Join me as I chat with Anu Atluru, startup builder, angel investor, and writer, as we dive deep into how to build and scale premium dating apps, and Anu shares her thoughts on how to leverage status to position and growth hack your startup. Episode Timestamps: 00:00 Intro01:27 Startup Idea 1: Premium Dating App for Niche Markets20:51 Startup Idea 2: AI Girlfriends/Boyfriends for Niche Demographics 27:23 Startup Idea 3: "Riz-maxing" app30:55 Startup Idea 4: Report cards for life35:15 Pricing strategy shift39:10 Content format discussion1) The League 2.0: Dating app for modern status symbols - Original League app sold for $30M+ to Match Groupa) Charged up to $2,499/month (!) for premium membershipsb) New version could filter by:- YC founders- Follower counts- Who follows youKey insight: Status markers have evolved beyond just education/job2) Why now for League 2.0? - Cheaper than ever to launch dating appsa) More distribution channels to hack growthb) People desperate for new ways to find partnersc) Premium/niche dating apps are HOTExample: Lox Club for Jewish singles crushing it3) Controversial idea alert: AI girlfriends/boyfriends for niche demographics - Huge financial opportunity (but ethically questionable)- Google Trends shows massive spike in interest- Could target specific ethnicities, religions, etc.Opportunity for brave founders, but proceed with caution!4) "Riz-maxing" app: Charisma coach in your pocket - AI listens to your convos & scores social skills- Gives feedback on awkwardness, charisma, etc.- People crave honest social feedbackThink: Looksmaxxing app, but for personality5) Report cards for life: Huge untapped opportunity - We're conditioned to want feedback from school days- Adults still crave knowing how they measure up- Combine with personality tests, IQ tests, etc.People LOVE data about themselves!6) Pricing strategy shift: Death of monthly subscriptions? - One-time payments- Lifetime subscriptions- Annual plans- Pay-what-you-want modelsMonthly feels like a "situationship" - users want commitment or freedom!7) Content creation pro tip: Iterate on format until you find your groove - Don't get stuck on what you "should" do- Experiment with:a) Live vs. asyncb) Solo vs. groupc) Short-form vs. long-formd) Audio vs. videoFind your emotional center & natural aptitude!8) Challenge: Create more novel content formats! Ideas:- Tech/culture Daily Show- Startup Cribs (MTV-style home tours)- Live, unscripted breakdownsPush to extremes - avoid the crowded middle!Want more free ideas? I collect the best ideas from the pod and give them to you for free in a database. Most of them cost $0 to start (my fav)Get access: https://www.gregisenberg.com/30startupideas Work with me and my team: LCA — world’s best product design firm to build apps, websites and brands people love. https://latecheckout.agency/BoringAds — ads agency that will build you profitable ad campaigns http://boringads.com/BoringMarketing — SEO agency and tools to get your organic customers http://boringmarketing.com/Community Empire - a membership for builders who want to build cash-flowing businesses http://communityempire.co/FIND ME ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenbergInstagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/FIND ANU ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://x.com/anuatluruNewsletter: https://www.workingtheorys.com
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.
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.
I appreciate the sentiment. It's always nice to hear positive things about Twitter and not like terrible things about Twitter. And obviously you're a great follow. I mean, these days you're doing a lot of interesting stuff. I won't like give away the hacks of what I've observed that you're doing. But yeah, always like curious what you're thinking about. Love your letter.
Love when my tweets show up in your letter. So a lot of crossover.
Very cool. So let's start with ideas.
Okay. Let's start with ideas. All right. So I always have like a bunch of ideas. So I kind of like pared down a few today that I think probably relate to things that people know that I think about as opposed to like the completely off the wall things. And maybe that like anybody could really like take a crack at versus like things that would be hard to do. So, okay.
Start with a fun one, which is basically like, you know, the league, the dating app started like 10 plus years ago at this point. So, um, I mean, I don't think everything has to be like super novel. I kind of think that someone should just like make another The League.
Okay, for people who don't know what The League is, maybe explain what it is.
Okay, so the League is basically, it's like a dating app. And I think it was started around 2012 or 2013. And the premise is like, okay, if you're a woman who's kind of like ambitious, and you want to get a significant other who is similarly ambitious, and also wants to be with a ambitious, accomplished partner, like, where can you actually find that?
I think the kind of filter underlying the premise when it started was a bit around like, okay, if I go to an Ivy League school or have like a Ivy League-esque job, like I want to meet people who are similarly, you know, pedigreed in a sense. So that was like the original premise. And obviously like whenever... one of these networks gets bigger and bigger. It gets a bit more diluted.
They start kind of like expanding the criteria and like this actually was pretty successful. And then they ultimately actually sold a match group, I think like a couple of years ago.
And they did some really innovative stuff with pricing too, which is kind of another tangent, but they started like charging like hundreds of dollars, which was kind of unknown for, for dating apps and actually were successful with it. So.
Hundreds of dollars a month.
I think they tested that, if I'm not mistaken. Like, I don't want to misquote it, so I should probably research it. But I think that's one of the reasons that Match was particularly interested in them as well, because they started doing really innovative stuff with pricing.
And like, it's a little bit like this is in a sense, like, you know, people are price insensitive for some of these types of products.
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.
Yep.
Wow.
So you could buy a Peloton forever or you could get a membership for a month to the league.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
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.
Yeah. I think they like, I don't really know what the interface was like. I actually never used it, but I do think they were like, instead of going for other socials linking, they were going for like LinkedIn and, you know, now they've obviously, obviously expanded a bit more, but I don't know if that's like an important part of it, to be honest.
But I think what's interesting if I were to think about a 2.0 now is like, and you talk about the sum too, or we all, I think anybody who's spending time online is like, what are the new status markers or like how has status markers evolved? So I don't think it's like as simple as like, I had an Ivy league education anymore, or I have this like job at this like consulting firm or investment bank.
I think that's kind of opened up a bit. So you could do like interesting things with like, honestly, you could make probably like a dating app just for people who are YC founders, but, YC would obviously never do that. But somebody who's in it could probably try to do it. And that's obviously one status filter in the tech startup community now.
Obviously, there's Raya, which I think is a bit more general approach.
celebrity or adjacent to celebrity I don't think it's like specific enough on what they're actually trying to filter for so I think like a lot of people could actually do this in a bunch of different like modern high status niches I guess so because I have you here and because I know you know a lot about status symbols and internet status symbols oh boy yeah it's coming this is coming
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.
They could. Well, you can do like the hard organizational filters, which is like, okay, what I see as an example, you could go like bigger orgs or smaller orgs. I think like the Theo Fellowship would be too small. probably, it's probably like only like 100 people or something in there. I don't know. But I think there's organizations like that.
So you could do it that way, where you're looking for something that's already defined. Or you could obviously do like platforms. So you know, you have some number of hundreds of 1000s of followers on Twitter, or, you know, you're, you're trying to get to that on YouTube.
So I think you could also do like, all right, obvious status symbol these days is like, what's your follower count, like on Instagram, or TikTok, or YouTube, or
twitter and you know it's like kind of funny i feel like these days people are like i have a combined 250 000 followers across all platforms so like i don't know there's some interesting ways to think about it that way i think those are probably like the ones that would be easiest to filter for but to be honest i think there's like you know a lot more things where you could be somewhat subjective about your criteria which is just like what influence level do you have or like what circles are you in like
even like looking at the who else follows this person would be like such an interesting metric to figure out like how much clout they essentially have or how much status they essentially have, even if they only have like 5K followers or 10K followers.
So, I mean, I'm not gonna list like 10 or 20 that are strictly visible online, but you kind of get the gist of like where you could actually parse it out and find those lanes.
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.
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.
But I am going to share my screen.
You have to tell me what you think your top one or two status symbols are that you're seeing these days too.
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.
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.
30-ish, I think. Yeah.
And they didn't raise a lot of money.
Yeah, I don't think so. I mean, I know for sure they raised a seed at the beginning, and I'm sure they did another round, but I'm sure they also got a bunch of equity in Match when they sold.
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?
Hundreds a month up to a couple of thousand a month.
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.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure they started testing some version of this on Tinder or whatever their other apps are somewhat soon after this.
Okay, interesting.
Yeah.
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.
So one reason why I say that and why I think it's interesting is like, okay, obviously with a lot of these products, part of the game is like, how can you actually like get people to be talking about it? Like you could argue that maybe if it's super high status luxury, like, you know, velvet rope stuff, you actually don't want a lot of people talking about it. But I don't know.
I kind of think the name of the game these days is you kind of do want it to have some, you know, hanger appeal or whatnot. So like, I think the more specific you make it and the more like remarkable in the sense that people want to talk about it, you make it like the more interesting your early traction will be.
I wouldn't necessarily say like in the longterm, just YC is an amazing, like, you know, dating app, but like, I think there's something to thinking about, not just like, okay, this is a dating app for pedigreed people. That's like, okay, cool. But it doesn't quite have the same hook.
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?
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?
People who follow... Oh, like, yeah, I think... So there's like status where it's like I can wear the status myself or there's status like who am I in the room with, right? And so you're like looking at the people who I'm in the room with and implicitly thinking I have high status. So online, you know, that'll be like who else is following me on Twitter?
You know, like you're following me on Twitter or Paul Graham's following me on Twitter or whatever. like Elon Musk is following me on Twitter. It's like, okay, even if I only have like tens of thousands of followers, maybe I actually am a high status or accomplished, like up and coming person that is worthy of being included in some pool.
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.
Yeah. This is already sounding like super, like, super like game the system. Like I'm looking, what is it? Like the trust fund six, five, like blue eyes finance. Honestly, you probably make an app like for that if you actually want it to. But at the same time, I don't know.
There's like something between this being crazy and something like also to say that there is a lot of pragmatism in like some of these things that people are actually like subconsciously, if not consciously caring about. So.
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.
I'm not on the dating scene either, but like, I don't know enough people are, especially like if you're doing anything in social or if you're online, it's just like, you can't avoid being kind of like slapped in the face with this and like loneliness and dating and how to meet people. So I think it's interesting. Like it's like a giant social experiment.
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.
Ask like more LA, like Hollywood adjacent.
Yeah.
I would say. And obviously I feel like a lot of tech people are, have been trying to get onto it and maybe have succeeded or maybe have not succeeded. Um, yeah. I mean, you could do levels, you could do like, you know, 10 K followers I feel like was a thing for a while. And then it's like a hundred K followers and, Now it's probably like a million, depending on how you slice it.
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.
Yeah, cheap to launch, like so many distribution channels you can try to hack to get users. Like, although that's, you know, you could talk about retention of those users. But in general, I think there's like a lot more ways to try to get people to use your products.
And I think like, you know, like probably the top in the top five topics for people between like ages 18 and like 40 is like how to find a partner. So I think people are like, okay, like all the legacy, like wave of dating apps that have been around for the last like 10 to 20 years are feeling like increasingly like desperate and inefficient. So I think people are looking for new things.
I think like the, we want to do it completely on like offline IRL thing is cool, but I don't think like 100% practical. I do think there's going to continue to be like, you know, an interest in at least doing both things like looking on apps or online and then also doing a lot of the IRL stuff.
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.
What would you add to it or, or change, change up about it as a married man?
Have you seen this?
I'm in... Okay, now I can... Lox Club, I have not.
So Lox Club is interesting. It's basically Raya or The League, but for Jewish people.
Okay.
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
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.
Okay. Did you see my screen?
Yep.
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?
I don't know. Honestly, that's probably... I don't know how I feel about the name. We can talk about names. I think names are pretty important, but I think it's actually a pretty good idea, to be honest.
Just go through this and just build premium versions of this. Do the league pricing and...
and just cash flow don't raise money yeah I think that's the big thing now too which is like a lot of the bigger ones they obviously like went the like raise a bunch of venture money route and so they're kind of like locked into that path for the most part so you can like start again and obviously choose a path that is more sustainable and more profitable earlier on and then you like don't even really have to get that big to actually make it a good business for yourself and you can probably still sell it to somebody later
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.
You get an offer. You take it and that's it.
Yeah, and there's always buyers, I feel like, because the base for the existing products is going to continue to churn out. They're going to become irrelevant. But this is a perennial thing, and I don't think the online or digital version of it's going to go away. So I don't even feel like it's not super seasonal or trendy in any way. It's just like...
I kind of feel like it's like a little bit like restaurants, you know, restaurants are cool for like two or three years. And then they're like, you kind of need a new one to try. And like, maybe this is a little bit longer than two to three years because like to build up the network and then have the network effects, it's like valuable for longer.
But I do feel like it's probably not that much more than like five or 10 years, you know? So.
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?
Yeah, of course.
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.
Are you trying to make profiles up?
I think the idea is you create...
don't give away all my thoughts but okay go ahead it's basically like AI girlfriends and boyfriends but in those niches so oh boy okay yeah I know I know I had to say it it's okay it'll probably happen if it's like I mean I don't know okay just like use a generic app and make a character but I guess it's like I guess it's like wanting a therapist that like fits your you know preferences similarly
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.
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.
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.
I believe that it is going to be an economic thing. What do you mean by that? Well, I believe that people are going to use it and a lot of money is going to be made with it. I don't know if it's going to be like a human improvement engine.
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.
What is this tool you're using, Glimpse?
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.
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.
Nice. I'm always like surprised. I mean, I'm not surprised, but I don't think like my approach to ever making things is like, look at the trends and the search and like, you know, like it's like, that's super diligent.
Yes.
Will definitely lead to outcomes. But I think it's like, it's kind of the opposite of getting inspiration from something you're observing or thinking or feeling or involved in. And I think for better or worse, I struggle to be inspired enough by data that I find alone.
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.
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.
I don't even need to type it. I know it's going to be...
What are you suggesting? Are you suggesting it's going to be even more popular? That's the tone of your... I think it's going to be as popular.
Okay.
All right. Fair enough.
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.
What's the discourse? The discourse is that it's probably supposed to be more popular because there's this commentary that there's a lot of men spending time on the internet.
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.
Um, my idea, shout out to, I think it's Amanda Bradford who made the link.
She is. Shout out to Amanda. She's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. She is awesome. So, um,
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
That's it. One more idea. My God. Okay. All right. That was like 30, 30 minute idea. Okay. All right. I'll run through a couple quickly. Okay. So this is, since we're on the AI topic, this is like a really small idea. Okay. So I don't think we need to dive into this one that much, but do you know this app looks maxing that whole like looks maxing? That's not the name of the app.
I think it was like you max or something like that. That happened for a while.
Like covered you max on the show.
Okay. So you definitely know it. Like, I'm like, there's probably a version you could do with AI. That's like, like Riz maxing or like charisma maxing, which is like,
The product would be that instead of like you taking a picture of yourself, it would be like the AI is listening to conversations that you have, which I know it's like we've been talking about that for like friend companionship apps and stuff like that. But this is more like as if it was like looking at your text, but it's actually listening to your conversation.
And then it'll like score you on all these different like dimensions of social competence, basically. And it'll... It'll say, are you being awkward? Were you being charismatic? You reacted this odd way. I haven't figured out what are all the different metrics. But basically, I feel like people want social feedback a lot, but they don't always get the honest feedback.
And I wouldn't say this is a durable product, to be honest. But I do think it's the type of product that could have... a moment around this like, you know, charisma or social skills, awareness rating, like trifecta, which I think does play well as far as like people sharing stuff like this.
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?
Not, I mean, I think that's like a whole nother, it's not like, this is not in my opinion, serious enough to like merit a hardware product that goes along with it. I think it's more just like, Oh, it's like an app. Maybe you can like make it background listen, like for some certain conversations, obviously like all privacy disclosures, like,
that's not part of this ideation process, but I think it's just like, okay, let's say I was even having an interview or something, or I was like meeting somebody new for a date. I could be like, how did I perform on this date? Like, which obviously the date is not going to tell you how you performed. So I, I'm a little like, not sure if it's,
Again, the human improvement scale, I don't know how I would rate this idea, but I do feel like it could work if you made it the right way. So I think there are people who are interested in experiments that they think could work for short periods of time. So this would be one of those.
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.
I think it's helpful like short term, but I guess my comment is like, I do think like social interaction is a thing that will longterm help you actually improve upon those things. So it's not like you can just constantly be getting a report card on every conversation you're having and then be like, Oh, I'm going to like look in the mirror and get better at this thing.
So maybe it's like good for some social awareness. I don't know if it's good for like actually putting that into action longterm.
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.
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.
People like report cards. They like astrology-esque things. They like personality test-oriented things. They kind of like IQ test-oriented things. I feel like there's probably some whole horizontal here that's related to all these... It's somewhere between a game and some tangible information.
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?
Well, it's probably not like, I don't know. My answer would be just make the thing, which is not an answer that involves a lot of other like research and stuff like that or validation necessarily. But I also don't think it would be that hard to make. I mean, obviously you need to have like some ability to like.
build the thing but I don't know I think that most of it is just like building the interface that you actually want people to see so like most of it is thinking through what we're talking about which is like what is a report card going to look like what are like the five or six or ten dimensions on which I'm going to give feedback and then maybe it would be thinking about like what are the use cases so
Maybe you'd make it easier for someone to use this by saying, oh, this is for an interview. This is for a date. This is for a party. Give them use cases so they don't feel like this is not normal for them to use it for a particular situation.
And then I think you could easily then give examples of someone using it for each of those use cases and what that report card looked like and then create a bunch of content on the basis of all those use cases And obviously that requires a lot of iteration. But then, you know, put it on TikTok, put it on Reels, probably like however you can get it out there.
And if you can make these like compelling little vignettes, basically, I think that's probably how I would think about actually getting people to use it. And then obviously you probably want to make it a like low price, one time paid app if you want to make some money off of it.
How low price? What are you thinking?
I don't know, like less than five bucks.
I think, by the way, under $5 apps and stuff like that, there's a huge...
I think so too. It's like a game, you know, it's just like a game. Basically you have to like, obviously you got to like hook people to want to use it at least for a couple of times, but totally. Yeah.
So that's, it's not the type of thing that I generally would spend my time doing, but I think there are a lot of people who are really good at this and like really enjoy doing this and would be better than me at doing this. And like you said, I think there's like a lot of versions of this that could be done.
Before we end, do you have a question for me?
Do I have a question for you?
Yeah. Yeah.
Um, well, you tell me all the secretive stuff that you're working on right now that you don't want to tell, tell anybody that you're working on.
Why?
I mean, that's the question. That's the question I would ask you if we weren't recording the podcast.
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.
Mm-hmm.
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.
I mean, I mean, I love multi recurring revenue.
No, for yourself, but I don't love it. Like to, to actually ask a user to do this.
Exactly.
Okay.
So yeah. Expand on that. Tell me more.
I just, I think this, like, I think the subscription fatigue thing is real, like, and I think that it's primarily about monthly subscriptions. I think that, like, I think I made some tweet about this or whatever, like, I usually like say one sentence things about things that I'm like thinking a lot more about.
And then later we'll probably write something longer about or do something with, but I said something like monthly subscriptions are like situationships basically. And like a lot of users that are signing up for monthly subscriptions are just like, okay, I want to try this thing. I don't really know if I want to commit to it.
Like either they're trying to kind of do a free trial and cancel it right away. Or they're like, don't end up doing that. And later they're like, shh, oh man, I didn't mean to actually be subscribed. It's just really irritating, I think, for people, and they're kind of in a limbo state.
So I do kind of feel like things are going to be pushing towards either, obviously free, people love free, but I think one-time payments, which I think you've talked about before, is a very appealing option. I think lifetime subscriptions, which basically is a one-time payment, is like another way to market that, which is very appealing. I think annual subscriptions are fine too.
Like I would love to not even have a monthly option. Like if I were... like selling something on a subscription basis, I'd be like, it's annual or nothing, basically. And I think a lot of people are going to start doing that more. I think there's also this like pay what you want trend that's been happening as well.
And I think it's like all from the root of the fact that monthly subscriptions are just like, don't feel good to users anymore. And you want to push people to either like, still be uncommitted entirely or committed entirely in some way. And then obviously, ideally you want them to feel like they got a lot more value than they actually paid.
So yeah, I have this, like any product that I'm pricing, I would not be at all interested in doing a monthly subscription. Like if I could avoid it.
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,
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.
So that's my... Is there an example of that? It doesn't have to be a tool you're making. But what do you think would be a tool that would fit that business model?
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.
That's not SaaS, right? It's not exactly software. Is it more like content or?
It's content. It is content. So it's not SaaS.
Yeah.
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.
Yeah. Selfishly, I have like... I want people to make a lot more interesting content like than just new podcasts. Like yours is at least like a new format, but I feel like most people are just doing like, let's try to recreate the all in podcast or let's try to like, so you've been doing a lot more live stuff or you were, which is very cool. I think live is actually still very underdone.
like particular from growing channels like and then obviously you can start doing a lot more asynchronous content as well um but i want people to like do more novel formats and that could either be like towards live and like much more unscripted which i think you're doing or it can be like more produced and like more high fidelity to some extent which i don't think people are really touching because it requires a lot i don't know it kind of like requires you to like
your heart on the sleeve a little bit more and like put your taste on the line. Like if you're doing something that's like more produced, I feel like people feel more like they're trying and so like it feels like bad if people don't like it. But like I really want somebody to do like the daily show but for like tech slash culture, you know, like tech meets culture.
Something like the be real like spot on SNL that like they did. I feel like that's like, you could do a bajillion of those. Like if you created your own or I don't know, just like, I think there's like so many, even like, um, like architectural digest, like home tours, you could totally take that and do it.
But like where startup founders live or like, you know, I don't know if investors are like founders who are actually rich would want to like show you that they have money if they were willing to, that would be cool. But I just feel like there's so many different spins that like you could do with, um,
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
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...
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.
One of the big things too, which you kind of probably figured out is like, I feel like people latch onto a format they think they should do. And then that format probably does not fit their emotional center or like their natural aptitude, like whether it's video or audio or async or live or like short form or long form or group or individual, like whatever the combinations are.
And like, I think you need to iterate a lot more on that to find where your emotional like center actually is. And yeah, And presumably, I think live and unscripted and a little more of that, I think, through observation, ended up fitting you better than previous iterations of things you had been doing, which you could do, but I don't think probably was emotionally the right fit for you.
And I think people make... like they don't spend enough time iterating on formats to find the thing that they're actually better at and can do more sustainably. And then like, I think people stay too much in the like middle of the bell curve, which is like, okay, what are people generally doing?
And I think most of the time you should push to some extreme, like, okay, everybody's doing group, like I think, okay, I should do like live and like try to solo stream or do one-on-one or like some interesting format, or I should like go more produced, higher fidelity, like less often, like, I think that's also good too, to try those things where people haven't really done a lot yet.
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.
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.
Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I feel like for the most part should be fun. You know, we don't need to like go do a teardown of Paul Graham's like latest essay or whatever. But not that one. You know, he put out another essay like yesterday or the day before. Yeah. It's like when to, I don't even know what it's called. So something like when to do what you love or something like that. So, you know.
there's like some meme about it it's like the bell curve and it's like oh like do what you love on this end and do what you love on this end and in the middle it's like basically like figure out what works you know something like that so totally i think that applies to this too you know it's not like an unheard insight but i think it's probably like pretty consistent it's a great place to end uh thank you for spending time with us today where could people follow your thoughts on the internet
They can follow me where you spend a lot of time on Twitter. Um, and I write long form essays like on my blog or whatever you want to call it. It's at working theories, T H E O R Y S misspelled intentionally.com. Um, but I mean, yeah, just go to my Twitter. You can like find my website and all my links and yeah, my DMS are open.
We'll put the links in the YouTube description. Cool.
And, uh, thanks for having me on. This was fun. Um, I didn't get to the back half of my ideas, doc. So, you know, for another time, if anybody ends up doing like the leak 2.0 and derivatives thereof, I'm sure we would be curious to know.
A hundred percent. Um, let's make that comment section on YouTube thriving. Thanks again for coming on and I'll see you later.
Okay. Thanks for having me, Greg.