The Startup Ideas Podcast - I can't believe he gave away these $1M+/year startup ideas

Episode Date: July 10, 2024

Neer Sharma shared 6 startup ideas and the frameworks he would use to grow them: 1) Baby Fund: a JustGiving for parents to raise money that can only be invested into their kid’s future • Crowdsource money from family/friends at baby showers• Invest only in index tracker funds• Could help solve the "can't afford kids" problem for millennials.2) Anti-Spend: The app that gamifies saving money • Track money you DON'T spend• Show future value of savings• Create dopamine hit from NOT buying• Growth hack: Tap into FIRE and minimalism movements on TikTok3) Cold Turkey: Gamified app to help people quit vaping • Real-time counter shows how long you've been "cold turkey"• Mini-games to distract during cravings• Social sharing for accountability• Potential to expand to other addictions.4) Gold Stars: Gamification app for parents to motivate kids• Think: "Starbucks app, but for kids"• Parents set tasks, kids earn stars• Unlock rewards at milestones (e.g. 100 stars = $10 Amazon item)5) Long Live Research Inc: Personalized longevity research summaries • Input your health concerns/family history• Receive summaries of relevant academic papers• Target the "don't die" community (e.g. Bryan Johnson fans)• Easiest to start, potentially most profitable.6) Ayurvedic Products for the West: Rebrand Indian health products• Create algorithm-breaking packaging and content• Leverage TikTok Shop and influencer marketing• Key: Make it VISUALLY scroll-stopping for maximum algo impact!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: gregisenberg.com/30startupideas🚀  My FREE 5 day email course to learn how to build a business of the future using the ACP funnel:https://www.communityempire.co/free-course🎯 To build your own portfolio businesses powered by community you might enjoy my membership.You'll get my full course with all my secrets on building businesses, peer-groups to keep you accountable, business ideas every single month and more!Spots are limited.https://www.communityempire.co/📬 Join my free newsletter to get weekly startup insights for free:https://www.gregisenberg.com70,000+ people are already subscribed.FIND ME ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenbergInstagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/FIND NEER ON SOCIAL:X/Twitter: https://x.com/thisisneerTo improve your rankings your business on Google and using AI for SEO, sign up tohttp://boringmarketing.com/Episode Timestamps: 0:00 Intro02:07 Startup Idea 1: Baby Fund: JustGiving for Parents09:54 Startup Idea 2: Anti-Spend: app that gamifies saving money22:26 Startup Idea 3: Cold Turkey: app to help people quit vaping32:21 Startup Idea 4: Gold Stars: app for parents to motivate kids40:22 Startup Idea 5: Personalized longevity research summaries45:35 Startup Idea 6: Rebrand Indian health products

The last thing that I really look for is distribution hacks and formats. So, for instance, if you can break the TikTok algo, then the scale at which products can grow is just so immensely huge. That's definitely like a big thing that I look for. So, and I think there's probably a thousand startup ideas that you can do just by looking at what's trending on TikTok in terms of challenges and making it easy. for those people to do those challenges. But yeah, that's generally the thesis. Yeah, I mean, the thesis is algorithm-breaking products. That's the stuff that's going to get shared,

and it's the stuff that's going to, you know, really works now. So I do like that thesis. Okay, new character unlocked, near. I had to, I stalked you on the internet because I saw that you posted some banger ideas. verified bangers. And I was like, I need to get this guy on the pod, sharing the ideas, give the people what they want. And you said, okay.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for coming. So all I know from you are those ideas that you shared. And they are some of the most interesting ideas that I have seen in a long time. And I see a lot of startup ideas. So I was hoping you could just take us through some of them, you know, what the ideas. ideas, why you think it's interesting, how you'd start them, how you'd grow them, just give people

all that sauce. And, uh, all right. Let's rock. Um, so we can start top of the list if we want to just kind of work our way down. So the first idea was something called baby fund. And the principle of baby fund was basically a just giving for parents to raise money for their kids. And that money can only be invested in index tracker funds. And the idea is, you know, if you invest X amount of money and you maybe keep topping it up, by the time the child is 18, that money will be worth quite a lot of money. And the reason why I thought about it was a whole confluence of like different things. So I'm at the age now where all of my friends are thinking about having kids or deciding, oh, no, I can't afford to have kids.

And, you know, then you hear all of the discussions around like the demographic, worries in the Western world. And cost of childcare, at least in the UK, is a really significant problem and something that is putting off a lot of, you know, millennial potential parents. So that was that kind of drew me to the problem in the first place. And the second thing I was thinking about was, do you know the idea of like wedding registries? Is that a thing that you guys have? Yeah, it's a thing. It's a thing.

I mean, it's, from what I understand, a lot less popular today than it was like 20 years ago. yeah but it's still a thing it's still definitely thing and a wedding registry is basically two people are going to get married they send around a link to all of the all the people attending being like here's a list of all the things you could buy for us for our wedding you know it's a fancy plate it's a nice spoon it's a honeymoon i've always really disliked it i've always kind of felt like this is this is is a really stupid thing to do. Anyway, it happens. But the idea of it is quite interesting because you're crowdsourcing these people to contribute to your future as a married couple. So I was thinking, well, what about if you take that principle and apply it to money going towards a newborn baby

and their future? So, yeah, the idea is really crowdsourcing money from parents and friends of parents, to invest in that baby's future. And the money can only be used for investing in index tracker funds. It can't be taken out before then. It will go in the name of the child. And yeah, I think it's pretty interesting because I do what you say as well around like crawling into the subredits. and when you kind of crawl into the subredits of like, you know, parenting and parents,

just cost of that is a big worry. And also just can I guarantee or can I provide for my child? Like, will I be able to ensure my child has a reasonable standard of living in 18 years? And when I can't do that for myself, like when I worry about my own standard of living in 18 years, you know, the probability that I could do it for my child is a lot lower. So the principle is that. Yeah. Yeah.

So when would future parents actually share the link? Like, is this during their wedding? Is this during like, hey, you know, we're thinking of having a kid fund it? Is this like, my wife's pregnant? You know, we're pregnant. And, you know, when is the right time? I was thinking the baby shower was a really good time. to do it.

Or is that when they're, that's when they're announcing like the gender of the child and all of that kind of stuff, I think, yeah. Okay. I think the baby shower is a great time. I can definitely imagine, um,

a link for the upcoming baby, a QR code, which can just be printed out and, you know, donate to our kids future or help, you know, help invest in our baby's future and everyone can just kind of donate 10 pounds, 20 pounds,

um, however much they want to do. donate and yeah. Here's how I think it should okay so I think the way it should work is it's kind of like part of full or one of those event platforms

but for baby showers or gender reveals so you you know this is this is really smart because you create the utility for that moment and so you essentially create like a SaaS product quick ad break let me tell you about a business i invested in it's called boring marketing.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. Then once you have them hooked, it's like, oh, you know, hey, now we have this like widget that is basically like the donate widget. And I think the way to do it and like the viral moment is let's say you give $100, you don't show that it's $100. You show that it's, you know, $10,000 in 255.

Yes, exactly. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what you do. So and then you allow those people. to share that moment. So let's say I donate $100, $100. I'm not, you know, the share widget isn't I donate $100. No, of course not. It's the, I donated the $15,000 in small

rating in 2050. Assuming this level of return with the S&P 500. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's the way, you know, sort of a framework for people to think about how do you come up with startup ideas. One is like thinking about life moments, milestones, then think about how you create a utility around that life moment or milestone. That could be consumer or B2B.

And then it's, what is the viral moment that you can reverse engineer so that you just increase water amount? And I think that, you know, I spend a lot of time in the fire like subreddits.

And the, there is something really interesting about that larger potential number of investing into an index tracker fund that I don't think is really utilized that much. And that's actually an idea that principle inspired another idea of mine, which was anti-spend, which is the next idea on the list. All right. Tell me more about it. Okay. So anti-spend is an app that basically tracks the money you don't spend by being more thoughtful, more thoughtful about your day-to-day spending behavior. And the idea of it is, again, this is something that I do. I'm generally a pretty cheap guy. And there's always this mental maths that I, there's like mental maths game

that I play with myself. You know, if I'm, hey, if I'm, if I'm, coffee today before I go out into town instead of buying coffee from that cafe, I've saved myself like four pounds. And it's almost like girl math, but for a cheap guy. And I think what's really interesting is then, hey, if I invested that four pounds into the S&P 500 in 30 years time, that four pounds could be worth X pounds. And I was just generally thinking, you know, there's a lot of, you know, there's, when we're making transactions,

when we're making purchases, there's a lot of like thoughtless purchases, right? And a lot of these, like, instant dopamine hits. So one thing for me is when I get stressed, I, once a month, I'll just buy a pizza, like, from Uber Eats. And it'll be terrible for me. and it's like super expensive for what it is. It's like a shit pizza. And that dopamine hit from just pressing purchase is like, yeah, okay, that will do something for me. But really it's just like a lot of

money wasted for nothing. And usually those kinds of purchases are things that are not actually really good for me in the long run anyway. So I think there's this like confluence of thoughtless purchases usually resulting in something bad for me anyway. And that might be money could have been spent better. So what I really wanted to do is can you create a dopamine hit from not spending money? So, you know, if I was on Uber Eats about to make that, you know, 20 pound pizza purchase, could I create an alternative dopamine hit from being like, no, I'm not going to spend that 20 pounds. Instead, I'm going to save that 20 pounds by not spending it. And then what I'd really want to do from there is, you know, build up this balance of money that you haven't spent.

And that is money that could in theory then be invested in an index tracker fund. And what is also interesting about this is the cost of the pizza is not 20 pounds, right? The cost of the pizza is that 20 pounds invested in the S&P 500 over 30. years. So I think there is, again, this like, I think there's two things. One thing is a viral moment from just having how much money have you decided to not spend and how much is that money worth. And secondly, from a monetization perspective, I'd really think about how do you connect, create that link from the money you've saved to then money being actually invested in like a Vanguard fund. Like, are there affiliate revenues that could be generated from

being like lead gen for Vanguard or whoever else there is. And I think just on top of that, I think there's a number of different movements that where anti-spend would actually be kind of interesting. So I think there's the fire movement, first of all. Secondly, I think there's like an environmental movement of people trying to actively consume less, spend less. So if you go on TikTok, there are people who do,

a lot of these no spend challenges. So like, I'm not going to spend money on new clothes this week or I'm not going to spend money on anything this week. So I think there is this combination of people either trying to save money or trying to veer away from like excessive consumerism or just trying to protect the planet where actually something like this and tracking that behavior would maybe be kind of interesting. But yeah, curious to get your thoughts. So here's what I like about this idea.

I like the idea that you looked at TikTok and challenges and said, how can I unbundle this challenge into an app? And I think there's probably a thousand startup ideas that you can do just by looking at what's trending on TikTok in terms of challenges and making it easier for those people to do those challenges. What I don't love about this app is I'm kind of like, okay, if I actually were going to go and create this app, I have to get people, like, as you said, pressing that button on Uber Eats for 20 pounds

and getting that pizza is like, at that moment, it feels like life or death. Yeah. It is so important to you. And it's almost instinctive and primal to actually go and press that button. This is a completely new habit that isn't fun to do.

And there's a lot, you know, I really like business ideas that are swimming downstream instead of swimming upstream. Like, I think that's the best way to describe it. And for me, you know, you're getting someone to download an app, which is like upstream. And then you're getting people to save, which is upstream. And then you're getting people to input

their goals, which is upstream. I think there's a business that, you know, our agency, LCA actually worked with. I don't know if you've seen it. It's called a crew. Have you seen this? So they have an interesting model going after, I think, a little bit of this market,

where they said, okay, there's all these buy now, pay later services, and it's kind of like making the world a worse place. Because people are buying things that they can't afford. So what they did is, you know, they integrated into these point of sales. And instead of, you know, buying now and paying later,

it's like set your account goal. And it's like this wallet where you can add funds to it. And you might not be able to afford this $3,500 or eight-slee mattress today. But, you know, in six months, if that's your goal, then you can save up for it. And what I'd like about it is it makes the merchant, like they can use this as a marketing thing.

So you're getting them, and it's at the point of sale, so they have the traffic. So you're swimming downstream, swimming downstream. So that's my question for you, which is like, how do you make a business like this more swimming downstream versus swimming upstream? Yeah, that's a, that's a really good point. And I think part of part of the motivation for doing it is trying to alter behavior, which makes it way harder to do. And I think one thing I was thinking about, which is semi-related, was I was thinking about Apple Pay and how, you know, Apple Pay is very much the way that I'm making a lot of these.

purchases. And I was thinking about, you know, Opel, the app that is about reducing like screen time and stuff. I was thinking about what does an Opel look like for making payments with your iPhone? Because on the iPhone, you know, you're tracking like all of the payments you're making with Apple Pay. You know, is there a way of just accumulate or like consolidating all the data and even just doing things like, are you sure you want to make that purchase? Or can you set a hard limit on your Apple pay. Like, you know, I just want to have a 10 pound budget. You know, I don't want to spend more than 10 pounds with Apple pay on like thoughtless purchases. So set that hard limit. And then when you hit that limit, there's like a notification being like, are you sure you want to make that purchase?

Are you sure you want to make that purchase? Or take a minute to, you know, decide if you want to do, which maybe is a little bit more, I wouldn't say necessarily downstream, but if there is that motivation to be like, hey, I want to control my spending, then, you know, you convert that high intention to an action, which is, I'm going to set a daily budget. And then the app just continues to work in the background, unlike the anti-spend app, which is every time you're about to make a purchase, you're swapping the app and adding, you know, the payment. So I think there's maybe ways to make it a little bit less, yeah, a little bit less effort and more autopilot. Another idea, which again was related to it and going back to what we've been discussing earlier,

was, and this is not a really good business idea at all, but I was thinking about a, if you did want to control your spending, like a Chrome extension, that would basically show the true cost of the items on the checkout page. So the true cost of that 10-pound sweater from Uniclo is 10 pounds invested in the S&P 500 over 30 years. So. Or even worse, like luxury goods, right? Like you just bought, you know, a Louis Vuitton purse for $12,000, but it really cost, you know, $28. Yeah.

So, yeah, I think you're circling around something that I think could be a really good business idea. I think going back to your Apple pay idea, I think that's really smart. I think if I was trying to create a business idea around that, I would probably call it something like angel or devil. Yeah. Everyone has like an angel or a devil, you know, an angel or devil decision. And it's like you just, you know, it's one in the morning and you get an Uber, an Uber, it's, you know, pay, Apple pay notification. And then you get like a DM from, from, you know, angel or devil saying like,

you probably shouldn't have done that. And I think the bigger idea is it's like a financial coach in your pocket that could be that's just a lot more casual and does help you hit your goals and does know your goals. And you know, this is like an AI coach basically. But it's a bit more whimsical and it's a bit more fun to help you actually like reach your goals and stuff like that. So I think that that's something that could be a good business. Because I think again, it's like one of those things that could go viral, has that viral moment. And And I do think that you're tapping into this macro trend around people are really stressed right now around costs of any items, product, services, anything.

Inflation is like top of mind. I don't even think people knew what the word inflation meant five years ago, literally. There's like, oh, inflation, yeah, I think I remember, you know, that, like, isn't that like an economics term? Like, what does that even mean? Now it's like people can't afford their lives, period. And so I think that there's a ton of opportunities to create a set of products around that. So there's something here. I'm just not sure it's exactly the anti-spend app.

What's your next idea? My next idea related to, you know, the last few ideas are focusing on trying to create dopamine hits for doing something good. or creating a friction when you're about to do something bad. And the other idea that I had that's kind of around that theme is an app called Cold Turkey. And I have a lot of friends who are trying to give up vaping. And I was crawling through the subreddit on people trying to give up vaping. And there's a lot of people find it really hard. People find it really tough to quit.

and I saw people sharing screenshots of very much like, you know, habit forming apps, you know, the really kind of boring stereotypical habit forming app of look at my four-day streak and look at this calendar of how many days I haven't vape for. So one thing I was thinking about was firstly, really going niche with the problem. Like if you were to just take some elements of that, of those habit-forming apps and just focus on like one thing, which is, let's say, quit vaping. And secondly, how do you create that dopamine hit from wanting to quit vaping now? So rather than, oh, if I make it through to tomorrow and I say that I haven't vaped, I get my one day streak, how can I create a dopamine hit now?

So what I was thinking was, you know, as soon as you decide that I don't want to vape, I'm going cold turkey, you're just seeing like, okay, instant dopamine hit. Time is going up. This is how long you are cold turkey for. And like, could you really gamify that experience where maybe you've got like three lives and, and, you know, there's time is going up. There's some cool visual thing happening as you're just progressing and as that counter is, you know, going up and up and up. And then there'd just be like one button. The one button would be, I've got a craving. I'm craving.

And then if you press that one button, there is just something that takes place to try to distract you for five minutes. So usually when people talk about how do you distract yourself from craving, there's like advice around, take five minutes to breathe, distract yourself for five minutes, you know, all these kinds of things. So what I was thinking was, well, what about if it was just, you know, a series of math questions that were just getting progressively harder for five minutes. Like, could you embed these, like, mini games into it?

And for, like, a bit of a viral loop, there'd be maybe one other button, which is just, like, share. And you can share your timer. Let's say it's cold turkey.com forward slash at Greg. You know, you share that with all of your friends, and they can just get real-time updates of how long you were cold turkey for. Yeah, just the idea of basically, how can you spice up the design of something that is now, I think, a little bit boring,

at least with like habit forming apps? And then how could you like niche down on one really important problem right now that people are trying to tackle? So yeah, that's the idea of cold turkey. So I love this idea. There has been a lot of, I'll give an analogy to the two to, to, to, to, to, to this app. So one of the most popular apps, like on the app store, is the Zero app, which is tracking your intermittent fasting. So I think they have, yeah, they have 500, they literally have 500,000 five-star reviews on the app store. People love it. And it's, you know, they took a trend,

intermittent fasting and they just made it way more fun to see, you know, how many, how many calories you're burning, like, when did your fast start, when did it end, seeing your results, just did an incredible job. And I think that the zeroification of all these things, like just create a beautiful app, make a purpose built, add game dynamics, add a social element. It's just going to work in so many categories. And the word of mouth of these businesses is so great because how many people do you go,

and I don't know about you, but at least myself, like a lot of people, I just hear people telling me like, oh, I'm intermittent fasting, I'm intermittent fasting. It's like the cold plunge community, right? They love talking about, you know, Hi, my name is Greg and I cold plunge. Like, that's the first thing they like talking about. So with vaping, which has become a real problem,

and people are addicted to, I know one person, like, in particular, like a friend of mine, just like he tries to get off it and he really struggles. So I think that I like this idea. I wonder if you can add a financial element to it, So like, what if, you know, I could donate to NIR's anti, you know, if NIR hits a hundred, you know, 100 days without vaping, I'll give them $50. And maybe companies could also support people as well.

And so there's that additional incentive there and peer pressure to like continue the streak. So that's just like one idea for you. and so I do like this idea and I think that with the model of zero like all you really need is just the name which actually this name is really good a catchy name some beautiful designs

and then you can just like go on like an upwork or something like that and just be like hey I'm trying to build this I'm trying to build an MVP try to build something like pretty cheap get some micro influencers to start promoting it. And then you're probably going to want to add some paid features where, you know, for more power features, you'll charge a monthly fee for it. People are going to want to spend money and support this app because, again, like,

you're helping them get off something that's very deadly. And it's, and so I do really like this app for a lot of reasons. there was um one of the thing i was thinking about loosely was you know in the same way with just normal gaming apps um you have the ability to pay for boosters or you need an extra life um and i was wondering whether the same thing could happen here you know let's say it's like two lives and if you want to have an extra life and not have all your progress kind of gone to waste um maybe you have to pay to get that extra life. It's probably a little bit evil in light of trying to help people.

So maybe that's not the right play. But I do think whether the models that have existed, you know, like the gamification of like real world things is something that I think about a little bit. And can you begin to just inject some of those monetization mechanics that have worked really well for games and apply that in these other contexts that are like real world contexts and real problem contexts. Well, it's the, it's the Octalysis Framework. I don't know, have you heard of that framework? No, what's that? Okay, so,

so Octalysis framework is for anyone who was thinking about creating a product that feels like a game. and so it's really just a checklist of all the things that you need to do. And I find it super helpful and I use it, you know, most of the products I create. So number one is epic meaning and calling. So the drive to become part of something bigger than ourselves. Number two, development and accomplishment, the drive to level up, improve and achieve mastery. Number three, empowerment of creativity and feedback. The drive to use one's creativity and adjusting through feedback.

Number four, ownership and possession, the drive to collect, accumulate, and organize. Number five, social influence and relatedness, the drive to collaborate, compete, and express social appreciation. Number six, scarcity and impatience, the drive to obsess over what we see but cannot have. Number seven, unpredictability and curiosity. The drive to crave what is unpredictable and new. And lastly, number eight, loss and avoidance, the drive to avoid what is undesirable or changing one's behavior. So, this like this octalysis framework it's by a guy I'm Yuku Chu

is just a really helpful kind of like shorthand checklist of if you're creating something like this like the zero app 4x it'll just okay I need you know call it epic meaning calling like what you know

how can I make this feel bigger than themselves or I need to you know social influence the drive to collaborate compete. So it just gives you these little reminders. And it works. Like, it just works. So, yeah, you know, I think that, yeah, it works. That's awesome. Yeah. What's your next idea? So my next idea semi-related to this was I was going through the subreddit for parents. and one of the common problems that was discussed was, how do I get my kid to do things they don't want to do?

So my kid never wants to brush his teeth. They never want to eat their dinner. You know, they don't want to do all of these things. So when I was in, you know, we call it primary school, between the ages of like 5 and 11, we had this idea of like gold stars in class. So you do something good, you get a gold star. And then at the end of the semester,

there would be this counting of like gold stars. And whoever gets the most gold stars, you know, get something. You know, you get a little trophy or a badge or whatever. So I was thinking again on this theme of like gamification, would you be able to create, let's say the gold stars app, a gamification app for parents to use with their kids? And it's really just tracking their behavior. of their kids in a really fun, highly visual way where you just, here's a star for brushing your teeth

today. Here's a star for cleaning your bedroom. And then, you know, what you could do is set like milestones where, let's say, after 100 stars, you can buy something. Maybe you can buy something. Maybe you can set the milestones before. Like, Jimmy, when you've got 100 gold stars, pick anything from this Amazon site, and that's going to be a reward. And when you got a thousand, gold stars, dream bigger. Let's have a bigger budget. Let's have $500. You know, get that PlayStation 5 you've always wanted. And it could you just set this reward framework for, you know, the gold stars that becomes the thing that's like mediating the parents and their kids in terms of trying to reward good behavior, keep track of good behavior.

In, again, a really fun way. Like a lot of the parenting apps I see are just really boring. They're just like really boring looking. And I think you'd want it to be so visual that the kid and their parent are like looking at it together and, you know, tracking how many gold stars they've got. But yeah, again, this theme of gamification of getting people to do good things. What you're talking about is the Starbucks app for kids. that's what you're talking about basically I have a Starbucks app

you know this is this podcast called the Startup Ideas podcast and a lot of our listeners like to call it sip you know sip SIP SIP

SIP and I've been sipping on a lot of nitro cold brew recently and I've been earning stars literally stars, okay. Literally stars, so for people listening, I'm showing my Starbucks app,

which I know makes me sound super basic, but the nitro cold brew takes you to outer space and gets you in the zone. And it's basically, you know, you've got your star balances, it makes you feel good. There's like basically a leaderboard of things that you can get. There's different offers. And you can just have a similar thing for kids.

It's just like, you know, it's the same concept. But for kids, the way the Starbucks app works is, you know, you go and you, let's say you order a nitro cold brew and it's $5. You know, they scan the barcode, which is essentially your payment. And then you get the stars. And you can have a similar thing where it's like a QR code for scanning, like for completion and stuff like that. And yeah, man, I think, I think this is like a really cool idea. I actually think that you can create like the future phone for kids is called the star phone. And it's like built around this whole concept. I love that. So I think it's a cool idea. I think like, okay, tactically, like, you know, you don't want to start with the, you know, building a phone because that costs a lot of money.

I do think that, you know, building an app, make it super simple, let people, like, you know, set what they're trying to incentivize, make a fun. Where it's different than a Starbucks app is like, when I open the Starbucks app, it's like this green, it kind of feels sterile, like how do you make it feel super fun, make it feel like a video game. Yeah, yeah, I love that. Yeah, I think there's a lot of, a lot of the problems we've been discussing and really just dealing with behavioral things and trying to gamify, you know, good things and punish bad things. And then it's just the case of picking who the person is and what their problem is. So it's like, okay, you've got a vape prediction. Cool. Here's the app for you. You're a stressed out parent with a really naughty child.

Like, this is the app for you. So yeah, I really like this this gamification kind of process for real wild things. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like we're coming, like one of the themes in a lot of your ideas is pick something that's, you know, people don't want to do,

that's boring, that's hard to do, that requires effort, and make it fun, tie a financial incentive a lot of the times, not in this case with kids, but there is some incentive for the kids to complete it. and then come up with a catchy name.

Like, that's, that's your, that's your thesis. It sounds, you know, am I, am I missing anything? No, that's, that's basically it. And I think the, the last thing that I really look for is just like distribution hacks and formats. So, for instance, on TikTok, like, okay, these people are getting a lot of views for talking about giving up spending. Okay, that's interesting. Like, you know, that to me says that there's something about this behavior that breaks the algorithm. So if I can reverse engineer a product to arrive at that output easily and faster for people, then that to me feels like, oh, okay,

there's a way for this to get distribution or to like crack the algo. And the thing is, if you can break the TikTok algo, then. then the scale at which products can grow is just so immensely huge. That's definitely like a big thing that I look for. Or in the case of like a Reddit thread, it's just like, okay, this is a common problem that is top of mind for some people. So maybe the first thing is dropping into that subreddit with, hey, by the way, like, here's a thing for you guys.

I think maybe you'd have to really engineer the viral mechanics, I think, a lot better because I don't think there's necessarily like algorithm breaking moments. But yeah, that's generally the thesis. Yeah, I mean, the thesis is algorithm breaking products. Yes. Right. That's the stuff that's going to get shared. And it's stuff that's going to, you know, really works now.

So I do like that thesis. We have time for two more ideas. Okay. let's go for something completely different. So the first one is Long Live Research, Inc. And this is, so I had a company a newsletter before that was called Patent Drop. And what Patent Drop would do is it would summarize three new patents from big tech companies every week. and it was really just about scraping the patent database,

bringing it to people with a short brief summary, and it was really focused on, hey, if you're interested in the future, like you need to be reading this newsletter. And what that experience taught me was, firstly, there is a lot of value from really fragmented information or information that's just like hard to find

and bringing that to people where they are in a way that's easy to digest. And I think the second thing is, again, going back to that algorithm-breaking moment, that kind of distributional advantage. So with patent drop, I would really just look for patents that had interesting visuals

that I knew would break the algorithm. It was like, okay, meta-working on this, brain computing helmet thing would definitely get people talking. And the distributional thing is validated from, oh yeah, like all of these journalistic publications always write about like, look at what Apple working on. Look at this Peyton from Apple. So it's like, okay, cool. Like, let's just centralize it. Let's own that format. That format right now is not owned by someone. Let's own that format. So similarly, with, long live research, it'd be doing the same play, but it would be doing it for academic research

that is looking at the extension of life and quality of life. And it'd just be kind of running it back in theory. But basically, let's say, you know, I'm near, I'm South Asian. So, you know, problems that I need to avoid are like type 2 diabetes, maybe some like cardiac issues. my father had cancer. So let me just like, I'm interested in cancer. I input all of those things. And then, okay, long live research is just sending me as soon as there is research focused on how to extend life or, you know, reduce the risk of one of those things. It's just sending me the summary. And I think this kind of taxed into the longevity meta trend. I think unlike Patent Drop, like Patent Drop was very much run by advertising.

I think Long Live Research is actually something that people would want to spend money on if it's done in a really high quality way. I think there's a lot of money being spent on people trying to extend their life. So having, you know, just instant research kind of brought to you very quickly is something I think people would pay for. So yeah, it's really just kind of applying that thesis of, you know, get fragmented information, bringing it to people in a way that's relevant to them, and make money from that is the play I'd be making.

This is probably my favorite idea that you dropped today, just because it has the least amount of risk and it's the easiest to start. And, you know, I've actually talked about this before, that scientific papers have all so much good data in it, but it's just hard to like break through. So if you could, to your point, own the format. And I do really like the idea around you put in, there's some input from you, you know, your own history,

you know, that sort of thing. I think that personalization piece is going to get open rates up, click through rates up, more engagement. And yeah, going back to monetization, it's like who's spending the most amount of money right now, it's people who are trying to live forever. It's like the Brian Johnson community is like who you want to target.

You know, the don't die community. And I think there's, this is really similar. I think this is a trend, like this is a great trend to be building in. And I like it. Yeah, I think also, you know, I was kind of testing it with Claude and just, you know, feeding it academic papers and just getting results. And it's like, yeah, this is so much easier now with, you know, starting these ideas using Claude or ChatGPT to kind of code an MVP is just so much easier to do today than it was like a few years ago.

So I think these kinds of plays are a pretty, a pretty easy to do. Okay, one last idea. What's rock? What kind of idea do we want? Do we want a weird idea or do we want? If you were trying to make a million dollars in the next 12 months, which idea would you pick? That's a great question.

I think the, okay, so I think besides the long-lived research, which I think could be that million dollars within a year. Okay. So the idea I would go for is, have you heard of Sheila's yet? No, I thought you were just having like a stroke over there I don't even know

So okay, so So you're having like a Joe Biden moment You know, at the debate So I mean, it's so funny because the name is algorithm breaking in itself Yeah, it's just so I was, I think I was listening to Sam Parr and Sean

Talk about this And basically it's just this black tar iovetic medicine that has been going really viral on TikTok and it's basically just leveraging TikTok shop like crazy it's it's an algorithm breaking visual it's like black gooey stuff you've got videos of hundreds and thousands of influences just eating this black tar and you know it's It's just then followed up with it boost your testosterone. It does all of these magical things.

And it's doing really well. I've forgotten the numbers exactly, but I think tens of millions of dollars in revenue in a very, very short period of time for the company that is selling Shulidot. So I think what I would do is, there is this other company in India called Patanjali. And Patangeli is an Arivedic company. And it's huge.

Like, must be billions of dollars in revenue. It's just absolutely massive. And it's really tailored to the Indian market. It's tailored to the Indian, like, middle market. The designs look terrible.

They look medicinal. But it's all the same stuff. Like, they sell, like, you know, the equivalent of SheilaJurt. They sell these other random, juices and these other like aeovedic things. And basically what I try to do is if

I'd just be running back the Shilajit thing with basically being a Patanjali rapper. I would take very ugly, disgusting looking products in India in the Aeovethic industry. I would spruce it up

with a cool brand or a brand that is still tied to like the mysticism of India, but Western enough for people to kind of snap it up. And I would hire a bunch of influencers using TikTok shop to go crazy. And I would make sure that the packaging is barrel, you know, is a algorithm breaking thing as well as the consumption of the product itself, whether it's the colors, just something about it needs to be extremely, you know, scroll stopping. Um, And then, you know, all of the health benefits are, you know, kind of well chronicled. And I think there's like this meta trend too of, you know, there's like the Brian Johnson's of the world who are really leaning into medical innovation and experimentation.

And then there are other people who are really like turning away from traditional, from modern day medicine and looking towards traditional. medicine as a means of like being pure and clean and healthy. So aeovedic medicine, which is like an ancient, need medicine kind of hits that specific demographic pretty well. So yeah, if I was trying to make a million dollars in a year, it's a little bit of, you know, capital. And to be honest, if I was to be really cheeky about it, I would just buy, I would buy the potentially products. I wouldn't even try to get it made. I'd just buy the product. I'd just buy the I'd design packaging and I would literally just put the product

in this new packaging hire a bunch of influences, start making videos, have my own website and just start selling those things. And then if you're, and then if you validate it, okay, cool,

let's actually like make this stuff properly with our own factory and have people do this more, you know, above board. I have no idea about the legality of actually doing that. But that would be one play that I could make if I were to aggressively try to seek a million dollars within 12 months. So yeah, it's like, why would you even

try to build the product, you know, at first? I mean, isn't the move just to do the research for great products and then reach out to them and be like, hey, I want to white label your product? and try to close those deals? Yeah, I think that is definitely a better way of probably doing it. I think if you wanted to do it in a permissionless way, the products are, you know, it's just, especially like Indian bureaucracy. It's just there's a lot of layers of fat to get through.

But yeah, that would be a much better play. And I'm sure there are, yeah, I haven't looked into the details of that specific company, but if you can white label it, and especially if you're, if you're going after a market that they're not capitalizing on, you know, like they're very much heavily focused on like Indians and the Indian diaspora, possibly. They're not really focused on like the Western market. So if you were to, you know, partner with them and be like, hey, look, just give me the stuff that you're making. And I'll take care of the rest in terms of actually making it palatable to the rest of this massive consumer market. I'm sure there's a win-win

for you and the distributor if you can build the trust and and go through that, go through that process. Well, that's why I think having like a personal brand is probably helpful there that you're not just like some random person from the internet reaching out. So maybe if you don't have a personal brand, you haven't done this, you haven't done that, at least partner with someone who has that. So you can say like, hey, you know, my co-founder is this person, she has 100,000 followers in this space. We love your product. I think white labeling probably makes more sense than acquiring first because acquiring is just you don't know if it's going to work. It's going to require more capital. So I'd love the idea of white labeling. And I guess at

the very worst, you can go to them and be like, hey, listen, I'll buy your products wholesale. So you're just, you know, they're making money. And if they're like, no, we won't buy it wholesale. It's like, okay, I'll buy your products retail. And with all the brand work you're going to do and all the influencer work that you're going to do, you'll be able to charge a lot for it. So I think it's interesting. I'm always wary of physical products,

but it would probably be a fun, like this is something like a fun week, two weeks, just to like explore and see if you're able to find these products, reach out to them and yeah it doesn't take up too much capital right you just need like a a really dope brand color palette positioning and you're off to the races yeah this is definitely something that is outside of my zone of expertise but I think for someone who has done this kind of play with physical goods I think they could probably kill it and especially I really like the idea of partnering with a TikTok influencer who's already got

that distribution baked in. Like if you can find, you know, who's like not the next Huberman, but, you know, like a notch below or a few notches below and kind of talking about similar things, you know, that just de-risks a lot of it. And also, you know, if you're like an operator or you're an entrepreneur and you're basically saying, hey, look, let's go 50-50 on this. I'll take care of everything. You just do the marketing and the distribution and just kind of pump this out.

I'm seeing a lot more startups and businesses going down that route. And I think it's a really solid route because going back to what we've been discussing today as well, just distribution is so important. And being able to break through is so important. It's really hard to get people's attention. So anything you can do to minimize the risk involved with not getting attention. is always helpful. And that's where we're going to end it, because I totally agree.

Near, I had high hopes for this podcast, and you obviously over-delivered. I love these ideas. You're criminally underfollowed. I think you have like 5,000 X followers. So where could people find you and get more of you? Yeah, just follow me on This Is Near on X. And yeah, just that's where I'd,

normally shipposts a lot of random ideas. I love it. Keep doing it. And if you made it this far, comment on YouTube, we'll be in the comments, replying, looking around, like on YouTube, and share this with a friend, share these ideas with a friend. You might find a co-founder. Or they might tell you that these ideas are dumb. And that's a whole, you know, that's maybe what you need to hear. So thank you, Nira. This has been real and I'll catch you later. Thanks.