everyone, if you're anything like me, you've got a ton of design work that you need. Websites, landing pages, emails, social assets, you name it. But you don't just want beautiful landing pages or beautiful websites. You want the stuff that's going to convert. You want the stuff that's going to actually drive value. That's where DesignScientist.com comes in.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
It's an agency that for one monthly price will do all your design work, all your copy work, all your engineering and do stuff that actually scales your revenue. You don't need a designer. You need a design scientist. Let's go design scientist dot com. I liked it so much I invested in the business. A lot of people ask me, oh, how did how did I get such a big Twitter audience?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
And I got a big Twitter audience when Two things happen. Threads, the ability to create a thread. That wasn't a feature and became a feature on Twitter. And then number two, the feed was latest and it moved to algorithmic. So all of a sudden your content was getting recommended to new followers. My content game didn't change. It was just the platform change. So what you're saying is really smart.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
You're saying that the platform LinkedIn is changing and there's going to be a bunch of B2B creators that are going to take advantage of it, but they're going to need sort of a middleman to facilitate it, right?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
Yeah, to me, there's the entry level pricing, which is probably like $2,500 a month, which is just exactly what you said. But then for like $5,000 to $8,000 a month, you can do lead magnets as a service. So it's like every month we'll create a lead magnet for you.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
because like a drip email course totally exactly totally yeah totally yeah and then the third thing is probably just design help so it's like we'll do your you know your band your your banner your cover art we'll go and create you know beautiful infographics so you put that together you target founders and that's the idea how do you actually get to founders though
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
With arms wide open, Cody Schneider. He's back on the pod, Startup Ideas pod. One of your YouTube videos on the pod has like 40 or 50,000 views. I'm hyped, man. It's insane.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
Yeah, absolutely. Here's how I would do the community aspect. So I would get the domain founders going viral on LinkedIn.com. And I'd create a free community where every week I'd give one tip on how to go viral on LinkedIn, like what's working. And then one breaking down another founder and why it's working. So it's like this person, Cody Schneider just got a thousand likes on this post.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
Let me break down why that matters. You do a monthly call where you... uh, you know, everyone kind of comes in and it's like a peer to peer group. And at the end, you just say like, Hey, you know, we've got this service. If you want the done for you service, it's going to cost X, Y, Z. Totally.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
Someone in the comment section is going to be like, but, you know, LinkedIn isn't going to be video first forever. And then in 12 months, you're going to have to shift your business. And it's like, well, even if that is the case, at least now you have a 1 million ARR business with a bunch of founders and you'll just sell them another service to help them grow on LinkedIn.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
9 Startup ideas to make $1M+ in 2024
All right. My appetite is, is wet. You know, I had some, some bread and I'm ready for idea number two. Hell yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
I interviewed Oren Meets World. This guy has worked with everyone from Red Bull to Ciroc, you name it, but that's not why he's interesting. He's interesting because he has nailed TikTok and he has nailed how to create content that spreads to millions of people. TikTok shop, I didn't know much about it. He taught me and he's going to teach you. Enjoy this episode.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
Insane that that exists. Because, you know, I did a tweet the other day about, you know, if you were going to create the YC of today in a world where software is commoditized, it's all about distribution. What does the YC for creators look like? And I feel like it's kind of this, right? Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
Just to finish up on the TikTok thing, what else do people need to know about building on TikTok, starting a business on TikTok?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
Dude, once you hit like, I don't know, late 20s, early 30s, you're just like, I can't do it anymore.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
Damn, dude. I do feel, and maybe other people listening, the whole supply chain just feels like a black box. I don't even know where to start.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
Yeah, in terms of making a product.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
Exactly. So the idea is, how can you make the case a little more fun? And... Like a lot of us, you know, I'm into collectibles and I was thinking, oh, wouldn't it be cool if you can have a case and in the back of the case, there'd be like a holographic Charizard. So it's basically marrying a collectible with the case.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
What sort of software tools do you use to come up with ideas, figure out supply chain, competitive analysis? What's your content creation? What are the things that people probably need to look into?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
Quick ad break. Let me tell you about a business I invested in. It's called boringmarketing.com. So a few years ago, I met this group of people that were some of the best SEO experts in the world. They were behind getting some of the biggest companies found on Google. And the secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and AI that could help you outrank your competition.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
So for my own businesses, I wanted that. I didn't want to have to rely on Mark Zuckerberg. I didn't want to depend on ads to drive customers to my businesses. I wanted to rank high in Google. That's why I like SEO and that's why I use boringmarketing.com and that's why I invested in it. They're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30-day sprint with 100% money-back guarantee.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
Who does that nowadays? So check it out. Highly recommend boringmarketing.com. And so we've talked a lot about TikTok, but YouTube, do you do any sort of... competitive analysis on YouTube or you just don't really touch it?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
And you're able to make a premium on it because obviously, let's say you're buying, okay, Charizard is probably a bad example because there's some Charizards that go for like $30,000. But there are like, I don't know, maybe it's a Squirtle or something like that, which you can put in, buy it for $20. It costs you $5 to make the case and you sell it for $75. What do you think?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
Wow, that's a hot take, dude.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
Yeah, that's a really hot take. I mean, first of all, the interesting thing is you don't even mention long form.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
And before we leave, I have to ask you, because you're the goat at this, besides format, if you're trying to create a TikTok audience, you're trying to create content that's going to land with people, how do you do it? Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
Beautiful. I appreciate it, my man. Where can people get to know the internet's creative director more?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
Anytime, my man. Come back soon.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
So my initial reaction to that is, well, if you're building a luxury product, which this is, do you need to have utility? That was my initial reaction. And then you started talking about the colognes, which, by the way, I had no idea that cologne is like, you know, popular right now.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
Exactly. We can unpack that later in the video. So what you're kind of saying is, you know, utility doesn't need to be like your standard utility around just covering the phone, but it could mean like, how do you put utility and marry that to what's happening in the cultural zeitgeist? Is that what you're saying? Exactly.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
Don't tell anyone, but I've got 30 plus startup ideas that could make you millions. And I'm giving them away for free. These aren't just random guesses. They're validated concepts from entrepreneurs who've built $100 million plus businesses. I've compiled them into one simple database. Compiled from hundreds of conversations I've had on my podcast.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
All right, new character unlocked. Oren, the internet's creative director. Welcome.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
But the main thing is most of these ideas don't need a single investor. Some cost nothing to start. I'm pretty much handing you a cheat sheet. The Idea Bank is your startup shortcut. Just click below to get access. Your next cash flowing business is waiting for you. Well, you know what's cool about this idea is When you think of... Okay, what's that brand? It's a men's cologne.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
I almost bought it and then I looked at the price and it was like $250 for a cologne. There's one... I think it starts with a C. Do you know what I'm talking about? I'm not sure. What's the... Cree or...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
Man, I'm excited to be here. Let's rip some ideas.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
I got it. I got it. I was close. I called it Cree, but it was really Creed. And I just like the first link that came up is it's a 12 Creed, $1,260 for, I don't know, like 12 hours.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
It's like the La Mer of Cologne.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
Yeah, exactly. So listen, if you're going to, I don't care how wealthy you are. If you're taking one spritz of that Creed, you're hoping that someone's like, wait, is that a, is that a Odo, you know, Aventus? You know, that's, but that's the problem with cologne is there's no easy way to share the status of your cologne.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
Okay, I want to run. This is a Startup Ideas podcast, so I'm going to run an idea by you. Anyone can take it. You can take it for all I care. And I want to workshop it and just get into your brain to see how you would take this idea and turn it into a cult brand. You with me? Let's roll. So here's the idea. I have a iPhone case. It's kind of actually kind of falling apart. It's just black.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
How do you look at a TikTok shop and see how much revenue they are doing?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
And so your buddy, you know... I don't know if you can say, but like what ballpark is he doing in revenue?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
And who else is... Because I'm fascinated, and I think a lot of people are fascinated with TikTok Shop. So how do you build a business on TikTok Shop? And who's doing it well? What... Are you following Goalie at all? No. Tell me about it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
It's not that interesting. I will say I used to just have no iPhone case and I would crack it and crack it and crack it. So I've given up, you know, for the people in the comment section who are going to be like, oh, you know, I can't believe he has an iPhone case. Can't believe he's one of those people like I've given up on it. You know, it's so interesting. You feel me on that?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
Dude, I actually love you. I... We have to unpack all of that. Cause I feel like there's to you, that's completely, uh, of course this is happening, you know, in my world, I'm like in the software world. So I don't like think about these things. You mentioned something at discord. I think you called it, uh,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Learn how to win on the internet in 28 min [tiktok shop, trends, building cult brands]
And then brands go and recruit in there. Explain exactly what it is.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
I appreciate you coming on here and lending your brain to get people to think bigger about startup ideas and spaces that you're interested in.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
Totally. Consumers is more glory in consumer. There's also something interesting about Like hitting your face against the dirt kind of like it hurts, but it also feels nice in a way. Like people who do consumer are sick like that. Yeah. You know what I mean?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
That's really kind of you to say. It's true. One part of the show I'm trying to do is people who might not have as much internet fame, bring them and give them the platform. Dude, you're a smart guy. Thank you. What's on your mind today?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
Okay, and going back to our AI agent world... I think a lot of people listening to this, they want to get their hands dirty. They see the opportunity. We're sharing all these products. They're like, yes, yes, this is cool, this is cool. But they don't know... Should I build a granola competitor? Should I build on top of one of these platforms?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
How should people think about what startup idea to pick? Do you have a framework for that? Why did you pick Sling versus the hundred other?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
I think that last part is probably the most important part. When I look back at all the products I worked on, the most successful products were the products that I I cared about the most, even though I didn't have high expectations that it was actually gonna work out.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
The ones that I actually was like, oh my God, there's a huge market opportunity here and I'm gonna sell it to Adobe and I'm trying to time something, that hasn't worked out for me personally. Quick ad break. Let me tell you about a business I invested in. It's called boringmarketing.com. So a few years ago, I met this group of people that were some of the best SEO experts in the world.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
They were behind getting some of the biggest companies found on Google. And the secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and AI that could help you outrank your competition. So for my own businesses, I wanted that. I didn't want to have to rely on Mark Zuckerberg. I didn't want to depend on ads to drive customers to my businesses. I wanted to rank high in Google.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
That's why I like SEO and that's why I use boringmarketing.com and that's why I invested in it. They're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30-day sprint with 100% money back guarantee. Who does that nowadays? So check it out. Highly recommend boringmarketing.com.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
In AI startup land, and also in financial services, it's an extremely competitive space. The smartest people in the world are going after this space. How much do you, as a product person, think about competition? When you're building out your product roadmap, are you mapping it to how the competitors work? How should people think about it?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
Um, I can probably, I can probably figure that out.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
Yeah, I mean, I agree. I think it's like like everything in life, balance is really important. And the way I think about it is I do keep tabs on competition and yeah, I I don't have a running list of what the competitors are doing, but I have a mental running list like I literally do in my head. I'm like, yeah, competitor X is doing Y. I look at their Twitter accounts. I follow them on Twitter.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
But I try not to get sucked in with, oh my God, they just launched this thing. It's really smart. Because you don't want to be a me too person product builder. For sure.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
A hundred percent. Okay. And yeah, You said you're going viral in Kenya. How do you think about, once you've built the product, getting people to the actual product? I know with Facebook, you attracted millions or hundreds of millions of people to the platform, directly or indirectly.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
If you're trying to build an AI startup, let's say, do you go and, like we've done, you map out the problem, you build a landing page. How do you think about, you build a product, how do you think about getting people to the actual product?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
So it's funny you bring this up. So I was writing this down for myself. Maybe I'll post this on my newsletter. But I was thinking about, okay, what's a framework for thinking about creating AI agents from a product perspective? So here's what I wrote down. A single clear action, instant feedback, Bounded decisions and zero friction.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
100%. Yeah, I started thinking about short form video and how do you like reverse engineer the viral TikTok? So building for mobile specifically or an AI startup, like thinking about, okay, I need to give something to this group of micro influencers that is going to get them to create a 30 second or 15 second clip that is going to go viral. So what is that product?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
And then reverse engineering that, that's been really helpful in terms of creating an AI startup that gets millions of views and downloads.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
I think I'm going to name this episode something around the framework for starting an AI startup. We've covered ideas and coming up with ideas. We covered some really cool startups like Granola and how they're doing it. We covered user acquisition. We've covered competition. What haven't we covered that we should? Pricing, monetization, how you make money.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
And that makes it a no-brainer offer, which is kind of the goal, right? I think so.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
So I wrote down smart agents that can actually think, that can understand what you mean, learn from mistakes, explain decisions, handle new situations. So then I wrote down, by the way, I wasn't planning on sharing this, so these are just some rough notes. So I was like, okay, how do you build a smart agent that is going to be valuable? Start with one action that matters, add LLM understanding,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
Are you of the belief to start, people say you can always go down on price, you can never go up. What's your thought on that?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
Yeah. And there's I mean, I remember Uber, for example, like when we first started using Uber and Uber and Lyft and SF when it first came out, it was like, well, not the black cars, but it was it was cheap. Like I remember, you know, they basically got us hooked on the product.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
And once we were hooked and we were in the network, then they were like, okay, let's see if we can charge 10% more, 20% more, 30% more. I think customers don't remember your pricing, they remember the value. I agree.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
And probably use AI to help figure that out too. For sure, for sure. I just have to ask, before we leave, I know you spent some time with Mark Zuckerberg. What do you think Mark Zuckerberg is thinking about with AI and this whole AI world? What's going through his mind?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
build tight feedback loops, learn from every interaction and expand slowly. What do you think about that?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
Mike, thanks for coming on. People, if you enjoyed this episode, please like, comment, subscribe so we know that you enjoy this type of stuff. I'll see you in the comment section. Mike, where can people get to know you better? My website is hudack.com and I'm mudack on Twitter and sling.money. Slink down money. We'll include both those in the description. And yeah, go check it out.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
Hope you learned something valuable. I know you did. And Mike, I'll see you soon. Sounds good. Thanks, Greg. Thank you. Cheers.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
Yeah, I mean, I shouldn't be sharing this because my team told me not to share this, but I can't help myself. Agencies are a really good business right now because it's super manual. It's humans doing things. It's in a particular niche. A good agency is focused on SaaS, FinTech. They're the best at just this one niche.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
And if you think about agencies, I wrote down in the same document, I was like, agencies, like agent, are the new agencies. So I think if I was trying to build an AI agent that I can sell to someone, of course we can come up with consumer ideas, but I'd probably start by just becoming a, I'd either build or buy an agency. Quick break in the pod to tell you a little bit about Startup Empire.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
So Startup Empire is my private membership where it's a bunch of people like me, like you, who want to build out their startup ideas. Now, they're looking for content to help accelerate that. They're looking for potential co-founders. They're looking for tutorials from people like me to come in and tell them, how do you do email marketing? How do you build an audience?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
How do you go viral on Twitter? All these different things. That's exactly what Startup Empire is. And it's for people who want to start a startup but are looking for ideas. or it's for people who have a startup, but just they're not seeing the traction that they need. So you can check out the link to startupempire.co in the description.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
Wait, hold on. Greenlight? I haven't heard of this. Let me pull this up.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
Let me share my screen real quick and we can learn together.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
It looks beautiful. I've played with a bunch of these apps and I don't know, they haven't really stuck with me. Just because, like you, the product needs to be tight. But this looks worth trying. It's great.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
So today we have a very special guest. I would say on my Mount Rushmore of product people, I think I only have two people that come to mind. One is Scott Belsky, who I've had on the pod before, chief product officer of Adobe. He advised my last company. Super, super smart guy. And the other, way less known in the internet world, but people who know know, Mike Udak.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
Yeah. Like, right. You look at it and it's like, So basically, for people listening not on YouTube, it's AI phone calls, basically. And you tell Blend your use case, sales, customer support, operations. It's in any language, which is crazy. And you can pick your voice, teach it like an employee, so there's intelligence there, and it integrates with your tools.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
So you can integrate it with Salesforce or whatever. I have a friend... who contacted a company like Bland and was like, I want to build the Bland for Germany, for example. I'm making that country up. And I think that there's a huge opportunity in taking some of these businesses, partnering with them, and being like, I'll just do your Canadian arm. And people think, oh, that's so small.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
That's such a small way of thinking. But like, Well Simple, which is the Robin Hood of Canada, is still a $3.5 billion company. There's opportunity in geographies. Yeah, for sure.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
Yeah. And you could, I mean, you could just open up, for example, Claude and say, you know, list me all the pain points in social media management.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
And it'll give you some ideas. Yeah. So I'll just read a few. Content creation and scheduling, consistently producing engaging high-quality content across multiple platforms, managing content callers and approval workflows, community management, so managing crisis communication, negative feedback. Each of these could be multiple agents. For sure.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The framework for building AI startups from a product design genius
I know you've built consumer. Earlier in your career, you were really consumer. Blip TV back in the day, which I think is now owned by Disney. Facebook, can't get more consumer than that. You were at Facebook, I think running their ads.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
If you don't know what a faceless YouTube channel is, it's a YouTube channel where there's no creator, you don't see any person, and it's somebody doing a voiceover. And what's interesting about these, I didn't know these were basically businesses, and they're just pumping out this content.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
That seems to be the vibe, right?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Should we do almost like, you know what I'd love to do actually at some time would be a video. Maybe this could be online or it could be live or whatever it is, but I'd love to do a video with you where we start on a Friday and we have to make X amount of dollars by like 72 hours later.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Or we are just absolutely shitty entrepreneurs. But I'd love to also watch videos like that. I see people posting, oh, I helped a guy make blah, blah, blah in 72 hours. But whenever I watch the video, they don't actually make money. They always just ask their friends to give the money. But I'd want to have a video, me and you, where we actually try an idea like this.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
And the idea would be to make... $10,000 from strangers. And it has to also not fall apart. Like the second the video ends, you know, it should run for a little bit, but just to prove the, prove the point. So you would, so I, I don't know most of these tools and that's a different, so the cool thing about this is like, For me, the idea and the concept part would be super exciting.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
The actual execution, that's where I would want to have the actual execution and someone going in and doing these things. That's where I would probably pull someone from Fiverr to actually pull these tools together and give me the end result. How long do you think it would take from the idea to having a video on YouTube?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Yeah. I think that, so choosing the niche, you would use this gummy search for it, or like, would you have a product in mind first that you would want to have at the end of the niche? Like, for example, I don't know this brick, we talked about it, the brick that bricks your phone, having a channel all about digital detox. And would you start with the product in mind or start with the niche in mind?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Without my phone. Dude, I do get that phone anxiety. When I go climbing, like bouldering, I leave my phone in like a locker. And this sounds really weird. So I was taking my Apple Watch with me. So that if somebody calls me, they can get through to my Apple Watch. Now I don't. But I basically tell everyone, hey, call this climbing hall if you need me. And then I feel calm.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
But yeah, there is something brain damaging about getting obsessive about always being contactable. I even got... a dumb phone for my apartment so that everybody who knows me can get through to me if my iPhone is just like somewhere in the apartment where I can't find it. So I feel more calm. It's a problem.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
No one's ever called, obviously. Yeah, they're like, hey, can you find a tall, skinny guy with glasses? Literally every other climber looks like that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
So I, I ran with that and I found One or two things that I think could be pretty interesting. One, again, like a lot of the things that I find are not because I'm researching for this podcast. It's because I'm researching it for myself. And one of the things that, you know, I have a YouTube channel. Our YouTube channel is one of the best ways for us to get qualified leads for our business.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Yeah. I'm going to do. Yeah. But, but totally separate, uh, totally separate topic. So you would start with a lifestyle. So like how you would write this out is I am targeting people who do this thing or people who are interested in this thing. How, like, how would you phrase it?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Of the climbing community.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
another niche that I find really interesting so obviously I'm very into the video game niche I just want to give you another example just to also show you that they're not all the bros if you go to the channel and again I don't know anything about these people they might they might have videos that are like inappropriate or something I don't know but Zvoke Z-E-E-V-O-K-E he's like an Elden Ring lore content channel faceless again um
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
And dude, I watch this channel. And now I'm also realizing I watch a lot of faceless channels, especially around specific niches. I mean, video gaming is an entire niche, but Elden Ring is a niche by itself.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Which is big enough for most individuals to take care of just one video game.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Um... something has happened in my brain where I'm like, now I'm kind of, now it all makes sense, I guess. But I personally, so for me, I think the faceless videos that are acceptable
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
when the person really writes the script themselves, when it's content that they're not stealing from other people, where they're actually coming up with their own interpretation of the thing, like when someone's talking about Elden Ring lore, and of course they're reading through the wikis and they're reading through the lore in the game, but they're giving their own take on it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
But I'm always looking to like, what else can you do at YouTube? And I stumbled across this notion board and I sent it to you. It's called Six Figure Channel List. And it's a notion board full of different channels on YouTube. And they're kind of ordered by six figure channels and seven figure channels.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I'm not a fan of the purely AI generated voices and scripts that people are just using to pump out as much revenue as possible. But yeah, like the channels that I watch, I wouldn't have labeled them as faceless YouTube channels. I wasn't even thinking about it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I wasn't thinking about this. I didn't know about this niche at all.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Exactly. Yeah. I mean, the faceless thing is like I went to my my girlfriend's YouTube like on her TV. I opened up YouTube and like the almost every video that's recommend to her recommended to her. She likes, you know, she's into personal development, learning about consciousness, all of that kind of stuff. And I was like, wow, every one of these thumbnails is AI generated.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
And when I click into it, it's always like some very distant voice. Oh, my God, I found a really good one as well. This sorry, I mean, I don't know how your team wants to edit this, but I want to show you an example of an amazing one. It has minimal personality, but really great kind of infographics, even though very, very simple. It's the guy, he does like one video a year.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I don't know if you know, he did this Pentagon puzzle thing. This is it, cracking the uncrackable code. What's it called? Jim Sanborn. I'm just realizing now that this is a faceless. Oh yeah, the channel is called Lemino, L-E-M-M-I-N-O. Check that channel out. So this is like the definition of a good faceless YouTube channel.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
And I recently watched this one called The Unbreakable Cryptos Code has 4.1 million views. Kennedy Assassinations, 11 million views. his videos are great. I would never have put like a generic stamp on it saying, Oh yeah, this is just some crap to make money. Um, and he's, I guess making money with a combination of Patreon and YouTube, but yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I don't know if it's lame. I mean, it's still like, I know your audience is here to make millions, but if I was making like 25 K a month from being able to make like videos that I think people will enjoy, like, I would be okay with that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I would be okay with having it as... If you're saying, especially if some people are still working at a company, having a side hustle like that, I think is pretty cool. But of course, I also didn't know about this until this week. So you're so much more integrated into it. And the product approach is probably more... But if you're not good at selling stuff... It's not about selling stuff.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
And the idea here, or what's special about these channels, is that they're called faceless YouTube channels. And I want to give credit to facelesschannelacademy.com. Actually, it was a guy. Who's the guy? He looks like Cody Schneider a little bit.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Oh my God, Internet Historian is also a faceless YouTube channel.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
They're just taking also world events like, here's what happens to your body while you're having sex. Here's how the SEAL team took down Osama bin Laden minute by minute. How they caught Ted Bundy. What happens when you die, which is a seven minute video, which has 26 million views. The worst punishment in the history of mankind. The worst torture. What happens to your body when you smoke weed?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Evil punishments designed to be worse than death. I do want to watch that, actually. Oh, yeah. America's strangest serial killer. Man. Could two people repopulate the earth? I guess you're just looking at also Quora questions that get a lot of heat and just making a video of it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Yeah, it's not going to work. I mean, obviously, a lot of people know about this kind of thing. So you need some creativity. You need some level of intelligence or something to make it work. You can't just be like, it's not like you could just say, hey, chat GTP, make me a faceless YouTube channel and make it successful. It's not going to work.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I want to give credit to Cody Schneider, even though it isn't him. It's like the video, whatever the guy who runs the business faceless.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
All right. That was my, I mean, I don't know if it's a startup idea, but I'm thinking of adding elements of this to my, like, I do want to do a video game channel. I don't want to be the face of it. People in the comments are going to be like, yeah, Jonathan, you said that 10 times in this episode already. I don't want to be the face of it. I honestly could do an entire Elden Ring channel.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I could do an entire Elden Ring or general video game art channel. I want to kind of do that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Because I didn't know about this fucking shit. And now I do. Now I actually might.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Don't do it, guys. Can we not post it? Don't do it. Let's not air this episode because I actually want to do it now. That's true. That is so true. Let's use a really crappy thumbnail and title so no one watches it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
It's worth the experiment anyway.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Whatever his name is. So I came across his video. Then he had this whole notion board. And by the way, I'll give you my first impression of faceless YouTube channels. If you don't know what a faceless YouTube channel is, it's a YouTube channel where there's no creator, you don't see any person, and it's somebody doing a voiceover. The most famous ones that you know are Daily Dose of Internet.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Yeah, that is the worst case.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I'm deeply appealed by this idea. I, there's a lot of appeal.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Yeah, the downside of starting a real YouTube channel is that you then have to deal with... Like, with your own face on it is that you have to learn to deal with trolls, like, talking about you and all that kind of stuff. Whereas the downside of starting a faceless YouTube channel is... I like that I could be a bit more... uh, personally detached from the outcome.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
And then I could just say, okay, this episode didn't work well. Okay. Like for example, when an episode of this podcast that I am on doesn't work out well, I'm like, fuck, like I didn't do a good job. And my, my, I am here doing like, it's me. Right. And in your comments, someone will write, don't put this guy on your podcast again.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
And no matter how long I've been making content, I still don't like that. Right. And it's It's like you're putting yourself out there and you know someone's going to shit on you no matter what. But I enjoy the art of making content. And so it feels like a more personally separate way where I can just think about it as an art project and as something that I'm building, like designing a website.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
There's something more mechanical about it that I actually enjoy.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Totally. You know what I mean? Or like my accent or all these things. I've been on the internet for so many years. I'm still not used to it. I still don't like it. And so that's what would hold me personally back from making more content online. But yeah, there are so many things I want to talk about. I just don't want to be there having to film myself.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I want to be able to do it in a more nerdy way, like making the visuals like, you know, I like to go into like a more nerdy, smelly mode to make things sometimes. That sounds perfect to me. But yeah, maybe we've dragged this on too long, but hopefully people. I don't think so.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
First time you've heard of it, Greg. I messaged Greg. This is just some behind the scenes. I do want to bring something interesting to the podcast. And I messaged Greg this stuff. And I was like, please tell me you don't know about this already. But he did, of course. Greg already knows about all this stuff. There's no way to surprise him.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Everyone, hello, this is your, what is it? Hello, welcome to your daily dose of internet. That guy, you know that guy?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I have another idea.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Totally separate to this.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Um, or do you have an idea you want to put in or do you, or do you think we should just end it with this focused idea?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I think one topic is pretty good. I think one topic is pretty good. Yeah. That's cool, dude. I'm I let us know in the comments, if you're thinking of starting one of these, I really hope one thing I do want to say at the end is I really hope people, what people do not take away from this is,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I hope the lesson they do not take away is I'm going to fill up YouTube with absolute dog shit content, copy other people's stuff and just flood it with even with more crap and like hack the system and hack the SEO. And it's just all low quality stuff. I think there's.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
That could work in the short term, but I think the long-term winners here are going to be the people who put a lot of love into it. And even though you're not in the videos and even though you're getting help, maybe with script writers and doing the visuals, I do think that people who can come up with really interesting concepts, find a really interesting niche and then write well.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
And then I almost feel like it's just a replacement for writing blog articles. It's like people want to watch blog articles now. You are not maybe a videographer. You're maybe not a good presenter. And so instead of you now writing, what you're doing is making this type of faceless video work.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
What does he say? Is it that?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
welcome to your daily dose of internet. Uh, so that, then there's Kurzgesagt, the, I think German channel, uh, which does animations. And then there's a ton of fucking absolute dog shit, uh, out there, but they, in between, there's also like some like interesting ones like charisma on command. Um, You've seen tons of them.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Did you notice?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
We deeply love you. Deeply. Hey, look out for that Elden Ring channel. I'm going to do an Elden Ring channel, a Jet Set Radio channel, a Shenmue channel, a Choo Choo Rocket channel, a Crazy Taxi channel. It's going to be too much.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I love Crazy Taxi. So good. I was obsessively addicted to Crazy Taxi.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Probably when I was 14. Yeah. You know there's a remake or there's a new version. An open world, massively multiplayer online version of Crazy Taxi is coming out.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
If they don't have the Offspring and Bad Religions music in there, I'm not playing it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
You got to race me. You got to race me to making that channel guys. All right.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
If you go to this Notion board, I don't know if you'll share it, you're going to notice a lot of these. And what's interesting about these, I never even paid attention. I didn't even know what these things were. And I am obsessed with YouTube. I didn't know these were basically businesses where people are using people from Fiverr to write scripts, AI to write scripts, narrators from Fiverr.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
So it's not even the same person narrating all the time. and they're just pumping out this content. Charisma on Command is a very good example. Not necessarily saying this person is using AI or anything, but it's just like, okay, here's a thing that people want to know about charisma and human interaction. Here's a celebrity interaction that we can break down.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
And I'm going to narrate this celebrity interaction that gets unbelievable amounts of views. And of course, then it makes money. Charisma on Command in particular makes seven figures apparently per year. But there's a lot of other very niche things in there, like, for example, survival, how to survive. Yeah, there's just so many different things in there. It's really interesting.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
History seems to be a big thing, like talking about the Black Plague, or I just watched one about the White Death, which is tuberculosis. There's daily dose of football. There's so many different things. There's body cam channels. You've probably come across them, but you might not have realized that they're part of this movement on YouTube called faceless YouTube channels.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Now, why I find this interesting, again, there's tons of crap out there, and I don't like the idea of polluting YouTube with absolute dog shit, like crappy, stupid AI generated scripts that are useless. But a couple of these are actually interesting to watch. A couple of these are entertaining. A couple of these are actually kind of cool. And those are the ones that stand out.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
And those are the ones that get the most views. And what I love about it is I really think a lot of people would love to make content. So for example, I'd love to make some video game content, but I don't personally want to be in the content. Like I don't want to be, you know, trolled. I don't like actually to be a personality on the internet. I do it almost as like a...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
a necessity, basically, because making content is a cool way to get clients and to sell products. But I love the idea of being able to make channels that are purely based on other footage, maybe animation, maybe just taking interviews from other people and commenting on them. And I've been spending the last four or five days looking at these channels and thinking, how can I apply this to myself?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
And Yeah, I think there's a way to wade through the absolute bullshit of the 90% of these channels and make actually good versions of them. So yeah, that's my first idea is looking into this idea of faceless YouTube channels. And now that I've started going down the rabbit hole, my entire...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
YouTube recommendations is full of different content creators talking about how to make faceless YouTube channels. So it's a super, yeah, super interesting concept. Didn't know about it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
It's so cool. Yeah. And again, like I see the DTC bro kind of thing and I'm not interested in being that. But for example, I've always wanted to start a video game channel. Again, I want to do this nostalgia hacking thing. I want to talk about Halo. I want to talk about Jet Set Radio. I want to talk about the Dreamcast.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I want to talk about Shenmue, but I've always been, what's really helped me back is being a personality is like, People get very attached to internet personalities and get very weird about that. I have no interest in that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
And now that I've learned about this faceless YouTube channel thing and found a couple of gaming faceless channels, I'm like, yeah, this would actually be a viable route for me to build a media empire around nostalgic gaming without having to be the face of it. maybe not even having to be the voice of it, just writing the scripts and coming up with the concepts and having someone else voice it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I honestly just never thought about it, but it's so obvious now.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Using an AI Joe Rogan's voice?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I'm back. I can't get rid of you.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I always come back. Yeah. You know, I've been watching the episodes of this podcast that do well. And you've also been messaging me. And generally people just want ideas. And as the name of the podcast is called, Podcast Ideas Podcast. What seems to do pretty well is things that one person can do that can make potentially a lot of money and doesn't require a whole team to set up.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
And there's some really interesting faceless channels that I've come across as well. This week, I came across a channel. I don't know if you know it called Wormwood. And they're doing something like what you were just talking about, except in the art space. It's like an absurdist art project thing almost, basically. Bee Jocko is the one that I just laugh my ass off.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
It's a video that has 285,000 views. The voice is AI. I do think the script is a mixture of AI and written by the person. I don't know anything about this person, but the... Everything about it is just like mind bending and super interesting and super cool. And again, when I was looking at these things, I was like, yeah, I would never have put the label.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
We on this podcast, me and you now are saying that this thing is called a faceless YouTube channel. The general public doesn't know anything about this stuff. I didn't know about it until like a couple of days ago. And I think there again, I don't think you should be joining the bros on a race to the bottom.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I think that if you have interesting concepts and especially if you can write, which is like a crazy thing, if you can write, then you can make a YouTube channel now because more and more people are expecting to not have to see the person who's actually talking. So I think writers are going to have a killer advantage here.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Um, the people who don't have to use AI to, to create, to generate the scripts. Um, but if you just have like great concepts and interesting ideas, take a look at that Wyrmwood channel, take a look at the Bijaco video. It's hilarious. It's really funny. It's really cool. And it's totally demented and insane. And it's in a completely different direction.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
It couldn't be less like the crypto bro guys you're talking about. It's a completely different world.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
So I've never found this. I've never seen this before.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I'm looking at this now.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Why are all AI websites purple? Is it just me or are all of them purple? I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying, why is everything purple?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
I just brainstormed with one of the smartest people I know about 20 plus dating app ideas. It was a live brainstorm. She had this insight. I opened up a Google Doc. All of a sudden, one idea, three ideas, seven ideas. This is a playbook for how to come up with 20 plus dating app ideas. One of the most proven ways to make money on the internet. I think you'll enjoy this episode.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
So Lox Club is interesting. It's basically Raya or The League, but for Jewish people.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
So more of a high-end... more of like a high-end version like a premium version and i believe they also launched uh recently one for asians so they're basically owned by the same company that's cool yeah i think that's pretty smart yeah and is it like in person online both i think it's i think it's online but they i think they must do a lot of events yeah
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
But I think just going premium, like looking at, basically going through, so going back to our document, it's like, what's the insight here? It's like go through Match.com and IAC, which is a huge multi-billion dollar conglomerate that owns a lot in dating apps. IAC's portfolio. And just create premium versions of what you see on their website. So if we pull up Match.com's portfolio, Match Group.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
Okay. Did you see my screen?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
It's like A through Z. Literally A through Z. Asian people meet. Baby boomer people meet. Black people meet. Catholic people meet. Divorce people meet. India meat, Italian people meat, J people meat, etc., etc. You get the idea. Oh my God. Do you see this? Veggie people meat?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
Just go through this and just build premium versions of this. Do the league pricing and...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
Totally. And the beauty about some of these businesses is they know how much they'll pay per user, per multiple of revenue. So it's like when you're ready to sell this business, it's not, oh my God, I got to go run this crazy process. It's like, no, you're doing 2 million ARR. They pay 8x, whatever, I'm making this up. And you just call them up. You meet them in their office in New York.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
You get an offer. You take it and that's it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
I like it. Cool. This idea. I think it's a good one to me. Like we have a thing on the show. Is it, is it a sip or a spit? And a sip means good. And spit means not good. And it's a huge, it's, it's a sip. This is like, it's validated. It's worked. I think the timing is good. The other idea. Okay. Can I, can I make this idea even crazier?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
Okay, for people who don't know what The League is, maybe explain what it is.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
People are going to hate this one, but it's an opportunity for someone to do. You just go through that list that we showed on Match.com and instead of creating a dating app, which is a bit more complex, you have to create liquidity, network effects, and you target locally first. It's just a bit more complex in terms of the user acquisition.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
I think the idea is you create...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
yeah i think uh quick ad break let me tell you about a business i invested in it's called boringmarketing.com so a few years ago i met this group of people that were some of the best seo experts in the world they were behind getting some of the biggest companies found on google And the secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and AI that could help you outrank your competition.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
So for my own businesses, I wanted that. I didn't want to have to rely on Mark Zuckerberg. I didn't want to depend on ads to drive customers to my businesses. I wanted to rank high in Google. That's why I like SEO and that's why I use boringmarketing.com and that's why I invested in it. They're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30-day sprint with 100% money back guarantee.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
Who does that nowadays? So check it out. Highly recommend boringmarketing.com. Let's just use Locks Club as an example or the Jewish niche. It's like if we believe that AI girlfriends and AI boyfriends are going to be a thing and we don't have to believe it. Like I can pull it up on Google Trends right now.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
I agree with you. I agree. And that's why maybe people listening don't work on it. You don't have to. I personally wouldn't want to work on this, but I do think that there's a huge financial opportunity to go and make millions of dollars doing this. Do I want to do it? Absolutely not. Here's the Google Trends data for AI Boyfriend, and charts are not nicer than this.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
Yeah, I use Glimpse. It's like a layer on top of... I'm not affiliated or anything like that. It's just a layer on top of Google Trends that adds a few more related trends or what are people talking about on different channels. It also just has these topics, related topics, and it gets you in these... I'll just click into... I know what Character AI is, but let's say I didn't.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
I'd click into Character AI... And then it would bring me in this rabbit hole and it just allows me to get really smart about a topic that I'm trying to learn about.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
Yeah. Well, I think, uh, You have amazing insights. You go out in the world, you get these insights. And I think a lot of people get these insights. Wouldn't it be cool if there was a League 2.0? I'm sure a lot of people think about things like that. Whenever I come up with an insight, my next step is I start writing it down like I showed on the one pager.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
I just get all my ideas out as quick as possible. And then I'll look in trends. I'll look at Reddit. I'll look at social to validate what I'm trying to build here. Because the way I think about it is I don't want to waste a year of my life or hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, building something. And this is really helpful. So point here, AI boyfriend, trending, AI girlfriend.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
I don't even need to type it. I know it's going to be...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
I actually think it might... Who knows? Let's check. I think it's going to be... I think it's going to be as popular.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
Um, so I can't, I actually don't have the paid glimpse tool, but I mean, it looks pretty, they're both spiking. They're both spiking. They're both similar. They're both similar.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
She is. Shout out to Amanda. She's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. She is awesome. So, um,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
point is ai girlfriends ai boyfriends for italians indians jewish people huge opportunity we don't want to do it but someone could do it somebody could do it and i'm sure they will do it yeah um and please don't shout me out when you do yeah me either um okay so is that a wrap on the league 2.0 that's a wrap on that let's do one more idea
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
Like covered you max on the show.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
And is, would it be like something like, uh, a pendant or you, you wear it and it's listening or what are you thinking?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
I mean, maybe it is helpful in the human improvement because the alternative is nothing or the alternative is anonymous apps that are very hurtful to people. People put up you know, these polls and they get sometimes really, really stuff.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
Yeah. I do like the insight around, um, report cards for riz basically that's the idea yeah um i think report cards for xyz in general is like a huge opportunity um people people constantly want to know are they doing good are they doing bad you know we we spend the first 21 years of our lives if we go to university and 18 years of our lives, let's say, going to school, getting report cards.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
Did you do good? Did you do bad? And then, yes, we do have performance reviews at work and stuff like that, but I think people love report cards. They like to know how they're doing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
Yeah. I like it. And if you're... Let's say you had this insight. I know you don't look at data and trends, but where do you go from here, from idea to actually taking it to the next level?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
Hundreds of dollars a month.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
How low price? What are you thinking?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
I think, by the way, under $5 apps and stuff like that, there's a huge...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
Before we end, do you have a question for me?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
That's okay. No, that's, I like that. That's the perfect, you know, um, I can answer, I can answer, here's how I'll answer it. Okay. So we've been building audiences and communities in a bunch of different verticals.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
And I practice what I preach. I really, really do. I am trying to figure out which tools can I build for these individual audiences that ideally I can get some SaaS level multiple for some of these businesses and just be in the workflow of people. Be in the daily lives of people. Um, you know, I don't love monthly recurring revenue in the sense of a whole thing on this, by the way. Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
I mean, I mean, I love multi recurring revenue.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
Okay, this is crazy. So... I just Googled, how much does the league membership cost? You'll pay anywhere from $99 a week to $24.99. That's $2,499 a month for a membership of the league.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
So yeah. Expand on that. Tell me more.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
And I think that's a bit of an unfair advantage is if you create a product and you just shift the business model. People are doing subscription, you're now pay what you want. Now there's certain businesses that, of course, there's monthly costs. So it might not make sense for every business and that's fine. But I do think, going back to prioritizing tools,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
I'm kind of like, what are tools that I can prioritize that I don't have to do monthly recurring? Because I think that they're more interesting to people.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
I mean, Ben Tossall from Ben's Bites. I just want to pull it up real quick. So he has a AI tutorial, learn AI, basically community and content course thing. He could have easily charged, I don't know, 50 bucks a month, but I'm pretty sure it's like one time payment. Yeah, it's $250 one time.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
It's content. It is content. So it's not SaaS.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
I don't have a SaaS one on top of my head, but they do exist. Someone in the comment section, throw some of those. Yeah. But they're out there and they're coming more and more every day.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
I think one of the... From what I remember, one of the... interesting things that the league did was they did connect with your LinkedIn.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
different parts of like the culture that are still very resonant and it doesn't just need to be like you know a group async podcast basically yes yeah so i think really smart growth tactic and insight which is live is pretty untapped um obviously it's tapped in some niches like gaming and stuff like that but there's whatever it is you're doing whatever it is you're working on
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
think about exploring new novel formats. Live is really interesting. And there is a way that you can... I was doing lives before. I did a bunch of lives where people would come on to my show and I'd be like, tell me your business and let me break it down for you. And it was really fun. And I will do that again. But my point is...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
It isn't easy to get started, but once I started doing it like four or five times, I, you know, it got a lot easier. So don't give up in the first time.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
Couldn't agree more. If you go back to old episodes of this podcast, I'm in the first episode, please don't because you can see how unhappy I am. You can see that I'm just trying to make it work. And sometimes you have to do that because on the other side of it could be something amazing. But the podcast, it was called Where It Happens. It was highly produced, which is not my vibe at all.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
I literally just pulled up a Google Doc and we just started jamming. That to me was like, that's fun to me. So I think asking yourself, what would this look like if it were to be fun in terms of content creation is a really important question that people don't ask themselves enough.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
We'll put the links in the YouTube description. Cool.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
A hundred percent. Um, let's make that comment section on YouTube thriving. Thanks again for coming on and I'll see you later.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
can you list 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 status symbols that are more modern internet culture type status symbols? And the reason I say this is because I think people can actually go and create the league for insert status symbols.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
Don't tell anyone, but I've got 30 plus startup ideas that could make you millions. And I'm giving them away for free. These aren't just random guesses. They're validated concepts from entrepreneurs who've built $100 million plus businesses. I've compiled them into one simple database. compiled from hundreds of conversations I've had on my podcast.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
Lovely to have you here. You're probably one of my favorite follows on Twitter because you're always putting out creative ideas. So I had to have you for the Startup Ideas podcast. It was only right.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
But the main thing is, most of these ideas don't need a single investor. Some cost nothing to start. I'm pretty much handing you a cheat sheet. The Idea Bank is your startup shortcut. Just click below to get access. Your next cash-flowing business is waiting for you. I want to try something new. I've never done this on the show ever. And I don't know why you're making me want to do it right now.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
But I am going to share my screen.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
Yeah, we'll jam on that. So what I want to do here is I want to create a mini one-pager for this idea. So... Basically, I buy your insight. What is the insight? And by the way, if you're listening to this on audio, check it out on video. On YouTube, I'll try to explain it. I'll try to say what I'm typing out. The insight is basically, the league was dope.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
There was something that was working with the league. They ended up selling for millions. I don't know if we know the exact... 30-ish.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
And they didn't raise a lot of money.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
Their insight at the time, I think, was go niche, go premium... And I really do think that LinkedIn Connect was an interesting filter. Ended up charging, what did we say?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
Hundreds a month up to, I think it was $24.99 a month. So completely zapped the business model. So this is really interesting. If you're a match group and you have a competitor charging this amount of money per month, you might want to acquire this. Because whenever you completely change the business model, that's interesting to someone who does acquisitions.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
So then it's like, okay, so here's the idea. I can't write. Here we go. Here's the idea. So what other... Oh, okay. What... is a list of status symbols that exist today in 2024 and beyond. YC, you mentioned. I think it's interesting.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
Totally. Okay. So I think there, there, there might be, you know, these are things that might work, right? Like when you're creating an idea doc, like the idea, you know, you, what you really want to say is just like, I think these are hypotheses. This might work. It might not work. This, this is the insight, you know?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
So I, I do, I do think that that's, it's worth, it's worth putting in there and it's like a TBD. We'll, you know, in the future we'll, we'll go explore. You had a really, really, really good insight, which is people who... How did you describe it?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
Yeah, that'd be, and you, maybe you can play like a, make a game of that too. You know, it's like, I only want to date people who, you know, Elon Musk follows or something like that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
Yes, I think that's right. I think that's right. Um, what, uh, you know, I'm married by the way, so I don't know.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
Very cool. So let's start with ideas.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
So I mean, mid amount of followers, like that was supposed to be Raya in the beginning. Um, Whereas like you needed a certain amount of followers basically. And you connected with your Instagram. Like what was, what was Raya? Raya was basically the league, but for like more celebrity. Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
Totally. Why now? Why should this business be created now? Well, it's easier than ever to create software. So it's basically cheap to launch a dating app, whereas it used to cost a couple million bucks.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app
Yeah, I think that's, I think that's right. I think that's right. So here, here's like, here's, this is what I start with, by the way, when I come up with an idea, it's literally this.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
It sounds like you're doing a very manual process in terms of responding to influencers, reaching out to influencers. There's probably a lot of ways that you can automate a lot of it. Especially with AI, you can just feed a list of, here's my niche and here's the 100 influencers and hit them up every week with
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
or every two weeks with an email saying, hey, are you willing to, your price is X, we're willing to pay you half X. Here's one more idea. There's one more idea. I mean, every idea births another idea is the issue, is my constant issues. I'm constantly having, when I come up with an idea, I'm like, oh, that's a good idea, or that's a bad idea, but you know, Oh, what if we change this?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
And Oh, that could do this, you know? So there's, that's the idea maze. That's why they call it the maze. And yeah, I'm definitely always in it. But yeah, I love that. I think a lot of people go towards ads as a, they're just, it's just the easiest way, you know, it's so simple to set up an ad campaign and,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
But I do think that the micro-influencers, particularly when you're reaching out to them, there's a lot of alpha there. Not sure how long that alpha is going to last, that arbitrage is going to last, because as more and more marketplaces come up, the prices, I'd imagine, end up becoming more visible. It's kind of like how real estate was.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
in real, you know, today in real estate, you know, you have the MLS. So you have basically a database of all the different, at least in North America. Um, I don't know how it works in Turkey, but, um, In North America, you have this system and it's basically, you can set up alerts and you can see everything that's in the system.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
But back in the day, when things weren't online, you might have seen a building for sale and they listed it at 200,000 and it was really worth 600,000. But because they didn't have access to the data... It was wildly underpriced. It was a mispriced asset. And I think you're starting to see the same thing with that kind of concept. We're in that era with influencers right now.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
Not everything is available. Actually, we're in that area specifically with micro-influencers. In influencers, mega-influencers, I feel like there's very little mispriced attention. But when it comes to smaller creators and smaller accounts, there is a ton of opportunity to get something that's worth $1,000 for $200. Yeah. I mean, I was just...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. I think the supply of... creators and influencers is going up and up. And especially with faceless YouTube channels and faceless accounts in general, meme pages, if the ability to create content becomes a lot easier, then more content exists, meaning more competition for eyeballs, which means that the monopoly that creators have become smaller and smaller.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
That's why I think right now is such a beautiful time to be creating products. And I don't know, like I said, I don't know how long this lasts, but it's beautiful because, as you said, number one, it's cheaper than ever to create. There's a mispriced influencer and creator opportunities. And number three, there's the ability to use
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
AI to enhance support and systematize and automate a lot of content. So you have these three things and it's just a beautiful time to be building. I want to segue to your and talk about ideas around directories, because when I think of directories, to me, you're like the directory king.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
And I just want you to talk about why are you building directories, and do you have any specific ideas that you can give away around directories?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
Yeah. So people are bought in. I mean, I don't know how you listen to that and aren't bought in. I think the idea around people, there's so much... and so much content that people just want a trusted source makes sense to, I think, a lot of people. And we talk about directories like, oh yeah, it's been around for the last few years.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
But the reality is, since the internet existed, directories have been a thing. Organizing information. From the first day. It's not the first day. And you have publicly traded companies Angie, which was formerly called Angie's List, does billion three in revenue. So big businesses that basically are just databases of curated content trusted people and people are willing to pay for it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
So that's what I like about directories too. I mean, it's proven, it's trusted. And you said the magic words, which is, it started to get uncool. If something started to get uncool, what does that mean if you're listening to this? It means if it's uncool, there's arbitrage. There's opportunity to come in and find something that's mispriced and do something. So yes. Now, We're bought in.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
What directory ideas do you have for us?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
So is the idea there that, I'm going to go find validated English directories and then I'm just going to apply, let's say French, I'm going to apply my language, French, to it and then localize it to, for example, France and Canada and Senegal and French-speaking countries. Is that the idea? Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
Yeah. I mean, you're talking to a guy. I mean, I'm literally sitting in a place where 94% of the people here where I'm sitting speak French as their first language. So, you know, there are... The American POV is always focused on America. It's such a big market. And it's true in a lot of ways. It is such a big market and it's an amazing market.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
But that doesn't mean that with what's happening around the ease to create directories and creating new tools, and we talked about audiences and stuff like that, why not just take something that's working and apply it to a local market? I think it makes a lot of sense. And again, this is not something that we're reinventing. Do you remember Rocket Internet? Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
yeah yeah exactly yeah right those those guys in germany that basically would look at popular silicon valley startups that raised a ton of money and be like okay great ebay is popping off in the US. Let's go create the eBay for North Africa. It was a brilliant idea. I think their downfall a little bit was that they went public. But the idea of rocket internet, cash flowing makes a lot of sense.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
I think that's a huge idea. So this is a really, John, I hope you know, you're given a really good idea over here.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
Absolutely. So you were saying before I got really excited about that idea that you had a second idea around directories. What was that?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
Yeah, and people will pay for growth is the other thing that people don't talk about, which is if you're able to generate customers for a startup, people are willing to basically share in the revenues. It's a revenue split, basically. So I think that what sort of prompt could you give to people in terms of... You know, how do you come up with an idea for, you know, in the space?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
So what would be an example prompt that you'd use with ChatGPT?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
Well, I think what it is, is great entrepreneurs bet heavily when the odds are stacked in their favor. So what you're doing, the process that you're mentioning is pretty methodical. There's a lot of steps associated with it. So it's less creative in that sense. It's less, I'm taking a blank canvas and I'm drawing something beautiful and putting it out into the world.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
And it's more like a science experiment. But what it does is when you use things like Google Keyword Planner is it reduces your risk and allows you to build something when the odds are stacked in your favor. You know that with a certain percentage
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
of probability that this is going to hit some level of success and of course it's going to be a numbers game so just like you know betting it's just you have to i don't think and correct me if i'm wrong i don't think that you're going to hit chat chat gpt what are high search terms uh directory stuff and then you pick the first one and it happens to you know
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
I think this is something that you have to apply a portfolio approach. Try multiple of them. But I think the key is you're reducing risk along the way. John, we're going to end it here because there's too much. There's too much goodness. I want people to check out John at his ex-account. He just posts every single day what he's learning in real time. building his 20 businesses is at JohnRushX.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
And he's also got a list of all his many projects, JohnRush.me. Check it out. And it's inspiring because I think the model that you're applying is really the future of building startups. So thank you for sharing it with us.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
Of course. Later. Thanks, everyone.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
You were telling me about a startup idea you had around wait lists. Can you talk more about that?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
If you're anything like me, you've got a ton of design work that you need. Websites, landing pages, emails, social assets, you name it. But you don't just want beautiful landing pages or beautiful websites. You want the stuff that's going to convert. You want the stuff that's going to actually drive value. That's where design scientist dot com comes in.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
it's an agency that for one monthly price will do all your design work all your copy work all your engineering and do stuff that actually scales your revenue you don't need a designer you need a design scientist let's go designscientist.com i liked it so much i invested in the business
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
John Rush, Startup Ideas podcast. He's finally on. He's a fellow idea junkie. This guy is pushing out. I mean, what, you have 20 businesses now?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
Yeah, so this is a really smart idea because no one's doing it, you know? Yeah, yeah. No one is doing it. And of course there's marketplaces for startups like Acquire.com and Flippa, but also there's no marketplace for what you're describing, which is basically... What you're describing is... is let us do all the work for validating a startup idea. Let us get you your first 100,000 customers.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
Yeah. You've got, John has 20 businesses that he's running, $2 million ARR, 10 million users that are B2B to see, 100,000 plus users on B2B. Come on, this guy is one of us. Welcome, John. Welcome, my friend. Good to have you.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
And then once the uncertainty is taken away, a lot of the uncertainty, we are going to hand that over to you, but you are going to pay us a premium for that. It's a win-win situation because the person who's inheriting that new product, they didn't have to go through all that hassle of going through the idea maze, finding those customers. As you said, finding customers isn't easy.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
Now all of a sudden, they can buy something for cheap because if they would have went on one of the startup marketplaces or buy a startup, you know, that's established, that's going to be already too expensive. So this is like a cheaper version of that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
And that's way too expensive. So you glossed over something that I think is really important that I want to unpack a little bit. So you said... You prefer influencers right now over ads and you're seeing rates like $300 for $100,000 views. Could you walk us through how you think about, how do you acquire these or how do you do these deals with these influencers? How do you reach out to them?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
What is your process to do this?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he shared these $1M+/year startup ideas
All right, so what is on your mind right now? What sort of ideas and trends would you be willing to share with our audience?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
I would say one thing you can do is get all the data around competition. Seeing where you sit in competition I think is really helpful. So make a list of all the data points around what people are selling it for. Take that data, go into Claude, let's say, and do a prompt. Be like, hey, I need you to help me price this. You're my pricing partner. Pretend like you're
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
the best pricing expert on the planet. I always say, pretend you work at Walmart or you're the head of pricing at Walmart and the best in the world and you get paid a million dollars a year to do this. And here's the data. I want to price this product. What do you think I should be priced at and why?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
And that, if you're like a solo indie hacker type person, just going back and forth with AI will help refine what your first price should be. Yeah, it's crazy good though. Yeah. And then the other thing to note about pricing, and by the way, comment on YouTube if you want us to do or you're interested in a pricing episode.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
You're here, man. You're here. And you came prepared too, which I love. So you've got a list of a bunch of ideas. And I take your ideas very seriously because you've been able to build a pretty big audience on YouTube. You've made money. in revenue, millions of dollars at this point. So which one of these ideas do you want to start with? Because they're all pretty interesting.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
I don't know if people are down for that, but I think you can always change your price too, right? Yeah. Yes.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Who do you think does pricing well? What are examples of people who do pricing well? Before we move on to the next startup idea, I just have to ask selfishly. Examples from indie hikers or any company? Could be anything, any company.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
I'm interested in it because I'm just interested in companies that do pricing well, because I think there's this shift happening right now to your point, which is like people are getting sick of monthly subscriptions. And so I'm just interested on who's innovating or who's doing interesting things in pricing. Quick ad break. Let me tell you about a business I invested in.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
It's called boringmarketing.com. So a few years ago, I met this group of people that were some of the best SEO experts in the world. They were behind getting some of the biggest companies found on Google.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
the secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and ai that could help you outrank your competition so for my own businesses i wanted that i didn't want to have to rely on mark zuckerberg i didn't want to depend on ads to drive customers to my businesses i wanted to rank high in google that's why i like seo and that's why i use boringmarketing.com and that's why i invested in it
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
They're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30-day sprint with 100% money-back guarantee. Who does that nowadays? So check it out. Highly recommend boringmarketing.com.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Yeah, I think that's like the pay-per-usage model, which is the more you use it, the more... In theory, you're happy because, oh, you're making all this money there and you're happy to give them a cut. And if you're not making a lot of money, then you don't give them a cut. But the reality is it would be great if it was a sliding scale, meaning maybe it's 2.9%, let's say 3%.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
I don't know what Stripe fees are, but let's just say for the sake of this conversation, that's 3%. up until 100,000 of sales. And then for 100,000 to a million, it's 2%. And then a million and more, it's 1%. Man, yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
That is really smart. That is really smart. Like no one's doing that. Yeah. Yeah. That makes me want to ship something and just try it just to see. That's amazing. Okay. Um, moving on to your next idea and idea number two, what do you, what do you got? All right.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
So you would have to... So I buy the thesis, which is gamification helps people do things and create streaks and results. So, but how would you like, which vertical is most interesting? You know, would you, I think sleep is really interesting. Um, but by the way, sleep, like I'll show you right now, like I use eight sleep, the mattress and it's like a smart mattress.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
And the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is I check my sleep fitness score. There you go. And so I slept well last night, 99%. Um, And then you can see like your REM sleep and your deep sleep. So you can see that I like, you know, it's gamified. Like this is gamified. Yeah, yeah. You're not wearing any ring or anything. Is it the mattress tell you that?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Just the mattress tells me that. I don't know how it does it. I don't ask questions.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Yeah, and it's funny because sometimes the bad ideas end up being the good ideas.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Wait, so Pokemon Sleep is making $100 million a year? Did I hear that correctly? Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
It's pretty insane. Okay, wow. I'm just reading this now. This is absolutely bonkers. They have... They made $100 million on 9.8 million downloads. So... That's pretty crazy.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Okay, so here's the unlock. Here's the idea. The idea is this. The idea is we all know the things that people want to do. Sleep better, eat better, all the things. You can ask Claude, you can ask whoever, you can ask your mom. These things don't change. Human beings don't change.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
We all know that gamification, leaderboard, status, badges, streaks is a product design tool that helps people achieve their goal. It sounds like, what is the unlock that Pokemon Sleep has done? Well, they've licensed... the intellectual property of Pokemon, and they've added that to this whole concept of gamification, et cetera.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
So the question is, the way I'm thinking about this, and I'm like really excited about this, as you can see, is what is an opportunity to license a brand and just basically, the idea is this, it's Pokemon Sleep for Axe. You license the IP. And by the way, someone's going to be listening to this and say, well, yeah, easy for them. They probably paid so much money for Pokemon.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Yeah, exactly. And sometimes you just got to put it out there and make it ugly and just see what happens. And it strikes a chord and you're like, wow, I actually can't believe how bad of an idea this is, but it's actually... interesting to people.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
And you'd be surprised... like how cheap some of these licenses are to, uh, to get, to get, um, maybe not Pokemon, but like to get amazing licenses for nostalgic intellectual property, you'd be surprised how cheap they are. I don't want to, uh, I don't want to say who it is cause it's, it's someone everyone knows, but there's someone who I know who got the license, like went to, um,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Basically, what do they call it? Like a French, not a franchise. It's like an intellectual property conference, licensing conference in Las Vegas. He got a Star Wars for some apparel. He basically bought the Star Wars license for some apparel line. And he thought it was going to cost, he's like, Star Wars is huge, right? And he's like, oh my God, it's going to cost millions of dollars a year.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
And it ended up costing $50,000 for the first two years. and some percentage of sale. I think it was like two or three percentage. But now all of a sudden you can do Facebook ads with Star Wars on it. So, huge. Yeah, that's crazy.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Dude, you need to build that idea because that idea is so smart. Think about. During the Web3 craze, there was an app called Sweatcoin. I don't know if you saw this, but it was basically based on the amount of steps that you took, they would give you this coin. So it gamified walking. Think about credit card points.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
The more you use your credit card, the more... I think credit card points meets GitHub... commit idea is a massive idea. If you could be the place that people, like the more I commit, the more points I get. And yes, there's a leaderboard, but it also allows me to redeem for something. I think that's the idea that you should do. There you go, man. That is my way.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
There's a financial incentive, yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
I need a notepad right here. That's a successful Startup Ideas podcast when you have to pull out your notepad and you're like, okay, let me just take a note on that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Cool. We have time for one last idea. Can I pick one? Okay. Because there's one I'm curious about that I've thought about for many years. I almost don't want to bring it up, but we'll bring it up because I said it already. Legal for entrepreneurs. What do you mean by that? Oh, okay. I thought it was your idea. No.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
I've been exploring this in the space for a few years now, but I haven't built anything in this space. So I'm curious what you mean by legal for entrepreneurs.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
I think so too. I use Stripe Atlas to set up my companies. It's just integrated with Stripe, obviously. It makes it pretty easy. But I wish there was someone I could talk to at Stripe Atlas too. Sometimes I'm like, I don't know if I should start an LLC versus S Corp. You know what I mean? It feels like there's an opportunity to make it a little more educational and have a more premium version.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
I guess the idea I have here is more of a premium version of Stripe Atlas.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Yeah, I mean, so the example I'll use is we set up an LLC for one of our businesses in the States. And it started making a bunch of money. And we didn't realize that we should have converted it to an escort. Which is another type of corporation. And that cost us hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars of taxes. And we would have set it up probably as an escort from the beginning.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Um, but we didn't know because we were just on Tribe Atlas. Um, so I wonder, so if you think about like legal, there's as a spectrum, right? On one end of the spectrum, you have, um, calling your, like calling my Manhattan name.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
lawyer paying my manhattan lawyer eleven hundred dollars an hour to set up a company which is something we've done before you know which sucks like take it's painful literally so painful that you know just it hurts my soul that that's one end of the spectrum and the other end of the spectrum you have self-serve striped atlas type products that for like a couple hundred bucks get you all set up it feels like there's something in the middle
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
And you're American. I mean, you're from Canada, so... I'm a green card holder. So I live in the US now, mostly. But I'm still... It's, it's basically, I'm like an American. Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Yeah. I pay taxes in the U S I don't pay taxes to Canada. Okay.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
That's interesting. That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't even consider opening a company outside Canada or the US. To me, it was like, that's where I would open a company because that's all I know. But you're right. There are probably other places that I should have considered for a bunch of reasons.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Like it's number one question. So I guess Stripe Atlas for indie hackers with maybe a little more support is probably an interesting idea. Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
I'm going to go there and boom. I like it. There's something here. Someone in the comment section is going to be like, I'm going to do something. So I'm happy you flagged it and I appreciate it. Marc, merci. I appreciate you coming on and spending time with us. Where could people get to know you and your products a little bit more?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Beautiful. Check it out. I'm a big fan and hopefully you come on the pod again sometime. Cheers, man. It was nice having you. All right. Take care.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
So yeah, you're right. Everyone knows something, but how do you know, just because you know something doesn't mean the thing that you know is what someone wants to buy necessarily. So for example, It might be way easier to sell someone how to build a SaaS online than it is to sell someone how to make ceramics or pottery or cups.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Maybe there's a big market for that, but I just know that the customer value for... how to build SaaS maybe is bigger than maybe the ceramics. So the question to you is, how do you think about the customer here and how much they're willing to pay? Or does it matter?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Don't tell anyone, but I've got 30 plus startup ideas that could make you millions. And I'm giving them away for free. These aren't just random guesses. They're validated concepts from entrepreneurs who've built $100 million plus businesses. I've compiled them into one simple database. Compiled from hundreds of conversations I've had on my podcast.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
You need to build that idea because that idea is so smart. I'll build that with you. I need a notepad right here. That's a successful Startup Ideas podcast and you have to pull out your notepad and you're like, okay, let me just take a note on that. All right. I am so excited to have you, Mark, on the show, on the Startup Ideas podcast.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
But the main thing is, most of these ideas don't need a single investor. Some cost nothing to start. I'm pretty much handing you a cheat sheet. The Idea Bank is your startup shortcut. Just click below to get access. Your next cash flowing business is waiting for you. So that's really interesting.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
So when you were saying, you know, everyone knows something, basically package it up and you can sell it. I was thinking more of like a hobby or something like that. But what you're saying is actually, no, you might just know something about life. Meaning you might know... just some life hack, basically, like how to sleep better.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
And if you write out, like as a prompt, what are the 10 life hacks that you've learned in your life? Maybe it's how to get to the gym consistently. And then what you're saying is, okay, write down all the life hacks and Write a PDF. You can even use tools like gamma.app, which is kind of a really, it's like a tool to really make lead magnets quite easily that I've been using. Have you seen it?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Yeah. Yeah, I've been obsessed with it recently. If you go to their website, it doesn't say, like, we make lead magnets. But I use it for lead magnets. And I use it for just making beautiful websites out of content.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Yeah, I think the counter argument that someone makes when they hear something like this is they go, okay, great. How to sleep better. Like I'm going to go make, maybe I can make $50,000 a year with this. But I think what you're saying is, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think what you're saying is that could just be the starting place. Meaning once you put out this PDF around how to sleep,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
You might have an idea for a sleep supplement or, I don't know, like an eye mask business, right?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
If you were, let's just say you were creating a digital product around how to sleep better, what are your next steps? Like, okay, you have the idea and then, you know, how do you name it? How do you, you know, what, how do you generate traffic to it? Like, how do you think about growing a digital product like that?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Okay, so if we're talking about something very simple, like creating an ebook to sleep better,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Yeah, and I want to say one quick thing on this. So, dude, I... and I applaud you for doing this, but I was, I was for a while, I was recording the direct to camera videos where I'd be like, here's the 10 ways to do X, Y, Z. And I, and I, you know, would do these videos and I hated it. I hated it, man. Like I, I really, really, it felt really unnatural to me. And, um,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Whereas on Twitter and writing and even doing these long-form podcasts, it feels very natural to me. But writing a script and staring into the camera made me feel very weird. And sometimes feeling weird is... It's not really feeling weird, actually. Uncomfortable. Sometimes feeling uncomfortable is the necessary evil you need to go through in order to do something great.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
But at a certain point, I was just unhappy and I hated doing it. So I think the question for people, if they're going to document their path, you have to ask yourself, which format is good for you?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Yeah. And I think about format a lot too. So what you mean by format is. Like saying I did that today and not you should do that. Right. And, and, and how do you like, so a lot of people are going to agree with you. Yeah. A format, but how do you, How do you develop your own format?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
On my Mount Rushmore of indie hackers, I've got Peter Levels, I've got Danny Postma, and I definitely have Mark Liu. So I finally got you to come on. I agree to come on the pod. You're here and welcome.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
There's a lot of content around developing your own voice, but developing your own voice is very different than developing a format that is going to work and get shared by people. How do you think about that?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
it's almost like you should create your own creator Mount Rushmore for your formats meaning pick three or four people who you really look up to and then write down what is the one or two things that you take away from their content that you want to implement into yours and then from that go and experiment with different formats exactly that cool All right. And then, okay.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
So then you start creating content and how do you, you know, how do you sell the PDF? How do you think about pricing it? Um, or ebook?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he gave away these $1M+/year startup ideas
And you might not be able to afford this $3,500 eight-sleep mattress today. But in... six months, if that's your goal, then you can, you can save up for it. And what I like about it is it, it, it makes the merchant, like they can use this as a marketing thing. So you're getting them and it's at the point of sale. So they have the traffic. So you're swimming downstream, swimming downstream.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he gave away these $1M+/year startup ideas
So that's my, my question for you, which is like, how do you make, how do you make a business like this more, more swimming downstream versus swimming upstream? Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he gave away these $1M+/year startup ideas
You know, what the idea is, why you think it's interesting, how you'd start them, how you'd grow them. Just give people all that sauce. And let's run.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he gave away these $1M+/year startup ideas
So... Or even worse, like luxury goods, right? Like you just bought, you know, a Louis Vuitton purse for $12,000, but it really cost, you know, $28. Yeah. So... yeah, I think, uh, you're circling around something that I think, uh, could be really a really good business idea. I think going back to your Apple pay, uh, idea, I think that's really smart.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he gave away these $1M+/year startup ideas
I think if I was trying to create a business idea around that, I would probably call it something like angel or devil, like an angel or a devil, you know, uh, an angel or devil decision. And it's like, you just, you just, you know, it's one in the morning and you get an Uber, an Uber Eats, you know, pay, Apple Pay notification. And then you get like a DM from,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he gave away these $1M+/year startup ideas
from, you know, angel or devil saying like, you probably shouldn't have done that. And I think the bigger idea is it's like a financial coach in your pocket that could be, that's just a lot more casual and does help you hit your goals and does know your goals. And, you know, this is like an AI coach basically.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he gave away these $1M+/year startup ideas
But it's a bit more whimsical and it's a bit more fun to help you actually like reach your goals and stuff like that. So I think that, that's something that could be a good business. Um, because I think, again, it's like one of those things that could go viral, has that viral moment. Um, and, uh,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he gave away these $1M+/year startup ideas
And I do think that you're tapping into this macro trend around people are really stressed right now around costs of any items, products, services, anything. Inflation is like top of mind. I don't even think people knew what the word inflation meant five years ago. Literally, you know, there's like, oh, inflation.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he gave away these $1M+/year startup ideas
Yeah, I think I remember, you know, that like, isn't that, you know, isn't that like an economics term? Like, what does that even mean? Now it's like people can't afford their lives, period. Yeah. And so I think that there's a ton of opportunities to create a set of products around that. So there's something here. I'm just not sure it's exactly the anti-spend app. What's your next idea?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he gave away these $1M+/year startup ideas
So I love this idea. There has been a lot of I'll give an analogy here. to this app. One of the most popular apps on the App Store is the Xero app, which is tracking your intermittent fasting. They literally have 500,000 five-star reviews on the App Store. People love it. They took a trend, intermittent fasting, And they just made it way more fun to see how many calories you're burning.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he gave away these $1M+/year startup ideas
When did your fast start? When did it end? Seeing your results. Just did an incredible job. And I think that the zerofication of all these things just... create a beautiful app, make it purpose-built, add game dynamics, add a social element. It's just going to work in so many categories.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he gave away these $1M+/year startup ideas
And the word of mouth of these businesses is so great because how many people do you go, and I don't know about you, but at least myself, a lot of people, I just hear people telling me, oh, I'm intermittent fasting, I'm intermittent fasting. It's like the cold plunge community, right? They love talking about hi, my name is Greg and I cold plunge. That's the first thing they're talking about.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he gave away these $1M+/year startup ideas
So with vaping, which has become a real problem and people are addicted to, I know one person in particular, a friend of mine, he tries to get off it and he really struggles. So I think that I like this idea. I wonder if you can add a financial element to it. So what if... I could donate to Nir's anti... If Nir hits 100 days without vaping, I'll give them $50.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he gave away these $1M+/year startup ideas
And maybe companies could also support people as well. And so there's that additional incentive there and peer pressure to continue the streak. So that's just one idea for you. And so I do like this idea and... I think that with the model of Xero, all you really need is just the name, which actually this name is really good. A catchy name. Some beautiful designs.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he gave away these $1M+/year startup ideas
And then you can just go on an Upwork or something like that and just be like, hey, I'm trying to build this. I'm trying to build an MVP. Try to build something pretty cheap. Get some micro-influencers to start promoting it. And then you're probably going to want to add some paid features where, you know, for more power features, you'll charge a monthly fee for it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he gave away these $1M+/year startup ideas
People are going to want to spend money and support this app because Again, you're helping them get off something that's very deadly. So I do really like this app for a lot of reasons.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he gave away these $1M+/year startup ideas
Well, it's the Octalysis framework. Have you heard of that framework?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he gave away these $1M+/year startup ideas
Okay, so Octalysis framework is for anyone who's thinking about creating a product that feels like a game. And so it's really just a checklist of all the things that you need to do. And I find it super helpful and I use it in most of the products I create. So number one is epic meaning and calling. So the drive to become part of something bigger than ourselves.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he gave away these $1M+/year startup ideas
Number two, development and accomplishment, the drive to level up, improve, and achieve mastery. Number three, empowerment of creativity and feedback, the drive to use one's creativity and adjusting through feedback. Number four, ownership and possession, the drive to collect, accumulate, and organize.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I can't believe he gave away these $1M+/year startup ideas
Number five, social influence and relatedness, the drive to collaborate, compete, and express social appreciation. Number s