The Startup Ideas Podcast - 7 validated startup ideas that will make $100K/month (and how to grow them)

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

Join us for an engaging conversation with Cody Schneider, Co-Founder and CEO of Swell AI, as we explore a wide range of AI startup ideas and business opportunities with detailed analysis of market opportunities, implementation strategies, and potential revenue models.Timestamps:00:00 - Introduction and technical setup01:31 - Startup Idea 1: Lightroom Preset SaaS04:41 - Startup Idea 2: Domain Portfolio for Lead Gen10:56 -Startup Idea 3: E-commerce newsletter AI tools15:19 -Startup Idea 4: High-LTV SaaS Services20:08 - Startup Idea 5: Productized Service  Agency28:11 - Startup Idea 6: Dog park bar concept32:53 - Startup Idea 7: Micro app StudioKey Points:• Detailed discussion of an AI-powered Lightroom preset subscription business opportunity• Analysis of e-commerce newsletter AI tools and market potential• Exploration of physical business concept: Dog park combined with bar• Discussion of micro-apps trend and opportunity in riding viral waves1) Lightroom Preset SaaSPhotographers spend $$$ on presets. Time to disrupt.• Build AI tool to generate Lightroom presets from sample photos• Convert XML packets at scale• $29/month subscription model• Target Adobe users on FB adsInfinite margins. Just code.2) Domain Portfolio for Lead GenLaw firms do it. Now apply it everywhere.• Buy 1000+ exact-match domains for niche keywords• Rank organically (still works!)• Bundle leads to specific industries• Sell entire portfolio to PE firms40k+ per lead in some niches 3) AI for Ecomm NewslettersPeople hate coding email templates.• AI chat interface for newsletter design• Product storytelling automation• Holiday campaign generation• Template modification without codeKlaviyo users desperate for this.4) Lalo Agency PlayNew CRM taking music industry by storm.• Help artists build fan lists• Run targeted merch giveaways• Geographic targeting for tours• Less than $1 cost per signupAll major labels switching over 5) Dog Park Bar ConceptThe millennial country club is here.• Combine dog park + bar• Add app for daily dog updates• Target high-income dog owners• Members-only model potential4pm is packed every day 6) Micro AI Apps StudioText-behind-image went viral. More coming.- Build simple, focused AI tools• Ride viral trends• Credit pack monetization• $7/week pricing psychologyAdobe does this. Why not you?7) High-LTV SaaS ServicesFind tools people pay for but barely use.• Target Klaviyo, HubSpot, Sage• Build productized service• Create digital assets/templates• Add custom plugins25k+ customer LTV Notable Quotes:"Labels are like a bank. That's all they turned into." - Cody Schneider"Find trends. That's a very hard thing, I think, for the average person to do. But I think to that point, I think it's gonna get easier and easier to see these trends that are occurring." - Cody SchneiderWant 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/30startupideasLCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products 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/Startup Empire - a membership for builders who want to build cash-flowing businesses https://www.startupempire.coFIND ME ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenbergInstagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/FIND CODY ON SOCIALCody’s startup: https://www.swellai.com/X/Twitter: https://tinyurl.com/5fjdn8d7LinkedIn: https://tinyurl.com/28e89f5r

So that's the idea basically is like fine trends, build a studio around it. Could be like micro apps basically. I think micro apps are the angle. Again, this, you know, when we break it down on that like simplified form, it sounds so obvious and so stupid. But like really, this is actually, and like fine trends. Like that's like a very hard thing. I think for the average person to do. But I think to that point, like I think it's going to get easier and easier to see these trends that are occurring.

And you can do that trend analysis now at a level that just like previously was impossible. and so you can also ship the product so quickly that you can actually ride that wave. And I think that that, again, it just feels like there's something in there that's going to become more common. And it's really like the larger trend that's happening with like Cali and like these other apps that do like that specific action, that specific thing. There's a ton like a ton of opportunity in those because there's just the term of that is huge. What are we doing today? Today we're doing, I mean, we're doing startup ideas. But I want to give you the distribution as a.

always come prepared right don't even come on the show if you're not doing it full disclosure we've both had four Cuban coffees I'm wired right now we're wired all right what's idea number one okay do you know much about like lightroom presets not really okay so it's like basically photographers use them to get like a certain style of the photo so for example like if you want your wedding to have like a specific aesthetic right you go and use these presets. Often, like, you know, there's, so there's this whole, like, economy around this, too, of people selling presets. So, like, a lot of photographers, this is what they do is they have these preset packs that you go and you buy from them. So I think

there's an opportunity to totally just erode this market and basically turn it into a subscription software for photographers. So how you do this? You can take a photo and you can get AI, To create the XML that creates the lightroom preset. So imagine this. I go in, I upload the photo, and I'm like, write the code for whatever this lightroom preset is. So it gets the aesthetic. Okay. So you can do that.

Make these XML packets at scale, right? And then what I think you can do is then turn this into a subscription software, where then you go and you're basically selling access to this, say it's $29 a month. You can make whatever preset you want. You find a photo, the aesthetic that you like, and you're about to go do a shoot or whatever, you're doing some edits, you can basically upload that source photo of the preset that you're looking for,

and it creates the, basically the plugin for you automatically, download that imports right into Lightroom, and then suddenly you have that preset already to find. You don't have to play with it. So what this solves is instead of, you can basically build whatever preset you want, like using the AI image recognition. So we messed around with this like two weeks ago,

saw that you could actually do this. huge market for this. Tons of search volume for like X preset, right? Like X lightroom preset. Also, you can target people on Facebook ads that have a Photoshop or a lightroom interest or an Adobe interest. And then you just run ads. It's really similar actually to the SVG one that we talked about forever ago. Same idea where it's like here's this subculture of people that are buying these like, you know,

like pre-made whatever digital products. And let's just turn that into a subscription revenue rather than having you. it be. And this is something they use like on a weekly, you know, that daily basis when they're doing these edits. They're constantly looking for them. So the margin on that is like infinite. I mean, it's like 99% right. It's just the code. Also as the company, like there's two sides of it. So I think what you could do is you could have it where it's like, uh, the customer could upload the preset and build their own preset or you just have this library of presets that they can go and download just an XML file download. And so then your job as like the company is you just go,

you scrape all the photo. Like I would probably. find all the keywords that people are looking for like boho lightroom presets right or whatever go find all the variations of the photos and then you take those build out the xml file and then people like have some for free like do like a 10 preset pack that's like a free download that gets their email put them into a drip nurture upselling them into the subscription i mean it's done dude tell me if this is a bad idea What if you bought a thousand domains? Boho, Lightroom. You know where I'm going with this, right?

Yes, 100%. Yeah. So you buy the domain for the search term. 100%. So it comes up, like, number one on Google, Quickfast. 100%. And then you just lead them to the subscription. Just funnel them into it into the company, a thousand percent.

Cost what? Domain costs what now? 10 bucks. Yeah. You can get hosting or hosting. I think you can do, it's like an infinite amount of domains. They charge on the bandwidth, but you could just do like WordPress sites for all of them. That's how all these SEOs do this.

How do they do it? So basically there's a huge value for like injury lawyers in all these subsets. Dude yeah like I always see their billboards. I'm always like how do they make money? Well actually that's how you think. You're like how do I think man? I'm like, who are these people getting

injured? Totally. Totally. How many people are getting injured that 80% of the billboards I see in Miami are, you know, personal injury lawyer? Totally. So So anyway, there's this whole quick break in the pod to tell you a little bit about startup empire. 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? 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 startup empire.com in the description. Basically, so why this is a thing is because to buy a, CPC ads or PPC ads on law-related keywords is super expensive. Like it's like, you know, for Miami, it's probably $120 a click, right, for like truck injury lawyer.

So what these SEOs do and then what these brands do or what these companies do is they're basically building an owned media asset that is a way for them to do like lead farming. So they find every long-tail keyword that's related to a brand or sorry, that's related to like some, you know, search term that's like to this high ticket item that's like a one time purchase and then they go they rank that they basically like farm these leads in what happens is then uh they do what's called a rank and rent um so they basically like rent the site the leads of that site to a company and then often what happens is like after that company gets sees the lead volume that's coming from the site they then go

and they're like hey we want to buy this and like have it in our portfolio because then it's an asset this is like a you know asset line within the the the law firm, right? Because they're like, oh, we own like, we'll say a portfolio of 50 domains that are constantly going to be sending leads to us is the idea. So why this works is because long tail exact domains still actually work for ranking on Google with even all the algorithm changes and updates. Actually, it's pretty insane. So what Greg is talking about with like, oh, you buy all these domain variations like Boho, Lightroom preset, right, or whatever the variation is. The opportunity there is that you can rank those domains.

really effectively so that creates this top of funnel if you have a thousand sites that are ranking for all these high intent keywords that just like funnels down into a single business and again you're just taking the same idea that the law industry is using and applying it in this space and law is just one of them like med spas or another like anything that's like again high ticket there there's opportunity there's probably there's a totally different world but uh in truck parking there's like a huge opportunity to do this same strategy. We looked at it at one point, but anyway, didn't move forward with it. Truck part.

Like, only you just know that that opportunity exists. I'd love you for it. That's why you're here. Okay, so I think one point on that. I just want to confirm with you. If you end up building a portfolio of all these domains, generating tons of leads, that itself you can sell. Thousand percent, thousand percent.

So like, how much could you make in something like that? that. Like, what kind of multiples? Huge, depending on the industry. Because, like, a lot of the people I know that do this, that's their whole strategy. They go and, like, basically, they bundle these domains and they sell, they sell them to a P.E. Because it's just a, you know, it's a, think about it as, like, digital real estate. You know, it's like a real estate portfolio that you're in your real estate is on the front page of Google, right?

Like, that's the whole concept. But, I mean, depending on the industry, right, like, if you look at like a truck, you know, accident lead, like, you're talking. talking about like 40 grand plus. So think about, okay, a, so the lead is worth $40,000. Yes, that's like the value of this. Like this is a huge, like, this is a huge business. Like I'm talking like, you know, and the $10 million plus if you have like 50 domains that are in high, like, you know, area, like high population dense areas. And that's like the whole game. The challenge is that these domains, everybody knows this, right? So what you have to do is like if you want to go buy, you know, say even like a domain for like,

like Kansas City or something, right? And it's like some long-tail domain. It's going to cost you like still a grand, right? So there is some type of like capital up from investment. That domain isn't even being used for this. It's just like domain squatters. But the domain squatters know that they're valuable because of this whole ecosystem that exists around this.

And again, we're just using the lawyers because it's like one of the easiest ones, but there's like hundreds of these categories, right? And it's a lot of it is, I mean, even like CrossFit gyms I've seen them do this in the past where they own like all these long-tail keywords. that are related to that business. HVAC companies do this as well. It's just elite, like, they're just lead, like, a lot of it's like local businesses that it's going to be in a physical location that you're searching for this.

Cool. Okay, so I get this idea. It's like on paper, I'm like, how doesn't this work? Someone's got to go build it to honestly find out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we'll put a bow on that idea. What do you got next? Next one I got for you is something a little bit different.

It's in the AI space as well, but totally different categories. so it's in e-com land. Tons of search volume for AI for e-commerce newsletters. AI for e-commerce newsletters. Going apeshit right now. And I think the reason for it is like people just don't know what to include. How do you talk about your products? So I think that's one element.

The other, the search intent that I'm also seeing forward is like they're looking for like basically how do I design these email newsletters? And we talked about this before, like this like AI chat, you know, on site, like imagine V0, but for designing email newsletters. I think that what it feels like there's people are looking for is basically, hey, I want to have like this predefined template. But then I want to just like chat with the AI to like insert specific products. So a lot of these e-commerce companies, they still like hard code these emails that they're building, right? Like if you're legit, you're doing all the design of these emails. You're writing all of this, you know, disgusting email code to like get, you know, it's just like tables within tables, basically. And so what you could do is, I mean, and this is, I've literally done this work in like a past life where you would go into the email template and you would change like certain photos and sections and like I mess stuff up like countless times because you're, again, like tables within tables of programming occurring.

And like, you know, the link's not actually clickable. And that's the whole point of this image being in there. So I think the angle is basically, it's probably both the ability to modify a template that they already have for their email, like the promotion of their products, whatever the emails are that they send out through Clavio or whatever. And then also just like writing newsletters about like, okay, the holiday's coming up. Like what are some products that are related to this holiday and an angle that I can spin those in so that it tells like some type of like story narrative. Like say you're selling, you know, festive. I don't know, like Christmas mugs or whatever, you know, something like that. It's how do I, I mean, I think one can be like identify the products in my catalog that are related to this, you know, event, this time and that something is happening.

And then how do I write about that in the storytelling format and kind of automate that process? So I'm curious your thoughts there. Again, I don't really know, like this is just based off the search intent that I've seen, but that, I mean, it's a growing keyword. and I'm curious what you think on like how people what people are actually looking for. I mean, just curious, okay, on that idea,

like, to be honest, I don't know. Yeah. Like the previous idea, I was like, yes. Yeah. I see it. Yeah. I like 97% see it. And the last 3%

you always kind of have to go and build it to really figure it out. This idea feels like if I have, you know, Be honest, I prefer the first idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you think people are searching for with, like, AI for e-commerce newsletters? Like, why is that search volume, like, going up?

And, like, why are people... Because that's the thing that, like, also, I'm like, I don't know. Like, I'm making a guess. Like, this is what I think people are looking for. But, like, they're looking for something, right? And I think that's a lot of this is, like, I don't know what it is. Like, that last three percent that you're talking about, like, we think this is it. I don't know if it's actually this, but...

Yeah, I mean... I don't know, dude. Yeah. Like the reality is everyone's searching for AI for XYZ. Yeah. So we know that. AI for e-commerce, I see it. You know, okay, like you're, that's a huge category.

That's a huge niche. But then you have the sub-niche of AI for e-commerce newsletters. And I'm like, kind of like, get out of here, dude. Yeah. I'm like, that, on one hand, I want to look at it and be like, like, something is up. Like the trend data, I don't know, there's a bunch of bots that are just like searching for this.

On the other hand, sometimes the best business ideas are these like weird ones, right? Sounds stupid. Sounds so stupid. The only reason I'm interested in this or like it jumped out of me is, so I had a friend that used to work at Clavio

and he's like, yo, 80% of the people that are using this aren't using it. Like they're paying for this, but they're like not extracting all the value out of it. And so it feels like some version of that. And like, again, I don't know if this is an agent. I don't know if this thing is just running in the back. Like, I don't know what this looks like.

But I feel like they know they need to do email marketing. They have no. And I've been in the same, you know, situation like with running like for email for an e-commerce company. It's like, what do you even say in this thing? Because you're just talking about the same products like over and over and over. Like how do I come from different angles every time so that it feels unique, but I'm not trying to get the same angle to happen.

Totally. So again, it feels like there's something in there. And it is a pain point because they're like, I'm paying whatever, you know, a grand a month for this claimio subscription, you know, 12 grand a year. And we're doing a send a month. Like that's not, I can extract so much more value from that. What does that look like? Here's, okay, so here's my framework for coming up with ideas based on this idea and other ideas like it that I think could be absolutely massive. So you pick a tool that has high LTV like Clavio.

What do you think an LTV of a Clavio customer is? I'm guessing. I think they're averages. They last around like 24 months. So I'm guessing like 25 grand. Yeah. So 25 grand, a HubSpot, 2550 grand. Go to chat, GPT, type in high LTV SaaS companies that have a market cap more than a billion dollars, gives you a list.

So then you have all these softwares. Your insight, really smart, 80% of people are paying for the software, but not getting the most out of it. Really big insight. So then it becomes, could you build a product-dised service that could eventually be like AI fully autonomous,

but a product-dice service that we're, you know, we help you get the most out of Clavio. I have something for you. Oh, here we go. Back off this. Do you know what the software sage is called, like Sage 100, Sage 300? I don't.

Okay. It is the biggest, it's basically QuickBooks, but for construction companies. One of the biggest softers in the world. Okay, just full stop. Massive. So many companies use it,

because it's one of the biggest categories. All right. There is like tens of thousands of long-tail keywords for how to X, Y, Z, and Sage 100. and SAGE 300. It's all these different variations of the software. They're doing the same thing.

Sage online. I think there's massive agency opportunity to go in and basically be like, we are the SAGE consulting company that comes in. And it's literally like every construction company in the U.S. uses this. Like that is your target market that you're going after. And you're just basically building out, you know, whatever. It's most likely workflows that you're doing for them. or the same thing that you do in like HubSpot Consulting or like Salesforce consulting, right,

where you build these custom dashboards out or whatever that ends up being. So again, huge category. There's probably a play within plugins for that as well. Again, they have a marketplace. Of course they do. One of these massive companies. So just random. I feel like that's related to like here's huge software that, you know, is underserved.

How do you go and provide some type of service within it? Totally. So it sounds like it's find underserved software number one. Then it's build an agency, productized agency. Turn that agency into productized agency. Then it's build templates, digital assets, sell them, high margin, 90 plus percent margin. And then it's can I, you know, add it. Do plugins.

Can I do, you know, custom builds on top of this? Because suddenly you know how the API works way better than anybody else in the industry. and you just found that the last 10 clients asked for the same thing. Can I do a subscription version of this? That's $100 instead of $1,000 instead of $1,000 to do this build out for them. And the reality is that you build all those things, you will be able to sell to HubSpot if you're building a HubSpot business or Sage or Shopify or whatever it is, right?

They're going to, if you could convince them that people who sign up to your service, use their product more. The core product more. That's huge for them. Totally. Yeah. And it makes a better experience on top of their software, which creates longer stickiness.

Like, yeah. This is good. Yeah. But, so next one, agency, so piggybacking off of exactly what we're talking about, of a software that's growing. Have you heard of Lalo yet?

No. Okay. VC company growing like crazy. They are a drop CRM is how they're positioning themselves. but they're doing like SMS, they're doing email, they do Instagram DMs, and I think they're moving into TikTok and all this. It's basically how it functions like, say I'm a creator or I'm like a music artist. So like, for example, Zach Bryan used them on his last tour.

He has this huge list. All the tickets drop. They hit the whole list. And you can also like do like, you know, if you're on the list, you get special access or whatever that ends up being. All of the major record labels are switching to this right now. The only reason I know this is because I do a little bit of work out of Nashville with, for my friend who's an artist. And like they switched over. Everybody that's on his management

company is now in the process of switching over. I think there's a massive opportunity to go and build the Lalo agency from the conversations I've had. Nobody knows how to get people onto these lists. All I'm doing and what we're seeing success with, we take their Instagram account and we do a match audience to anybody that's engaged with the Instagram account. So this is the artist that we're doing. we then run an ad that is a giveaway ad. So get $100 worth of merch for free when you sign up. So these people already have an interest in that person. So we know that they're a fan.

And we are running a merch ad to them. And we just run that continually, just constantly. And then at the end of each month, now it's the winner. And it turns into this repeatable thing. We're getting people to sign up for like under a dollar on this, right? And so, which is just crazy. And then what you're basically doing is like the whole angle is like, hey, we, we, we run that whole playbook for you.

And this is this continuous thing that's going. And the angle of why it's continuous is you're constantly making different ad variations, different, different testing, different. So where this can even get deeper is you can strategically go

and be like, hey, we know that the tour next year is going to be in these locations. I want to run the ads just to these locations so that we get a mailing list for those specific venues, those specific locations

where the artist is going to be this next year. so that when those tickets drop, boom, I hit that entire audience, right? And I immediately get sales. So you can be like almost scalpel-like in the targeting that you're doing on this. So anyway, I'm curious your thoughts. And can you personalize it? Yeah.

Yeah. All of it. So how would you personalize it? Because I think that's what a lot of people don't realize that's happening right now in growth in marketing is like we move from like one size fits. We're moving from one size fits all marketing to, you know, personalized with AI. So thinking about, so two things there.

The artists, the ads, like we do variations of the artist being like, hey, I'm doing a giveaway, like, you know, click the link to blah, blah, whatever it is, right? So you can do those variations. And then the other thing that you can do is because it's geography. When you say doing those variations, I mean, I'm, I'll pick your favorite artist. Charlie X, yeah. Charlie XXX. For those of you don't know, Cody is literally, forget Superfan, the number one fan. I wasn't the top 1%. You were in the top point zero. You're in the top one, dude. I love Charlie. And all these bandwagon fans, man, they need a, it's killing. Get out of here.

I was at her bat tour and they were like, oh, they like, I was with my girlfriend. They asked like, who's the fan? And she's like, oh, he is. And, you know, I look out of place there. And the people that, like, asked this, they're like, oh, yeah, for sure. I knew every lyric. They knew maybe two songs. So, yeah, it kills me anyways. So you can take, you're saying using AI. You could use AI. I think the artist would have, like, hesitancy with that from a brand standpoint.

What we just had the artist do is, like, hey, you know, here's five different scripts. Like, just literally do a selfie video of you at a venue. Right. And just, like, read out the scripts. it's whatever, 20 seconds long. And then we test all those variations against each other, see which one has the cheapest CPC, the cheapest sign up, you know,

people giving their phone number or their contact information. Well, just to speak to that for a second. So, okay, maybe Charlie is doing the, I could just see her like heart drop whenever I say the word Charlie. I get, Charlie records the script, but the background could be, you know, if it's in Miami. New variation.

Yeah, new variation, right? Totally. That's either stock video or AI generated. I remember Nikita Beer, you know, with TBH and Gass, his viral social apps, he was creating ads and content where he was focusing on high schools and college campuses. But, you know, I think what made his ads and content so effective was, you know, if you saw an ad for University of Alabama. Oh, in the location, that's, oh, that's brilliant.

So he's targeting University of Alabama. The background isn't just some random college campus. It's, you know, Alabama quad or whatever. Yeah, totally. Something that's recognizable that the whole, I guess, like, you know, micro-community or that geography would know exists. Or high schools even, right? Yeah, totally.

Even like a 500, 300, 300, 200-person high school. Totally. they see that ad creative and they're like wow this is obviously a product for me specific for me totally so take that you know just to flesh that out even further so you take that you know the talent that they recorded the video we remove the background and be like I'm coming to your city it could be generic even or change it right whatever do some lip sync but I'm coming to your city I want to give away free tickets to you uh you know click the ad to learn more and it like shows the background of the place that they're at and then

you do that geo targeting that ad just runs to that specific location i mean you could probably get that sign up even lower these people already know they exist right like they're already bought in you're just trying to get them on that on this list which is like what do you offer them and again we're just seeing this you know playbook of like merch giveaway they already like this person like work really effectively for this what do you say to people who say building a startup in the music business is like a terrible idea. I think yes and no. I think there's straight up an opportunity.

Probably if you go and do like a web flow or web design agency that is specifically for artists. Every year they renew their website, every album drop. And like they're constantly doing updates and edits on it. Like you could, I know a dude that does this and it's like 2K a month. He's on subscription.

Right. And it's terrible. The experience is terrible. Really hard to get into that. world. But like once you get one, then it's, you get all of them. Because like all of them are, you get the entire management team is typically how this happens. So like a management company, right? Like they would go, they manage 30 artists and like you get one of those artists and you provide a great experience. Like you're going to get every one of those artists is going to come,

you know, back to you basically. Because there's all this cross talk that happens internally, like on like what are the strategies that are happening? Like that's the whole point of the management company, how they function now is they're almost like a, you know, a growth agency or like the the media team that's behind this, this artist. So like the label isn't really doing that. The label doesn't even know what's going on. Nobody knows what's going on. But like specifically the label doesn't know what's going on.

The artists and the management company are becoming more and more of that like lever that actually pulls and makes difference for the, for the music. Labels like, am I, am I? They're like a bank. Yeah, exactly. It's all they turned into. Yeah. God bless him. Yeah.

Paying all the bills. All right, cool. So this is a physical one, but I'm just like, okay, so I just feel like it's like this is a huge trend that's about to happen. So that's why I'm above it. Wait, before you even say this idea, okay, physical idea. Yeah. Would you ever start actually start a physical idea? How should people be thinking about software versus physical right now? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think software or like any of these digital companies, it's great if you, like if you're, it's cutthroat though, right? Like you're playing. against the world. I think that's the difference. Whereas like these physical locations, or these physical businesses, you're just competing against the people in your geography. And like if there's a certain biology of that, that, you know, demographic area, sorry, that geographic area, like these can work really well. And like the one I'm about to

tell you is, is that. So this business is a dog park that has a bar in it. Obvious. Say less, dude. Okay. So I, we take our dog there some days of the week just to like when we're cleaning the house and you know running the vacuum or whatever and we don't want them to like just be in the way and it's also like for him to get to hang out and you know have some social um so it's it's a boarding like daycare place the dog has to be okay to be in there if once they're okay they can go to the dog park there's a bar at the dog park at 4 p.m. every day that bar is popping I'm talking like you're talking you know peak 11 p.m. like new year's

Eve, like bar level of turns that are happening, the whole thing. It is insane. And I think that there is a huge opportunity. They just have it in like a warehouse that's like all like, you know, it's in this like industrial park that they put this thing in. Um, there's nothing else out there besides really this, this facility. And, uh, I, I think it's massive. The other side of it too that they do is they have this like app that throughout the day when they're watching the dog, it like, they take photos of the dog and then they give like a play by play of like what it's doing. Uh, girlfriend is obsessed with it. She like, she's like, oh my God. Like I get this like, it's almost like a feed of like hit, you know, their day basically. So kind of two sides of like a similar business. But like I think specifically like dog park bar is just this massive, massive opportunity just based on what I'm seeing. So how do you actually go and start that? I don't, I, that's where you're like, I don't know.

I have no idea. Like getting the liquor license, the whole thing, like, that's a huge lift. This would have to be, but, you know, somebody that knows that industry or knows that world. But I think that that idea of like a place where I can take my dog that has like some type of social thing connected to it. Because they're charging for the dog and then for the drinks, right? So you're getting like the dog turn, but then also like the drink turn. It can even be a coffee shop or something as well. But it's like, oh, the dog can play.

for two hours. You drink two coffees or whatever. You drink two drinks or three drinks, whatever that ends up being. And the bigger thing is it's like this third space that people go to that they can meet up, which is like everybody's looking for that third space right now. So a bigger thing. On the marketing side, super easy. It's just Facebook ads to people who own dogs. That's super, super, super easy. Do like higher income, you know, 26 to 35. You're in the money. I think like a members-only version of this could be really interesting. Totally agree. Yeah.

So like the trend is the sow-house-sification of everything. Yep. I'm starting to see like the sow-house but for kids. Yep. Like you bring your kids there. Totally. The sow-house for like people who play paddle. Totally.

Which is like an upcoming trend. So you basically, you have the macro trend of the sow-house specification of everything. It's just country club. Yeah, exactly. It's millennial country country. Coming back. They are, though. I think they are.

They are. You're going to rebrand, too. They need to re- Yeah, exactly. Doos, and then you make money on, you know, hospitality. It's such a, like a repeat, like, again, from how I understand

the economics of these country clubs work, like you have the dues, you have to hit that amount. If you don't, you still pay that money. Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. Yeah.

So you're, like, the, like, the, the, the, the, company is guaranteeing they're going to get X dollar amount from you during that year, right? By the way, it's not like they like hit you up and they're like, by the way, you haven't hit your limit and go spend $2,000. They're just like, I hope Greg doesn't send them an email. Exactly. And ask about this. Yeah.

Totally. Totally. So, but we have time for another. Let's do, yeah, let's do another, let's do another idea. Okay, cool. Next one for you. This one is more just like a larger trend I'm studying to see. with like very specific AI apps.

So like this AI app went viral recently. It's like text behind image. Yeah, I saw that on. And so what it is like for the audience is basically, it's literally like here's a person, there's a background behind them that's like beautiful. And then they put like one word text that's like, you know, sunset.

It's so stupid. I think the use case is like YouTube thumbnails. Yeah. Yeah. That's one of the pieces. Yeah. You had them on your show recently. Daniel Daly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He does that style. Amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So basically what happened is I think this guy or girl saw this trend in YouTube thumbnails and was like, how do I make it really easy to do it, productized it, got a lot of traction. 100%. So I think that those, like, there's all of these very small things that people are trying to do,

like background removal or like cloud removal. And like all this stuff has kind of existed in some forms before. And like all these like FaceTune apps and stuff like this. But I think that there's, and this is like API wrapper games that you could play. But it's like, okay, we have this like app framework that's like text behind image. Like all that's happening there is like it's probably just an API call

that's like putting this, you know, doing the separation and the whole thing. That could just be like reused over and over again for all of these like, like small actions that people are trying to go viral with. And how I'm seeing people price these is you basically buy like credit packs where it's like, you know, whatever,

four dollars a month and you get 10 credits a month or something. But a lot of the times it's like the classic, you know, app pricing where it's like $7 a week and it's like actually $29 a month. That's what that's translating into. But I think that. No one talks about that. Oh, dude,

that's what is happening here. And then they get three months out of it and they just got $100 for, you know, an acquisition cost of like three bucks, right? Because they're like, oh, you know,

all impulse, all impulse by $7.99. You know where that started? Ringtones. Oh, do you remember that? Yeah. They're coming back, I heard.

What? Yes. I heard they're coming back. I've heard that like, there's this whole. Did your grandmother tell you that? No, dude. This is like,

I think Sam Parr tweeted about it of how there's like these companies that are growing again and it's like a nostalgia thing, like selling nostalgia of like, you know, you put like a Britney ringtone on, like toxic as what place people call you. That is so funny.

Dude, amazing, right? Like if I was hanging out with you and then all of a sudden toxic by Britney Spears came on? Straight up. Dude, you would be, you would go up in my books. I would be amazing, right? And it would be, and I think that that's it. It's like a, you know, it's a brand. A small price to pay for being cool with your friends.

Exactly. Exactly. And I think that that's back. So anyway, yeah, I don't know how we ended up in the retail world. All roads lead to toxic by Britney's hair. A thousand percent. The best karaoke song to sing, by the way. You want to get a crowd pumping?

It's like that or sweet Caroline. Like those two will get everybody hyped. How did we get here? I have no idea. Rapha, you know what we got here? Jordan, you know what we got here? Text behind image. Sex behind image was it.

Let's go. So, yeah, I think that that is the angle. I think you can just ride these ways. And actually, like, this, like, you know, you have an app framework that you're just, like, replacing the guts each time. I think that this is what's going to happen with a lot of these, like, startup studios.

And I think this is actually a larger trend. We're, like, even look behind, you know, the guys that are doing that cursor, right? Or, like, any of these, they're all, like, labs. Like, that's how they position themselves and how they're raising money. Like, we're an AI lab. or we're like, we're at, you know, we're almost, they're like product studios because it's like,

you know, we have a 10 cracked engineers and we can push stuff out in like 24 hours, right? And I think that that, that larger trend at like different scales of the game are going to be happening more and more with, because it's just so fast, right? Like we're in this very ephemeral media landscape. And because of that, like a trend can go viral for 90 days. And it's like, how do you ride that wave? And I think that there's people that are doing this. So that's the idea basically is like fine trends, build.

the studio around it. Could be like micro apps basically. I think micro apps are the angle. Again, this, you know, when we break it down on that like simplified form, sounds so obvious and so stupid. Yeah. But like really, this is actually, and like, fine trends. Like, that's like a very hard thing, I think for the average person to do. But I think to that point, like, I think it's going to get easier and easier to see these trends that are occurring. Like, even the tools that I know you guys are building internally of like, here's things that are popping off, right? Like, is there a way that we can inject or insert ourselves into this? And you can do that trend analysis now at a level that just like previously was impossible.

And so you can also ship the product so quickly that you can actually ride that wave. And I think that that, again, it just feels like there's something in there that's going to become more common. By the way, someone listening this is going to be like, yeah, that's just like a small idea building these like micro apps. But the reality is Adobe does this. Literally Adobe does this. Like if you, they look for search terms, they create micro apps that funnels to their main apps. Yeah. Do you know V, you know VED, right?

VDIO. They're like an online video editor company. How do I spell that? It's VEED.0. Yeah, I know them, but. Yeah. Yeah. So they launched a captions app for videos.

Yeah. Where you just like, it's a standalone app away from their core product. They also have like mobile full video editing. It just those captions, right? got to a million ARR, and I think it was like 27 days, if I remember, right? And again, they had an audience, like, they had an email list and all these users already. So like that's how they can do that. But like, when you think about that, like, here's this app that does this one thing only,

but the audience is so big that you can go after. Like, it's like, even if you get a small percentage of it, it's, and it's really like the larger trend that's happening with like Cali and like these other apps that do like that specific action, that specific thing. there's a ton, like a ton of opportunity in those because there's just, the, the tam of that is huge, right? So, and I think that this is like a big trend and all, like, everybody that's like, you know, go, like, well, Canva does this already or anything. Yeah, like, they do do this. But, like, there's this subset of people that want to do this on their phone really easily, right?

And they'll pay you for that, right? It's like, it's just like, you know, looking at like people that pay, like, play candy crush as an example. Like, majority in their revenue comes from like 10% of their users, right? But there's this subset of people that are willing to pay for this thing because they find value in it. Totally. It's like. And everybody edits photos. Like, everybody takes photos.

Like, everybody is your tank. It's like when you go to the cheesecake factory and you can order anything, you know, that's Canada. Exactly. And you're like, God, I don't even like, I don't even know where to start. I don't know what I want to do. Like, dude, a friend of mine comes to Miami tells me that he's ordering a Cuban sandwich from cheesecake factory. Because it's on the menu. It's like, yeah, you can order a Cuban sandwich from cheesecake factory.

But, you know, you want to go to the place that has a menu of five things. Totally. That has the best Cubano in town. Why do people buy from product-to-services? Yeah. Why do they buy from them? those types of companies, it's because they specialize in the specific thing. And because of that offering, like, they can just narrow down and focus, right? Yeah. And the positioning is tight.

Oh, totally. You can wrap your mind around it, right? And don't get me wrong. Like, sometimes the experience of, like, when I go and I have that overwhelm this, like, if you go to, like, a bomb Chinese, like, dim sum in place, like, dude, there's so many things on the menu. Like, there's no way that, like, you're going to be able to. But, like, that has its place. But majority of the time, people want to make less decisions. So if you're like, this app does this, but there's like, you know, 360 million people that have mobile phones in the U.S. that all could potentially want to do this thing.

There's a subset of those people that want to do that, right? And you're going to be able to find them now, especially with, like, Facebook ad targeting has gotten ridiculous for app installs. Like, I don't know if you guys have seen this, where it's like, we're at the point where it's like, you just have enough money, like, you just target all of Facebook with some type of conversion action. And, like, it'll find the people. Like, we're not even, like, don't even do the targeting.

Just like tell them to like, we want this action to happen. Send us traffic. And then like you just run like 100 different variations of creative and it like finds that person. Insane. Insane when you think about that. You know, we're all talking about agents. Like it's like this brand new thing. Like isn't that's like an agent basically.

Basically. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. My goal is this action. This action. Yep. That is like the simple way of thinking about what an agent is.

Totally. I don't think people really. like how deep Facebook is on the AI stuff too. Like their entire ad platform is basically just AI, right? Like that's how they're making all their decisions. Their platform is AI and their news feed is AI. It's a thousand percent. Their main product is AI. 100% for consumers. And their main product for businesses is AI. How would they not an AI company? A thousand percent. They have more text information than the majority of them. It's like higher quality typically in comparison to like shorter form because it's like more long form written content a lot of

the time the whole thing so anyway I mean we don't want to get too deep into that but on the philosophical side of who's going to win this game but I think it it's so obvious to me that like especially in like the ads like even with Google it's not that easy like I can just be like Google here's my action go find me keywords it's not really good at that like it can't do that really yeah sort of you can like throw you know give it a landing page URL and will go and like extract the information. But like a lot of the times like me in there like in that, you know, the dashboard, like picking what we're actually bidding on, we can get a better like performant convert like

CPA than than what Google would find on its own. In contrast, Facebook is like a lot of times, again, it depends on the budget size. But it can be better than us if the market is big enough. And there's some B2B like tails cases where that's different. where it's like, oh, this audience is only like 50,000, right? Like, it's not going to, we don't want to do all this ad spend to end up finding those 50,000. We'll just go after that 50,000. We'll pay a higher CPC just because we know it's actually the target customer.

But the, you know, if it's a product that sells to more than 30% of the U.S., like just global targeting and you're going to, like, it's going to find it faster than you'll ever be able to. All right, bro. So I think that's the episode. Chillin. You know? Thanks for having you. If you can't figure out how to make money from one of these ideas, I don't know.

I don't know, man. You got it, man. Honestly, reach out. Ask questions in the comments, man. I'm lurking there. I'm happy. I'll just drop a freaking loom video to you. We'll be in the comments.

Go check out Cody's podcast. I don't really even know. I'm online. I'm just doing it. You'll see him. Cody Schneider. We'll put his links in the show notes. Dude, always good jamming with you.

Gee, thanks for having me, man. Stoke to do it to IRL. It's awesome. We out here. I'll see you at Cheesecake Factory today. Hell yeah. I'm down. Let's go.