The Startup Ideas Podcast - [DELETED ON YOUTUBE] 5 AI Startup Ideas So Good You’ll Quit Your Job in 24hrs

Starting point is 00:00:00 Steph Smith, I've been trying to get you to come on the podcast for eternity. Eternity. And it's finally happened. You're the queen of trends, the queen of ideas. You can't set me up like that. And I heard you're bringing the sauce today, so I'm excited about it. We'll see. We'll see.

Starting point is 00:00:19 So what do we got? So I'm giving away $5,000 so you can build your startup idea. Now, $5,000, you can actually. do a lot with nowadays you probably can build a startup with $500 so the way to win the $5,000 that I'm given away to one of you is you got to drop a like to this YouTube video takes a second comment what would you what startup idea would you build with $5,000 let the comment section know the third thing is subscribe to the YouTube channel probably subscribed already but you are and subscribe. The last thing is you're going to want to head to the pinned comment of this

Starting point is 00:01:04 video. There's a link to greggisembourg.com and you're going to subscribe to Greg's letter. This is the email which I send occasionally with startup ideas and frameworks for you. And the next email that I send just reply to it and say, I want to win the giveaway. And I'm going to pick one lucky person, a random person. person who replies to that email and I'm excited for one of you to win $5,000 to see what you built. And shout out to the folks at Beehive because they're the ones that put up the $5,000. They want to see you build your ideas. And I think that's really cool.

Starting point is 00:01:44 So show them some love. You probably already know them. They're the email platform loved by creators. Excited to see who wins and enjoy this episode. Your prompt to me was, you know, we're in this crazy new AI world. And so I have two groups of ideas. One of them is, you know, kind of using AI to build different ideas. But then the second half is like we're in this world where things are changing quickly. What still stays the same or what is actually kind of like tech agnostic that I think becomes even more important, kind of along the thread where people are like, oh, chess, you know, computers beat humans a long time ago, but somehow people are still watching humans. Something along that thread. of just like what actually doesn't really get disrupted in this new world. And by the end of this episode, what do you think people are going to get out of this? Hopefully a way of thinking about, again, this kind of barbelled world and then just a bunch of new ideas in both categories.

Starting point is 00:02:52 For free. For free. Oh, my God. All right. Let's get into it. All right. So a few of these are kind of just things like my requests for startups. So one of them is, you know what in open pages, right?

Starting point is 00:03:06 Lots of startups have them, right? They basically are these pages where people who choose to share their stats openly often. Revenue, users, things like that, decide to put that in the open, and there's these cool open pages with charts and things like that. Not that many people have been able to build those pages in the past, and they've been kind of selective in that they only cover revenue. But a few years ago, I created an open page that was more about my life, right? So it's like, What books am I reading? I'm trying to exercise X percent of days. How am I doing with that? And I think we're now in this world where, as you know, just about anyone can create something, whip up a page in cursor or bolt or some of these new companies. But I also think there's an opening for someone to create the open page creator for just about anything. What supplements is someone taking, again, like how are they exercising? what is their glucose monitor saying? And obviously they can select what they want to show. But I feel like that is something that in the past,

Starting point is 00:04:10 people just, it would have been too difficult to create and too difficult to create the like slow of different kind of categories or things to display on the page. But what do you think? I think it's kind of two things. One, I think it's, you know, the technology allows you to actually create these pages. So that's huge. But also I think people want like,

Starting point is 00:04:31 the social motivation to actually, you know, do things, right? So like Strava. Yes. Yeah, yeah. I'm not a runner, but like every runner I meet talks like, it's like, hey, what's your name? I'm on Strava, you know? Like it's, they love talking about it. So I just feel like for me, that's validation, that there's an opportunity to, like people care about leaderboards and social motivation. Yeah. And the. Open page I created years ago still to date is one of the things, even though I never promote it, that I get contacted about the most. And often it's like, how do I create my own? Or like, basically, like, I want to set up the same thing, but as you're saying, for running

Starting point is 00:05:14 or some other part of my life. Let me show you an example of this is, I'm biased because my husband created this, but he learned to use cursor and he never coded before. And he created this stats page for his surfing. And so it's basically, again, the same idea that you might see for, you know, a startup in their revenue. But instead, it syncs to his tracker for how often he's surfing, where he's surfing, who he's surfing with his kind of like GitHub tracker for his surfing and, you know, how often he's getting a session in, how he's tracking against his goal. He's in them. He used cursor. Literally. Yes. And so that's the thing. I think a lot of people think that cursor is, you know,

Starting point is 00:05:53 the one shot, you get a static landing page and that's all. But if you actually learn to use the tool, we're at a point where he, by the way, was the kind of person who I tried to get to learn to code so many times and never did it. And now, you know, this is a pretty, like there's like dynamic animations on the page when you come in here waving. You can email him. Again, there's this tracker of how often he's doing something. If you go to the breaks page, you can see the brakes he's surfing at. you can learn about them. So this is like a kind of, one, a solid representation of what he's doing. But I also think the interesting thing about open pages is it's almost a reflection of your personality.

Starting point is 00:06:30 And I know that sounds woo-woo, but it's like you are kind of creating a combination of art and data that reflects your life. And for him, that's surfing, but for someone else it might be running, as you said. Or like, what would you create an open page for? Right now, probably tennis. There you go. Yeah, right now tennis. Yeah. And there's no tool today that would represent tennis probably in the way you want, both visually, but also the metrics that you want to track or the things that you care about who you're facing, how you're doing, how you're improving.

Starting point is 00:07:00 And so today, more than for sure three years ago, you can do that. And you can do this, by the way, in a matter of days or weeks. I think another big trend, obviously, is sobriety. Yeah. So I think having that, like how many days you've been sober, you know, how many, you know, the last time you had a drink. that could be huge also. Exactly. So there's both the like software for one if someone wants to go create this on their own behalf where they're like, yes, I'm on this sobriety journey and I want to be able to display this in my own unique way to people. But then there's also who can go and create

Starting point is 00:07:32 this software for someone who's not willing to learn cursor and spend a few weeks in there to basically create something that's modular and that is customizable for people and their unique tennis or drinking goals. Also, people, if you don't have a personal website, just make a personal website. Yeah. I feel like, do you have a personal website? I do. Imagine you didn't. I just like trashed everyone who didn't. No, no, no, I have one. And by the way, that was one of the first things I created when I started, you know, being a quote creator in 2017 or 2018. And that got me connected to so many people as well because instead of creating it on some, you know, website creator like Squarespace, I also taught myself to code and made it custom to, again, the way I wanted to show up. And I had so

Starting point is 00:08:15 many people, like David Perel in his very first writing cohort for write of passage, he featured that because he was like, look at this creator who is not creating the kind of standard landing page. And again, I think it's a way to tell people how you want to show up by actually creating something that's like, again, a visual representation of you. If you were building this startup, you know, how much would you charge for it? How much do you think people are willing to pay for something like this? I mean, I think you could create the equivalent of the existing. landing page creators where you get a free page that's very simple. And then you just upcharge

Starting point is 00:08:51 based on, again, the modules that you want to add. So imagine a fitness influencer who specifically wants to show like Andrew Heberman. He has certain advertisers and he wants to show who he's affiliated with or the types of supplements he's taking on Thorn. Well, you could upcharge for that and you could upcharge for, you know, runners who want to right now, the Strava embed is horrible. I love Strava, but if you want to actually show how often you're running or again your progress towards certain PRs, you can't show any of that. And so you could have upcharges based on your affinity for customization. One thing I like to do is to look at ads that come up because that shows me if it's a good

Starting point is 00:09:30 business or not. And like website builders advertise everywhere. Every podcast. Every podcast. VPNs. Well, because it's also recurring revenue. There's a bunch of other start-upers. there's a bunch of other startups as well, but that people kind of throw shade on because they're like,

Starting point is 00:09:45 oh, it's just a link page, right? There's so many startups that are just building link pages, and that's because there's limited real estate on, like, you know, you have, you've built up an Instagram profile and you only have one link. But imagine if instead of that link page just directing to, like, your personal website or your podcast, you actually, again, had something modular that represented the things that you care about. And then to your point, there's all kinds of things you're you can add there too, right? If you want to monetize as well, like you can monetize on that page. So imagine you had a supplement section.

Starting point is 00:10:16 And you truly included the supplements that you're taking and that you care about, but then you also had like AG1 in there. And it's clearly represented as an ad. But that gives you real estate now to play with. That's a lot more creative than just, you know, your standard, hey, it's staff or hey, it's Greg. By the way, open pages. I don't know if that domain's available, but that's the perfect name. We can find out.

Starting point is 00:10:37 We're going to find out. Name cheap. You're a name cheap girl? I am. What are you? On my worst days, I'm a go daddy guy. On my best days, I'm a name cheap guy. One day you'll be a cloud fair guy.

Starting point is 00:10:52 So openpages.com is not, I got confused because there's openpages. Dot it.com, which we obviously don't want. It was registered in 1996. But openpages. com is available. Openpages. dot me is pretty legit and dot xyz dot ink yeah dot gg go grab it okay i had an idea related to this yeah and i want your opinion on it okay so go to my website greggisberg dot com when you scroll down

Starting point is 00:11:26 you see this popular guide section yes so like you i create a lot of content and people bookmarked my stuff so i started basically taking some of my most popular tweets basically and putting them into guides. And so I made these landing pages and thousands of people every month download them. And it got me thinking that every personal web page, just like every personal web page, should have an open page,

Starting point is 00:12:00 should have essentially like a knowledge open page that you gate so you can get people's email address. Interesting. Why that's important is because we're all on social and we're, you know, the algorithms change sometimes and we want to own the email address so we can, you know, connect with our community, our audience. And I don't know, and maybe you know, but I don't know of any specific platform that helps me manage this like, you know, lead magnet for personal web pages. I don't know if one that's dedicated to personal webpages, but yeah, you can create a lead magnet site that pushes people through the funnel

Starting point is 00:12:45 through things like HubSpot. But give me an example of, so you've got this one that's like, find winning startup ideas. So how would you change this page? Or you're just saying you think a product should exist that helps you create these. Yeah, like if I go to Squarespace, for example,

Starting point is 00:12:58 and I make a personal website, which is where millions of people are doing that, it's strictly informational. It's strictly about me. who I am, maybe some pictures, social media links, but it's nothing around like taking the next step. And, you know, of course you can have a link that says subscribe to my newsletter, but that just doesn't work anymore. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:13:25 Subscribe. I guess that's the insight. You know, subscribe saying like, hey, subscribe to my newsletter, like people have hit fatigue in terms of newsletter fatigue, but they are willing to put in their email address if they're going to get something out of it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think your point just about what worked in 2010 for marketing on the web is just like out the door. And so that's why I think people should absolutely, there was always this gap between people knew that, you know, static landing pages from the past were outdated.

Starting point is 00:13:52 But I don't know how to actually create something new. And we're now at a point where actually you can create just about anything through a tool like cursor, right, where you can actually code and dictate like your creative vision on a digital page. and it not being hard at all. And you can actually differentiate in that way. And so I think that's maybe the prompt that people should take is just like, sure, you can whip up something very quickly on like insert marketing tool here. But then you're just going to look like everyone else. And that's just not good enough today.

Starting point is 00:14:24 So I think maybe that's the takeaway. All right. What else you got? Okay. So this one is we were talking a lot about health. So this is a personal request. And I'm sure people are working on this. In fact, I feel like I know people working on bits of this, but just there needs to be some centralized platform that integrates all of the information that you are capturing regarding your health.

Starting point is 00:14:45 So, like, I'm wearing a CGM right now. I'm one of those people who have, like, I've gotten eight sleep people of, or a range. CGM is a continuous glucose monitor. Yeah. But also it's like if you use Strava, that data should be in there. If you go and use function health and get your blood done, that should be integrated into the same platform. If you go see your doctor, I'm taking medication right now. So it's like that should be in there as well.

Starting point is 00:15:10 An example of why this matters is, so I ran my first marathon on Sunday. Did not go as well as I was hoping, despite a year of training. But I've been facing this nausea thing, which feels very different from a fueling issue or an energy or training issue. And it's been so hard to figure out. And only after the marathon it dawned on me that, oh my gosh, like this is. medication that I've been taking for the last few months only might be playing a role in what's going on here. Because again, it's this weird nausea thing that I've asked so many runners, and they're like, I've experienced other stuff, but like nausea, not so much. And if I had this tool that was

Starting point is 00:15:50 integrating all of the information, it could triangulate and at least give me suggestions, or at least, you know, imagine like a chat GPT interface where I could probe it and be like, is there anything happening in my whole health ecosystem that you might think could be causing this. And that just does not exist. In theory, a doctor should do this, right? In theory, a doctor should have the wholesale understanding of what is happening in your body, but it doesn't. Right. In theory, the doctor should be like the data warehouse. Yes. And there should be like an AI layer that you can ask it, you know, based on the data. Yeah. And so this is again, like my request for startup because all of these tools, like whether it's Dextcom or Abbott, they have CGM APIs that you can integrate into.

Starting point is 00:16:35 Strava has an API. So all of these things exist and the data can be imported in. But there needs to be some sort of good application that aggregates it and makes sense of it. And then to your point has kind of like your digital doctor layer where it's not prescribing anything, but where you can interrogate it. And I can say, hey, this was my HR or my heart rate during my marathon. And this is the point where I hit an issue and I felt nausea, like, what's going on, and obviously can integrate information from the web as well, which would actually be much more effective than a doctor because the doctor can't actually be probing the web in real

Starting point is 00:17:11 time and pulling in all that information. So that's my request for someone to build, which is an integrated layer of everything. And obviously, you can pick and choose what you want to bring in. But to date, I haven't seen this. And I think that's actually been a limitation of many of these products, too, where people wear an aura ring and they're like, it's good because I can see the data, but I don't know how to relate this to my life and actually take action on it. Yeah, and it's, it feels like this is a business, I mean, that people would pay for.

Starting point is 00:17:40 I would pay for it. How much would you pay for something like this? I mean, I think I would pay substantially more than the classic $10 per month subscription. Just because it is, I mean, if you think about an eight sleep costs thousands of dollars, an aura ring costs hundreds of dollars. of these other things like Strava, you're paying $10 a month for. So I think there's an awareness that those things that people are spending money on are not quite giving them the information that they need to make it actionable. And so maybe I'm more ready to pay than the average person, but I would

Starting point is 00:18:14 for sure pay at least $30 per month, especially in instances where I'm trying to solve an issue, like the example I just gave. And it could be one of those businesses that you actually sell to, I don't know how this works, maybe you know, but as like a perk to businesses, right? So the companies would, you know, pay for their employees, like no cost to employees to basically use this product. Totally. I don't know why I haven't seen this more in the U.S., but when I was in the U.K., friends of mine would be on health insurance plans that would incentivize them to do healthy things.

Starting point is 00:18:49 Like this already existed. My friend's like, do you want a free coffee at Starbucks? And I'm like, why do you have a free coffee at Starbucks? books. And he's like, well, my insurance plan has given me points or, you know, free dollars to certain things because I have, you know, if he's wearing an aura ring, I have achieved a good health score or a sleep score, or because I've gone to the gym a certain number of times, or I've seen my doctor, you know, on a regular basis. I don't remember what the inputs were, but he specifically was like, my health insurance plan has done the, you know, data analysis to determine, like,

Starting point is 00:19:21 this is worth X to us for someone to be a healthier person. and therefore we're going to incentivize this through rewards. Incredible. I mean, health is wealth. Maybe that's what you call this thing. Maybe you call it like health is wealth.a.i. Yeah. And I mean, there's tiny little things.

Starting point is 00:19:38 People are going to find them silly, but I swear there is demand for this where you could also just be this like ongoing health assistant for folks where there are so many things that, for example, I don't drink enough water. I just am never thirsty, never have been. But I know I should drink more water. I tweeted about this two days ago, and there was like 400 comments of people being like,

Starting point is 00:19:59 either I have the same thing or I fixed it with these really simple tricks. But I think at the end of the day, if I read all of the comments in that thread, the answer was just like building a habit. I'm like, I can't build a habit on my own. I need an assistant to like remind me as silly as it sounds to be like, it's time to drink water. And I know there are apps for this, but if it's a lot more customized, personalized to your way of operating, instead of me having to open an app and remember.

Starting point is 00:20:27 I think there's little things like that, postures another thing where if you have this AI assistant and it knows your issues, I feel like there's just ample opportunity to be that micro fix in order to build the habit and to help someone, I guess, address the issues that are unique to them. I love it.

Starting point is 00:20:46 By the way, just so you know this, you think this is water, parking water. But I actually put a little Celsius in here. So it's sort of a melange. So I'm also one of those people who don't drink enough water. It's so funny. Celsius water doesn't count. It's funny because there's for sure, I don't know what the percentages are.

Starting point is 00:21:04 There's people who hear that we don't drink much water and they're just like, what's wrong with you? You're a mammal and you need water and like this makes no sense. But then I don't know if you're like this, but I just have never drank much water. I think it's kind of like the late debate where people who are late just will never understand people who are not late and vice versa. I think it's a lot of us heard that you need to drink two liters a day. Which sounds outlandish. It's outlandish. Then I just lose all trust in the system.

Starting point is 00:21:33 It's like the breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And then it's like the egg companies that sponsor that message. And it's like, okay, obviously I'm not eating breakfast anymore. Yeah. The water thing, though, I feel like I trust that we need water. I just don't understand the mechanic of why some bodies don't. seem to have as clear a signal that they're thirsty. I guess we've just gotten used to being constantly dehydrated.

Starting point is 00:21:59 Could you give us one last idea before we leave? Yeah. What kind of idea do you want? You want something more still in the AI world? Okay, well, here's just like a, let me give you two quick ones. One of them is just when you think of the internet five, ten years ago, there was this huge wave of once information became digitized, that there was this opportunity to create directories. So you have things like nomad lists, which was just like, let me take all the data that exists

Starting point is 00:22:31 and aggregate it to make sense of what cities nomads should go to. There's tons of other examples where literally directory companies became really sizable. But today, my prompt for people, again, this is a really quick idea, is just what directory companies or websites can become custom GPs. So like Nomad List is great, but what's better is the ability to have your custom GPT where you say, hey, I care about these things or I want to, you know, I really over index on wanting good weather or I actually have no money. And so I really need this place to be like less than $1,000 per month.

Starting point is 00:23:07 And to be able to chat with it, which places don't or do I need a visa for, etc. And so I just think using the frame of what exists as a directory that can be improved through a custom GPT, like Nomad Visas is one frame. Are you seeing people make money through custom GPs? Not yet. Have you seen any? I heard one story of a lawyer who owns all the top legal GPT, and he buys all the custom, like if something comes up,

Starting point is 00:23:46 he'll just go and reach out to the developer and be like, I'll buy it. and he's using it as a lead gen. So basically people are, and millions and millions and millions of people are, you know, prompting for, I need a contract for this or I need that. And then he's just basically reaching out and being like, hey, do you want like a real lawyer?

Starting point is 00:24:08 So I've only heard of from a lead gen perspective, which by the way is interesting. That's super interesting, actually. Yeah. So. To that point, I think I'm trying to, so in order for custom GPT, to, I think, be able to monetize, you do need some sort of specialized data that other people don't have.

Starting point is 00:24:26 Because if that same thing can be done through chat GPT or Claude, right, you don't have a business. But to your point, if there is a custom GPT that is uniquely effective at answering someone's specific set of needs, you might be able to monetize that. But just like creators have different ways of monetizing through ads, affiliates, or their own product, I think your point about it being a lead gen mechanism is equally interesting. And I think would work for many of these topics. So my last thing is I feel like with AI, there's got to be better dating apps. Neither of us are single, but I think if you look at the prior wave.

Starting point is 00:25:03 Let's get the married people to come up with ideas for dating apps. We're that annoying person where we're like, I think I can solve your problem. But okay, my seed for this one is just simply that dating apps today, and maybe this is just a of the way that humans think are all based on looks. So you're swiping and you're like, in theory, you're adding all this other information about, you know, I like to do this or this is my favorite thing to do with my friends. But it's all like swiping based on do I like the way this person looks. But if you think about the mechanisms for people to actually come together, it's things like humor, it's things like intelligence. And none of the AI or none of the apps today,

Starting point is 00:25:43 I think accurately capture those things. And obviously, different people index on, again, humor intelligence, all of those things in terms of what they care about. But I met someone in Bali years ago who was creating an app, I guess it didn't work. So worth noting. But he was basically like, what if the app was instead of scrolling on someone's face, it was scrolling on memes. So you're just, or swiping, rather. So you're swiping on things. And it's basically getting a sense of your sense of humor, right?

Starting point is 00:26:12 And basically, according to that, it then is going to match you with different folks. And obviously then you can still be like, am I attracted to this person? Do I want to chat with this person? You still have agency to choose. But I just think especially with AI today, this is easier than ever for you to be able to create, whether it's swiping or otherwise, a mechanism for determining if people are compatible based on those other traits. I'll take your idea further. So I think from what I hear from people in single land,

Starting point is 00:26:42 they are tired of swiping. So why don't we just remove the swipe? You download the app, you figure out, you know, the memes, the memes that you like. Do you like, it's, maybe there's an initial, you know, onboarding where you do swipe for like, I like this meme, I don't like that meme. And then it just assigns you to a person to meet, basically a blind date, 7 p.m. you know, you're going to meet over here. They know where both of you live. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:27:15 And good luck. And it gives you some sort of prompt. I mean, these AIs are so good at being like, you guys both like this movie or you both enjoy running or whatever it is and it can even get more specific than that. But imagine taking the idea further, it's like you don't even have to swipe. You can choose what applications you want to integrate. So maybe it connects to your goodreads or maybe it connects to your Netflix or your Strava or insert thing here that has information. about the way that you live and the things that you like.

Starting point is 00:27:42 Your open page. There you go. Yeah. I mean, in a future world, when everyone has an open page, that would be the perfect mechanic. Totally. To identify if people may be at least initially compatible. I do think that the future of dating is with no swiping.

Starting point is 00:27:57 Yeah. Yeah. Basically, you're personalized AI matchmaker. Basically, arranged marriages. By the AI. You still get to choose if you want to stay in the relationship. But yeah, I like that. And I like the idea of it just setting up. I think I heard of a company that's doing well, doing this. I can't remember the name. But it's just like it sets up a time for you. It says meet at this time. And it picks a location as well. So you don't have to think about any of the dating mechanics of like, oh, maybe we'll meet in two weeks and it never happens kind of thing. Steph Smith, you exceeded my expectations. Did I? And I had high expectations.

Starting point is 00:28:35 What do you want to, anything you want to plug or say or leave people with? No, I mean, you can just find me at my personal website, steffsmith.io. I also have a product project that teaches people how to find interesting things around the web called internet pipes, internet pipes.com. We'll include the links so people don't have to do hard work. Thank you. And thanks for, thanks you for doing the hard work for coming up with these ideas. Thank you so much. Steph Smith.

Starting point is 00:29:05 This has been real.

The Startup Ideas Podcast - [DELETED ON YOUTUBE] 5 AI Startup Ideas So Good You’ll Quit Your Job in 24hrs

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