The Startup Ideas Podcast - pov: brainstorming $1M+ startup ideas with Daniel Dalen

Starting point is 00:00:00 Dude, oh my God. I can tell you how excited I am for this podcast. Daniel Dalen, if you're on YouTube and you're into startups and entrepreneurship, you know him. He doesn't do podcasts like this. So thank you. Thank you, Daniel, for taking some time. Thank you for having me, Greg. It's funny enough, been the podcast that has actually been requested most. I've had so many people in Twitter DM me and be like, dude, please hop on with Greg because I know you guys would hit it off so well. I'm so sure that with YouTube, you're only scratching the service and to get someone who's, you know, as role and as, as, you know, straight to the point as Greg of just, you know, sitting down and and talking about cool things, you know, I'm super excited to be here. So thank you for having me. So today we're doing startup ideas with Daniel Dalen. And we're going to go through these three startup ideas I have and just jam. And my hope is basically, to get inside your brain, just a glimpse inside your brain at how you think about fleshing out some of these businesses. We're going to give away these ideas and talk about how we'd actually build them.

Starting point is 00:01:33 And you can tell me if you hate these ideas, by the way. And I want you to be real with us. Yeah, yeah. So I went and had some dental work done yesterday. And I walked into the waiting room. And the dentist, well, the receptionist says, hey, did you see our new best dentist in America plaque for 2023? Or actually, no, it's 2024. And I was like, no, but that's amazing.

Starting point is 00:02:03 Like, this is amazing. She was so proud of it. It got me thinking that there's an opportunity to build, like, best product of the year or, you know, best e-commerce brand of the year. business where you actually create these plaques and it's not too dissimilar to have you ever seen like the better business bureau

Starting point is 00:02:26 image? Have you seen this on some websites? No, I haven't. So it's just like a little image that you can put on your website that says that you're like legit. Look, eight plus rating and

Starting point is 00:02:43 they're like Better Business Bureau makes millions of dollars a year basically selling this image. So that's the insight. The insight is what plaque or what image could you create and sell that to whenever you go to a website, so it shows that it's credible.

Starting point is 00:03:06 It's a credible website. What do you think about that? Are we talking, like, are we just taking the concept of a dentist or just like any business? Any business. So, like, you know, on one of my recent pods, I talked about this app called Granola, right? So it's like, wow, this is a really cool app, the AI notepad for people in back-to-back meetings.

Starting point is 00:03:28 And it's like every product, every indie hacker, every founder is trying to add credibility here. So they all have this, trusted at individuals at this. And I don't know about you, but I started to like gloss over these credibility slides. Now, if it said like top product of the year in an image over here, I might be more willing to try this because there's a thousand AI notepad apps. And I think that Granola would be willing to pay $200 a year for some sticker over here, as well as a physical plaque that they can get, similar to like the YouTube 100 plaque that they can go and create content and be like, wow, we're so happy that, you know, we got the, you know, top startup of the year by, you know, Dailen Institute. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Starting point is 00:04:23 So I think, like, especially for those kind of, like, ultimately it comes down to acknowledgement of that being a good product, right? So there's, there's two sides to that. We've got the supply as in the product and then the demand for the product. So I think with, with like a concept like this. figuring out, first of all, again, like I always try and, especially when building product or thinking if something makes sense, it's like, how could we make this work? You know, because if there is a need for credibility, that's something that in my opinion is, is there. You know, like, like you said, even like splashing logos on your side or even having testimonials, like all those things

Starting point is 00:05:05 are there. So having a product that essentially within a specific niche gathers in kind of aggregates that supply and demand and almost to like a sort of like a public listing. You know, it reminds me a little bit of product hunt where there's people that can vote and obviously you can apply. Product hunt also allows these these plaques to be created and to be put on the website, which is, which is quite similar. So that's kind of like the first kind of set of thoughts that come to mind. Yeah, I think the most similar thing is the product hunt, you know, product of the day. I do see this on people's websites.

Starting point is 00:05:50 Yeah. You do see it? Yeah, especially within the indie hacking community. It's like, it's a big thing, you know, like if you go training on product hunt, if you, if, you know, you're even featured on product hunt, it's just, you know, it's just something that, again, going back to that credibility, there's relatability of. something that they've seen in other platforms as well, you know. So if you're trending on on on on that one thing. So just I think like this product and and with most of these products, you can make it work. I would say like

Starting point is 00:06:21 the main thing where you can make a big difference, which is also something that stands very close to me. And also very close to you is making noise because making the noise is going to get the eyeballs, which is basically the supply. And then all you have to do is to just close the demand on a. $300 a year plan in order for you to have them displayed on the website. And then what, you know, in terms of making the noise, which can be done through the, you know, startup ideas, podcast with Daniel, for example, or whatever you may come up with, to really start making that noise and having that traffic funnel to that specific page, which then again builds that credibility because people will start to recognize it, which, which is, yeah, like,

Starting point is 00:07:07 I think the most crucial part here would be to make so much noise in the right way with the right authority for people to start, you know, really looking at that with the credibility that you would need for the companies to value it as much to pay a certain amount of money for it. 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 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?

Starting point is 00:07:54 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. 100%. Yeah, I think what I like about this business is, you know, the inside I guess is like what are businesses where you can make 99% margin on? And if you're selling a badge, like you're selling,

Starting point is 00:08:32 it's like Warren Buffett says, why does he like insurance, businesses so much. He likes insurance businesses and spends billions of dollars on insurance businesses because, like Geico, because, you know, you sell something for $10,000 on day one. You know, it's just like pure margin, especially in the beginning. Now, eventually, there could be a hurricane in Florida and then you have to make it up. But yeah, that's why I like businesses like this. So that's one kind of insight. I built something for fun called Offer Button. And the reason I bring it up is because I'm starting to be really obsessed with businesses that are embeddable. So the way offer button works is I was like, wouldn't it be cool if you can just put a little button on anyone's website?

Starting point is 00:09:21 And if you wanted to buy the website, you can just make an offer to the owner. And it's free. It's totally free. And we already have 400 websites that have embedded it. We're on 400 people's websites. Like there's a directory of all these companies that are for sale. And you go on their website and it's like we have real estate. I think that businesses like that owning real estate on other people's websites,

Starting point is 00:09:52 I call them embeddable businesses, are going to be really big in 2025. What do you think about that? Yeah. Very interesting, embeddable businesses. I think it's almost like an, like, like an extent within like even like the concept of what was the name again of the business you started

Starting point is 00:10:16 make an offer button.com offer button.com that's so interesting. I honestly haven't like thought too much about invadable businesses. I mean if you really think about it like some of the things that we use a lot or especially when wanting to quickly validate stuff or you know think of things which is type form or whatever. like those are all things that you can embed for it to you know like look pretty native with very very very minimal effort um embeddable business in all

Starting point is 00:10:46 honesty i haven't i haven't thought about that much i like mainly within within the businesses that we're building right now it's like a lot of layered solutions so we build on top of existing very boring traditional infrastructure and try and innovate as much as we can there um so i actually haven't um haven't really thought much about embedded solutions or like embedded businesses as how you called it. But it's a really interesting one. Like even product is like almost the embedded, you know, business. Yeah, it's true.

Starting point is 00:11:22 Yeah, I think I think the reason why I'm interested in it is, as you know, it's so hard to get, you know, it's so hard to get traffic in a consistent manner. sometimes it's easy for people like us to launch something, get a bunch of traffic in the beginning, but then it like tapers off. And what's cool about an embeddable business is your own real estate on an app, on a website that people are going to every single day. Yeah. Yeah. One thing that I also really like about that is something that is also very recognizable. So it's automatically doing marketing for itself. Like another good example is let's take zero, like an invoicing software as an example.

Starting point is 00:12:12 Like at the bottom, you'll always see that, you know, the invoices send with zero. You know, so even though, you know, like you can pay premium to remove the branding, but 99% of customers won't do it. So everyone who receives an invoice has automatically kind of, you know, seed planted as in like, hey, you know, like they've, they've used zero. So even when, when you make, beehive does the, that's the same thing. Like always at every single bottom of the email, they, they always do a little bit of marketing. Right. So I feel like when having that digital real estate on someone else's, you know, property, that's also automatically marketing for you on their

Starting point is 00:12:53 website, which comes with authority. So if you're a big fan of, let's say, Beehive and then all lot of a sudden to see that button on there, it's, it's, you know, it's really good marketing. That's, uh, that's actually how Gmail, I don't know if you know the story of how Gmail got popular in 2005, I think, 2004. So they, they had, they made an invite only. It's like Google's making an invite only email. Very cool. I want to be on it. They got like a few thousand people on it. People were selling invites on eBay for so much money to get into Gmail. And at the bottom of it, it said like sent with Gmail. You know who does this now also is superhuman, sent with superhuman. Yeah. Yeah. That's so funny. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a big thing

Starting point is 00:13:44 with embedded businesses as well. You like automatically lift on the authority of whoever uses your product, you know, even with superhuman, you know, like if you and I were to send an email and and you'd see it at the bottom. I actually only found out about superhuman doing this after like months of using it. I was like, man, I've just been promoting you guys' product for free. That's awesome.

Starting point is 00:14:09 Yeah. Yeah. You know, people call this, people call products like superhuman luxury software because it's more expensive. It looks a bit luxury. It's a whole new category. And I think

Starting point is 00:14:26 having things like a status play, like a status symbol, like sent with superhuman built within the product is really important with luxury businesses. And you know a lot. I feel like you know a lot about that sort of stuff before we move on to our next one. I feel like it makes sense, right? Because if you spend $7,000 on a Louis Vuitton bag, you're wearing the bag, not because it's great leather. You want other people to see you. Yeah, I think, I think it goes kind of hand in hand with the thing that we touched on earlier. It's kind of the credibility, it's the authority.

Starting point is 00:15:09 You know, it's like, what do I want to be associated with? That's, I think, something that, I mean, I, for example, like, why would I, why wouldn't I mind the people know that I'm superhuman, or that I use superhuman, for example, I think it's a great tool. You know, I think it's actually something that really helps me. I think it's, it looks nice. And I mean, like when, when I do my emails, it's just, it's just nice, you know, and the way it allows me to organize it, some of the AI features and all of that. So just having those, those, you know, having a good experience and then also allowing that, you know, marketing to happen on its own behalf because of using the product is something.

Starting point is 00:15:53 You know, I think, I think a lot of people would, you know, be okay with. But with those kinds of products, like take against super humans as an example, it's, there's a lot of interaction. So just as how you said with the, what was it called again, the button? Offerbutton.com. Offerbotton.com. It's, again, you know, like anyone who uses it, you know, automatically promotes your products because they probably think, hey, that's a pretty cool product. my business is for sale. And it's almost as if, you know, you have like one of those for sale

Starting point is 00:16:27 boards in front of your house, but then on your business. Exactly. That was, that was the insight. It's like, how do you put a, and I do that often as I go into the real world. People ask me, how do you come up with startup ideas? Right before this, I showed you my like long list of startup ideas. And it's often just going into the real world, seeing something and insight about human beings, because human beings don't change. We are who we are. And thinking, okay, how could I create software to apply this way of thinking to a particular niche?

Starting point is 00:17:03 I want to say one quick thing. I want to get your opinion on this. I just thought about this. I feel like luxury software is old and the new wave is going to be aesthetic software. Yeah. Yeah, you use superhuman, not just because it's luxury because you said,

Starting point is 00:17:22 I think you even might have used the word aesthetic or design. Like you might subconsciously want people to know that you're, you're someone who takes design seriously. I think just, and I don't know, it may just be the designer in me. I mean, I grew up,

Starting point is 00:17:41 my dad's an architect, so I grew up with him working in the office. We had a super small little home. offers and he was doing nothing else but drawing you know so i've always been super fascinated by just design and and you know aesthetics from a very very young age so i feel like i don't know even simple tools like raycast it's just nice you know like it just looks smooth it works smooth and um yeah i mean it's it's it's kind of like almost uh of a a thing that i adopt even throughout You know, the way I, like the visuals we use when announcing new features, the way we design websites, the way we design products, the way I use the products.

Starting point is 00:18:31 And even if I shoot content, like if you look at my content, you know, the kind of aesthetic, you know, not only is displayed in the work that we do, but I also threw out my storytelling value, you know, like a good aesthetic a lot because I just think. that it just contributes so much to the perceived value of, of, you know, of what it is that you're trying to get across. And that I mean that also applies to product. You know, ultimately, we're doing emails, you know, it's, it's the way you do it is different. So there's a luxury experience. There's a convenient experience. There may be a very convenient and luxury experience. And all of those come, obviously like a different price range. And I'm sure that there's going to be people listening who would happily pay $99 bucks a month for like a super aesthetically looking efficient email client or there's going to be people that say, you know, I'm never ever in my entire life going to pay $99 and I'll just

Starting point is 00:19:30 use Gmail, you know? Totally. I was actually shocked. Have you heard of Zoho? I have. Yeah. Man, that was my first email provider. So I went in a deep rabbit hole of Zoho and learned about them. I didn't realize how big they were. Yeah, they're massive. They've got all these different branches of product, like Soho payments, invoicing. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:19:55 So they've got 15,000 employees. Wow, that's massive. And Zoho is the Costco of software. It's the Kirkland of software. Like, I'm wearing a Kirkland T-shirt under my LaCost sweater. You know what I'm saying? It works. I love it.

Starting point is 00:20:14 Yeah, exactly. You know, I think there's an opportunity, you know, when you're creating a startup, you have to ask yourself, am I Zoho? Am I trying to be the Costco or am I superhuman? Am I trying to be the Louis Vuitton or am I, am I Daniel Dalyin? Am I trying to go after aesthetics? I think those are the three, that's the spectrum. And maybe we can draw this out somehow. Yeah. Yeah. What do you think about that? I think, I mean, I think the aesthetics just help because in all honesty, like I've taken one year of computer science just because I wanted to figure out how to build stuff myself. I did that when I was, I think it was like 16 or 17. It was my last year before I dropped out. But that made me realize that I would always have so much higher perceived value of everyone around. me building like really nice looking products with a terrible back end but just because it looks

Starting point is 00:21:18 so nice and just because it made so much sense um because i think you know like when when when when when when talking about aesthetics and especially when product like the way i the way i think of aesthetics within products is it just has to make sense you know and especially within a world where you're being bombarded with like so much information for stuff to just look clean and clear and just blend in and be very, very, very, you know, just clear on what this is, I feel like that's something that that is really important. So when when building products, or at least from my experience, when actually building products, that's something that I always obviously try and leverage. But ultimately, the most important thing to me is obviously that it makes most sense

Starting point is 00:22:05 and that you can actually, that you can actually, you know, that it has an impact because one, I would say, and I'm very curious to get your take actually on this as well as someone who I don't think I know many people who build as much stuff as you have done and to the day still do. The way I look at building stuff is that so many people always focus on the wrong things. And I have this analogy that I always use that I even talk to my team members about. I feel like building a product is like building a car. And whenever someone walks into a dealership, they see this super nice car. Like it has everything, all the bells and whistles.

Starting point is 00:22:49 It has a super nice color. It has a leather steering wheel. It has a panorama rooftop. But the second that person gets into the car and finds out that the car doesn't drive, he doesn't care and he's not going to buy it. And what I always tell my team is like, let's figure out. what makes the car drive? Like just may it be a bike, you know, like maybe a skateboard before we turn it into a car.

Starting point is 00:23:18 But let's figure out the core value proposition of getting from A to B. Now, what I try and do and why, you know, I would say the aesthetic in some extent is important is that when we're in that face of figuring that out, we can validate if, you know, we get someone from A to B by just making it look nice, you know, because that natural. draws people's attention. Like even when you leverage platforms to, you know, like you touched on this earlier as well, not everyone is as fortunate to just launch a product and they get hundreds of people to sign up, if not thousands of people to sign up. When it looks nice, you can grab attention. You know, so that's something that I like really try and leverage when I built products or whenever

Starting point is 00:23:59 I want to announce anything or just make noise and push traffic to whatever it may be. Obviously, we're talking about product right now. But that's why I think like the aesthetic. to some extent it can be like a really good parameter to play with to grab attention and get through the first stages of building your product. Before we move on to the next startup idea,

Starting point is 00:24:24 I just have to ask on this. Sometimes when I'm building a product, I don't know if aesthetics should be in the MVP or not. How do you think about that? I think I think spinning up a really nice aesthetic lining page and it doesn't even have to be you know like I mean define aesthetic right I think you can just you know pick a nice font you know bump up the font size get one nice you know good looking header it was make a simple logo and a you know well you know good rounded with some shadow email sign up you know like

Starting point is 00:25:06 I think that already gets you somewhere. But then in terms of the product itself, yeah, that I would argue, unless it's going to take you a lot of time to make it look aesthetic, just run with it. I do firmly, firmly always refer back to that analogy that I use. You know, getting someone from A to B is the main thing that we have to figure out, you know. And are we going to do it in style? Probably not, you know, but are we going to do it in style later? Yes, but a very nice looking car without the ability to drive doesn't make sense. So I think if it's like not too much effort, yes, the product can have its design features

Starting point is 00:25:51 and you know, spent and you can tell that, you know, the team spent some time thinking through the design just to make it look nice. But I would say just make the front end look as nice as possible to grab attention if you're not as, you know, in a position to be easily creating traffic just to grab that attention and clearly communicate what it is that, you know, like what makes your car drive? And then the product itself, I mean, it could be, it could be just like a type form with some zapriers behind it, you know, whatever you can, whatever the product may be. Quick ad break. Let me tell you about a business I invested in. It's called boringmarketing.com. So a few years ago, I met this group of people that were

Starting point is 00:26:31 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.

Starting point is 00:26:58 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.

Starting point is 00:27:12 Highly recommend boringmarketing.com. Yeah, I think that's right. Like, even with offer button, I used initially V-0. Like, by the way, this is not a beautiful landing page by any, you know, This took like a few hours type thing. But I think I recommend people put animations

Starting point is 00:27:34 because I think the animations just like help people and these aren't like this could be better. But again, I wanted to get something up within a day. So set that constraint on yourself. I want to get something up in a day. Use platforms like V0, Framer AI, platforms like that to get like the basics done. and then iterate from there either on your own. Ideally, you know some code, excuse me, code,

Starting point is 00:28:04 but otherwise you can still do some like light animations that, or honestly go to like go to Upwork, get someone to do some animations. I think they will go a long way. Yeah, I agree. And I would argue this is like a good, this is like the perfect lander. You know, it's just like clear what is the, what is the main thing that we're trying to do here is displaying a button on your website, showing that, you know, this business can be bought, you know, and that's what it does. And then again, like you said, I mean, you've also done the like small animation or like the small graphic at the bottom. Yeah. Like even the all the way in the bottom one. Yeah, that one. But this is like really sufficient. And, and I mean, this, this can be set up in like something like framer like you said

Starting point is 00:28:48 in, in like an hour, you know. Yeah. Totally. It's funny though because as like a product person, I look at this and I'm like, this is the worst website I've ever seen. Yeah, yeah. But it does the job, you know. Like, I, I know, like, even if you go to whatever, like the late checkout website, which is such a cool website, you know, you can tell you guys, you know, I've thought this through. It's like, it's so cool, you know.

Starting point is 00:29:13 But on the other hand, it's, you know, like even the other one, it does the job, you know. And it's, it's, you know, it's going to go. get to a point where there's enough validation for you to justify spending so much time, effort, and energy into potentially making offer button, you know, that cool of a website. You know, it's like, it's, I'm sure the late checkout website didn't look like that when you started it. No, not at all, dude. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:29:41 I love going to, do you ever go to archive.org? No. The way back machine. So you can go and check what a website looked like in the past. No way. That's so cool. Yeah. So like when we launched it in 2020, let's see. See if this comes up. Now it doesn't pull in all the animations, but it'll give you an idea of a snapshot of what a website will look like. And dude, let's put it this way as it's loading. It was a landing page. It was a landing page. But you got to get something out there, right? exactly yeah oh you know what it was with late checkout dot com that's what it was

Starting point is 00:30:30 checkout dot com well even goes back one more day one more year yeah i haven't checked this since since then so this is uh this is fun yeah it's like it's like reminiscing about you know an old girl you used to date or something like that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's funny that when you think of, like, this specific time frame, 2020, that this probably would have been something, you know, like worth showing, worth talking about. But that the standard now of, like, such a simple website is, one, so easy to create. And two, it's also, you know, it's also pretty, you know, you can so easily make something look so nice. Yeah, I agree.

Starting point is 00:31:33 I think there's a landing page should be aesthetic for your MVP. Everything else you can layer on aesthetics. Okay, this is not pulling up, but maybe it'll be loading. It'll load, and let's go to our next startup idea, and then we'll see if it's loaded by the end. So I actually want to start with this. I'm not even to call it a startup idea. it's like a germ of an insight that I want to get your opinion on.

Starting point is 00:32:04 So I've noticed recently where, you know, a local coffee shop I go to, if you share a picture of your coffee on social, they'll give you a free cup of coffee. So I've noticed that there's starting to be like incentivization for sharing on social. and if you do that, you'll get a future credits, status, or even free product. It got me thinking that, you know, let's go to Singelman Stable, let's say. And if we go to the shop. If Daniel Dalyan comes to this website, wouldn't it be cool if he could press a button that says, log in with influencer, you press that button.

Starting point is 00:32:54 you press that button, embeddable business, and then he was able to see different products and different price points, maybe lower price points. And you had to connect your YouTube, let's say, and you have hundreds of thousands of subs. Wouldn't it be cool if you can do that? It's good for Siegelman stable

Starting point is 00:33:16 because you might buy more of their product or more exclusive stuff too. And it's good for you, you know, you get cool product. And they would indirectly get exposure as well by. Exactly. Because you kind of use the social status as a measure of, you know, wearing that. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:33:41 Yeah. Yeah, I think it's, it's, I mean, I'm like whenever someone tells me an idea, I always directly start to think about, okay, like, how would this work? And it's like kind of similar to, um, which I mean, I'm, like, like it applies to like 99.9% of products right there's like supply and demand and now it also comes with that that little piece of credibility and also verification so when I think that should be actually something that would be within because I feel like when especially when when like you know, working with econ brands like myself within our business is you want to avoid also

Starting point is 00:34:33 giving too much options because, you know, like your conversion rate could drop. Like especially for econ brands, they run loads of traffic. Well, this traffic is paid and then giving someone the option to log in as in, as in, you know, with their social profile to kind of measure what benefits they may be eligible to. is something that could, you know, significantly impact or like could impact conversion because maybe someone logs in and they're like, oh, man, like, I'm not even, you know, I cannot even get any benefits. So maybe just maybe even when there's any traffic that, you know, through cookies or whatever

Starting point is 00:35:18 you can measure, they come from socials, that you then can like trigger those kind of functions. may be able to just be a bit more specific about who you show this to. But I think, I think it would be, I think maybe integrating this within like the checkout, that could be something like, see if you're eligible to, to, you know, some benefits, you know, by, by connecting your socials, you know, like by understanding, you know, who it is that's going to wear use these products. I think that would be something that's pretty cool. The only thing that I, that I, you know, it would, it would really be for marketing purposes because I would say that you wouldn't want to necessarily roll that out to the masses because how many of, let's say,

Starting point is 00:36:08 you know, any brand their customers are, you know, eligible to, to get any benefits, right? So if, if, if, if we were to take a hundred thousand people, I dare to be. You know, bet that's probably going to be like a hundred people that a brand would actually be like, oh, you know, like I would definitely give you some, um, some, some benefits because of, because of your social status. Um, so that means that there's going to be, um, you know, there's so much percentage, like almost 99.9 percentage of people that are distracted with, uh, something that they're not even eligible for because I'm sure as a brand, you would only want to give that to people that you feel are worthy of being able to give that.

Starting point is 00:36:56 So I think there's got to be some sort of a filtering system for you to figure out or maybe like even turn it into a marketing tool, you know, and then just just reverse it where you get to scrape a bunch of social profiles within specific niches and then blast out, you know, an email or a message or whatever for them to be exposed to these benefits, kind of like, you know, around having to like physically, like publicly display some sort of a call to action for people to check if they're eligible for benefits. Yeah, I think, I think there's something to this idea. I am a bit worried about like, does it create like a dual class system for e-commerce? You know what I mean? like have or have nots. I mean the reality, yeah, I'm curious your POV on that.

Starting point is 00:37:54 Yeah, I think, I think it's kind of, you know, like in all honest, I feel like it would kind of suck, you know, like you would get on a website and you're like, oh man, I can get discounted if I'm cool and then you find out you're not cool enough, you know, it's like shit. So I think if for this tool to like really to live, I feel like it should be the other way around, right you should kind of see if you can get access to the cool people and automatically you know expose them to these benefits so let's take um you know let's let's let's take our personal brands as an example and and someone would would you know reach out to us and be like hey listen there's this zero catch um were a product and we gather you know people with with like a following

Starting point is 00:38:45 and we put you on a database and brands get to, you know, just give you benefits. They get to give you discounts, free items, you name it. And that's it, you know. And for those brands to then kind of like select and on the back end decide to, you know, give those to you. I think that could be something that would make more sense because I think publicly facing, you would really just, yeah, you know, like differentiate those two while the, the percentage is only so small.

Starting point is 00:39:18 Yeah. And I'm happy that this is a bad idea because it's a good insight with a bad idea. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's that's the idea maze. The idea maze is helping you take that insight into a product that has a high probability of working. I always, even when I look at some of the things that I still go through through this day,

Starting point is 00:39:43 a lot of people don't realize that there's often way more failure to be found in things that are bad than the things that are right because you would never even, like the odds of something not being the first, like the right idea straight away is way higher than you're just hitting jackpot the first go, you know? So having like a streak of things that just simply didn't work out or bad ideas

Starting point is 00:40:09 or, you know, they're going to take you one step closer to that one thing that sticks. that's like what I always notice where you know just just just focus on what information do I get from and you can even go to extensive testing it you know like that's that's also something that um you know because who says what's good and what's bad you know perhaps you know us putting that on that website and everyone starts to go crazy about hey am I cool enough and everyone starts using it you know like we never know so even even figuring and finding those things out and to some extent use comments sense and maybe even speak to people, which I think, you know, like Greg, you're a living

Starting point is 00:40:47 example of just putting it out there in the wild and literally spin up a visual and be like, hey, would you use this on my ecom website and just check if you're eligible for benefits if you have social status, whatever, you know, and then get that feedback there. And then you also have your answer. But it's, yeah, I mean, I guess I guess the, the startup idea, podcast, you know, would be impossible to have, you know, only good ideas. 100%. I mean, if we're lucky if we get 75% good insights, you know? Yeah. Do you think a lot about or how much do you think about the Shopify app ecosystem? You know, do you think there's a lot of opportunity there for people to create businesses there?

Starting point is 00:41:35 Yeah. So I actually invested in a company. They're called instant.com. And it's, it's, it's like an instant page builder. And what I see a lot within Shopify and even when I look at some of the things that we are building, we, for example, yeah, those guys. Yeah. Exactly. So instant is a tool that allows you to, and I'm also launching a product myself because my audience has been asking it so much.

Starting point is 00:42:08 And they have also, like, like we run a, fulfillment business in China, right? So even the fulfillment itself for ecom brands, it's just a beautiful case study. So I'm going to launch these glasses, the ones that I always wear. And I've used instant to build the entire website. Now, I gave this to one of our designers who basically span up epic looking store in as quick as, I think it was, I think it was like two to three hours. Now, the cool thing is that they've run or they've ran so many different split test on all of the different designs that they're also CRO optimized. So you have all of these different templates that really allow you to just plug and play and launch super quickly. So it's it's one of these

Starting point is 00:42:57 tools that is built on top of the Shopify ecosystem using and and you know having built tools that automatically using AI generate liquid themes or liquid components, which is the native code language for Shopify themes and the page builder itself. And this is like, this is like fully living on top of Shopify. Then taking it like a bit closer to me, myself, what we have built with our fulfillment business, which is also living on top of the Shopify ecosystem, is, a tool that integrate last milk carriers. Now, what does that mean? When, with a fulfillment business, and we'll take the U.S. as an example,

Starting point is 00:43:44 is when we ship a parcel from, let's take these glasses as an example, they're like about 200, 300 grams maximum, including packaging. With our priority line, it takes about three days, three to six days to get a parcel from China to the U.S. And one of the things that, you know, we got a lot from customer. and also looking at the evolvement of shipping from China. It's like, hey, and again, like every single store you work with, you use Shopify. So all our clients use Shopify.

Starting point is 00:44:18 And we got the feedback. It's like, you know, like how can we hide the China origin? Because obviously, you know, even though the products are made in China, people always are like, oh, man, you know, I've received my partner from China. But there's no different to importing it to a local warehouse and then getting it to the customer. Now, what we did on top of the Shopify ecosystem was build a very simple Shopify app that allowed us to simply only upload and fulfill last mile carrier links. So, for example, in the U.S. customers would only receive the USBS trekking link. And we integrated that within Shopify, its fulfillment status, where only that link would be provided to the customer, completely hiding the China rigid, which is just like really enhancing the experience of the customer. customer. And in line with your question, it is so, like DTC is such an incredible, interesting

Starting point is 00:45:15 space with so much money just flowing in every single direction for people that want to build products to save time, increase convenience, increased conversion, to like be somewhere in between those gaps. And even if you take like 10 cents, there is so much opportunity there. So to answer your question, yeah, I am a massive fan of building on top of the Shopify infrastructure just because I know how big it is and how much it's growing. If someone listens to that agrees with you and wants to build in the Shopify ecosystem, how do they figure out what's the pain points that they need to go and solve? I think when building any product, it's really about understanding the pain point, right?

Starting point is 00:46:13 It's really diving in. It's really getting your hands dirty on like, hey, why? Like if you look at anyone who starts an agency, you know, like it often comes out of a place of really understanding. You know, it's like, oh, hey, I've done this for myself. I can probably do this for other people. You know, it's, it's, but it's within the part of doing it yourself by figuring it out. And I think within within, within the kind of story that I just explained where there's, there's so much happening within this entire DTC kind of land from, you know, dealing with China. Like, again, that's all product, you know, like think of Alibaba. You know, like I, I've had so many ideas and I, and I probably know, and that's also something that I love about content,

Starting point is 00:46:59 because I always say content compounds. But I'm very, very sure that there's going to be a point in my career where I would take it up upon like an Alibaba and create the luxury version of it, just to streamline that part in itself. And that in itself is really like such a massive thing. And to answer your question that comes out of a place of understanding the pain of dealing with Chinese manufacturers

Starting point is 00:47:28 because of the language barriers, because of the distance, because of the cultural differences. So understanding those pain points and having gone through me, you know, from the age of 15, 16, starting to learn Chinese Mandarin, just so that I could solve those problems because I saw how big they were all comes out of a place of understanding. So anyone who wants to build within the Shopify ecosystem, pick like one specific section within that entire niche, may it be supply chain, may be dealing with China. may it be CRO as in conversion rate optimization, may it be email, may it be after sales, may it be, you know, product, like building a store like the guys from Instant did.

Starting point is 00:48:12 There's so many pain points and there's so many money flowing because when you, and that's like what I realized because I've always been, I've always been big in products. Like I've always built products, always been fascinated about products. I've worked with on the Asia side with some really big companies and help them just like strategize and think through product and build some stuff with them as well. But the cool thing about DTC is that, you know, like think of any SaaS. If we were to take whatever, let's take zero as an example, like you're sending invoices. Like it, you know, it gets very hard to convince a customer nowadays to pay, you know, $250. is a month or something for like a simple invoicing tool, you know, even though it's like super

Starting point is 00:48:59 advanced, you use AI, all of those things. Like the barrier to enter is getting is getting, is getting really, really high, you know, and you have to, you know, you have to like get low prices and deliver so much value and do so much work and put in so much, so much effort to, to acquire customers. And now even, you know, I've seen you talk about that as well with like subscription fatigue where people are like, oh, man, you know, I'm done. But then when you think about D to C, there's always money flowing. Every month, like as long as the business exists, there's money flowing.

Starting point is 00:49:35 So to justify a $499 a month subscription within that like flow of money is so easy to figure out as long as you solve a problem big enough to just to keep justifying that amount within that, within that already flow of cash. You know, and I feel like within like a lot of other, like when you think of invoicing and especially how much competitive, you know, how competitive that specific niche is, it's so hard to find those those gaps to like justify like high margin products, you know, like high revenue generating products. One of the things I think you said, which is really smart is is once you figure out the pain point niche down and I think that you. you can even niche down further. So I think, you know, you mentioned CRO. You mentioned, like, logistics.

Starting point is 00:50:31 Think about, like, what CRO look like for, you know, local websites, construction workers, like, go deeper because there's like one to $10 million ideas just in that alone. And there's more of a moat for people, right? Because, like, I saw today even, I don't know if this is true or not, but people were saying DocuSign has like 14,000 employees. And it's been like going viral on Twitter. And I don't know if I'm like getting trolled and it's like a joke.

Starting point is 00:51:06 But Google now has the ability to sign documents if you have, you know, Google apps. So people are like, oh, what's going to happen to all these docusign employees? You don't want to compete with Google. You don't want to compete with where, you know, you don't want to be one of those apps that Shopify ends up like cloning and puts into the system. You want to be, you know, just quietly printing over there. Yeah, yeah. The one thing that I do think is interesting, though, is that I do see opportunity. If you play your cards right and you build something that's in like a relatively short time frame making enough noise,

Starting point is 00:51:52 and acquiring like enough market share for someone like Shopify to buy you. Yeah. You know, that's that's a cart you can play. But obviously that's a bit of a big bet. But it's, it's, you know, like it's not impossible. You know, like they're buying like crazy. Dude, I played that game in my 20s.

Starting point is 00:52:14 That's the game I would play, which was go figure out what a company wants to buy, build it, get a lot of noise, raise a bunch of venture, and sell it to them. And I did it, so I can't be like, don't do this. It's like, it can't be like one of the people that is like, you know, don't drink alcohol as you're sipping a chardonnay. But on the positive side, these companies will overpay for or will like acquire some of these businesses. if you're at the right place at the right time. And you have the opportunity to make generational wealth. You have the opportunity to be a part of these bigger companies

Starting point is 00:52:58 and run that piece of the business within their division, which is really cool. And especially if you're in your 20s, like extremely cool. On the negative side, you have to, like, the stars literally need to align. And I just, I don't want, personally, I don't want to be like, that's like playing a slot machine versus playing

Starting point is 00:53:26 poker. Like business for me is, I want to play poker in business. I want to be like, learn about how to, you know, how to play the odds. You know, what do I do over here? What do I do over there? Look at my opponents. I don't want to be like pressing a slot machine and hoping

Starting point is 00:53:42 something happens. Yeah. I think for me, the biggest part in those two different types of building a business, for me, it's always been the freedom. And I'm also personally just, you know, I mean, like my whole journey as an entrepreneur has always been just figuring shit out my own, you know. And I have always operated out of a point where I understand that, you know, and again, like obviously I understand the concept behind raising and getting a concept and, you know,

Starting point is 00:54:16 and having to invest a lot of money and to build stuff. But because I didn't have that or even, I didn't even have the guts to ever think about raising money, you know, because I mean, I come from a small town in the Netherlands.

Starting point is 00:54:28 English is not even my first language. I've learned it through gaming. You know, like it's never even occurred for me to like ask people for money because I was like, man, there's no way they're going to give this kid money

Starting point is 00:54:38 in any form of shape, you know? They're probably going to ask me to pay them money to even ask them, you know? So I very naturally came from the perspective of always wanted to just have something that, you know, proves to itself that it can sustain and grow. So having like a cash flow positive business that can grow from, from itself and reinvest the capital,

Starting point is 00:55:01 bootstrapping it has always been something that that to me makes so much sense. And the reason why I love this so much is because, you know, the difference between the two that you, that you sketched as well is that, you know, like one, the stars have to align. Two, there's going to be people breathing down. on your neck, making sure that, you know, like you do everything right and that, you know, that, you know, the stars are aligned, you know, so it's all out of society.

Starting point is 00:55:24 You're trying to control the stars as much as you can, which, you know, you and I both know, you cannot do. So it comes with a lot of stress, a lot of pressure as well. And I mean, like you said, obviously that when it works out, it works out. But then on the other hand, you know, you can have like a much leaner business, make a lot more money where ultimately like when I really think about it you know like that's what it's about you know like you got to do something that makes you happy you got to do something that makes you enough money and from that point obviously you just keep you know you can repeat and you can go bigger and

Starting point is 00:55:59 you can you can grow that's kind of like how I really look at building anything do you feel like you're free yeah I am yeah I could I could if I would really want to step away anytime and live the life I, you know, have dreamed of. I think like one of the things that I'm most proud of is, is right now knowing that I have built such a strong arsenal of skills that no matter what happens, I will be able to build a successful lean business myself that's going to, you know, allow me to make enough money

Starting point is 00:56:35 to sustain a very simple life that makes me happy and that I do with the, people around me that I that I'm very proud of you know like when I look at my other half when I look at my business partner when I look at the team members that I work with it's people that I know are very very close to the values and morals that I live by and I think that to me is ultimate wealth you know so all of the tools all of the things that we've that we've talked about and everything they're they're incredible but I wouldn't want to do any of it or would sacrifice anything on the other side if I wouldn't have or could do it with those kinds of people.

Starting point is 00:57:17 You know, and I think when you put so much pressure on it and if you really fixate so much about, you know, wanting to go so big, I think it personally takes away the fun, you know, because I am, I mean, we're like our business is doing, you know, like multiple A figures. And I don't necessarily talk about that in my content even. Like people don't even know how, you know, like how big the business actually is. you know but the reason I don't talk about is because I mean like even if it would have been you know six figures it doesn't matter because it's still fun and and it's still getting the same thing done and the

Starting point is 00:57:53 amount of money is not going to change my happiness it's just it's just a tool to do it bigger better with probably cooler more experienced people um and just have fun you know yeah I think uh one thing I learned about myself is building I can't have fun if I'm having too many meetings meetings. So I could be in the best business of all time, like with the best people working on the coolest stuff, having the time of my life, crushing it. But if I have 25 recurring meetings in a week and they just recur every single week, I will want to blow my brains out. And show me your talent. Like the wealthiest people have the least amount of recurring meetings. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:58:44 That's my hot take. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have this, I've seen you, I've seen your tweet about it. I forgot what it's called. It's something like you need a robot or something. Yeah. Yeah, I love that so much because I feel like, you know, like the empty calendar can also be very easily achieved by just leveraging everything that's out there. You know, and like we're going through a big face.

Starting point is 00:59:12 of that right now within the company where we're just rethinking everything like literally everything you know everyone's being challenged like no everyone's like waking up it's like okay how can we how can we you know like make this more efficient how can we use AI how can we automate this um just uh just to get that calendar clear um Daniel we had one more idea but we're not going to have time to do it I'm going to flesh out that insight uh I'll send it out of my newsletter um people can go and go and and check it out. Greg Eisenberg.com. The links in the description. Daniel, I just have a question for you before we end it.

Starting point is 00:59:53 Should I ask people to like, like, comments and subscribe? Or should I just like not ask? I think, in all honesty, what I've seen, like, especially within, like, how I've positioned myself within, you know, the YouTube and content creation, I feel like we're kind of entering this era of, you know, call to action kind of becoming dead. Where I feel like, even throughout my content, like, I never like has necessarily anything of like check out my business or check this or like like or subscribe.

Starting point is 01:00:32 I feel like like it. They'll just, you know, they'll do what they should do, you know. That's really, really what I've seen, you know. But one day, you're not going to, in your content, you're not going to promote a product or, like, how do you think about that? I mean, like the way I look at it, it's, it's, I promote my stuff all the time. But there's a very big difference between showing what's happening and talking about what has happened. So for me to document how we're building a brand and sharing the lessons along the way, is the best form of marketing that you can ever do without, you know,

Starting point is 01:01:15 making people feel like you're, you're screaming in their face or wanted to sell anything to them. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's just something that is so different, especially within,

Starting point is 01:01:29 because it's, like, it's really funny, like you mentioned, right? Like, there's, there's,

Starting point is 01:01:32 there's two types of audience that listen to, to this podcast. There's one type of audience that probably has never heard of me. There's one type of audience that, you know like is heavily invested in my content um now like anyone who watches my stuff and if i were to like actively promote or like talk about things i feel like in some extent it with me building the business that i'm building it just takes away a little bit of authenticity because my goal is not necessarily to promote these businesses to them is to take them through the learnings of me building

Starting point is 01:02:07 these businesses where i just get to experience the upside and benefit of, of, you know, me just actually building something that they're interested in. You know, so that's like how, how I, like, really look at my position within, within my brand and, like, my YouTube. It's like, it comes out of the place of just wanting to show and share and the exposure is there, you know, and people who want to find out, they will find out and they will click. I am not going to ask people to like comments and subscribe.

Starting point is 01:02:41 I'm going further. So they know what to do anyway. But, you know, the reality is like, I just, I'd like the common section to be popping just because, like, I want to see if the content that I'm creating is resonating with people. And that's ultimately what I care about. So that's good advice. That's good advice. I think one thing that I always do is, yeah, like, that is something that I, that I do ask

Starting point is 01:03:10 for us. Like, you know, let me know. Send me a message. Yeah. Shoot, you know, shoot through a tweet, shoot through a DM. You know, those are things that I do, that I do ask for. Okay. So I'm going to try this, no asking for like, comments and subscribing. But I would, but I will, I would love to hear your thoughts going forward people. Daniel, I know you're not a, you don't want to promote, you know, that's not your vibe. So I'm going to promote for you. I think everyone should go in, watch how watch Daniel's

Starting point is 01:03:44 channel and on YouTube follow him on Instagram we'll include those links even if you're not particularly

Starting point is 01:03:53 interested in you know Hong Kong China DDC e-commerce I think the way that he's

Starting point is 01:04:00 building his brand in public is is you know top tier top shelf as we say

Starting point is 01:04:08 in Canada and you can learn a lot of it. So I'd learn a lot from it. So, dude, I can't thank you enough for the time. I just want to build a business with you, man. I don't know what it is. We should. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:04:22 I don't know what it is, but something. Yeah, yeah. Well, let's make it happen, man. As I said, man, content compounds. Like, if we put this out there and like a year from now we've done it, that's going to be some cool stuff, man. Totally. All right. Well, I'll catch you later.

Starting point is 01:04:40 Thank you so much for having me, Greg. I've had a really good time. I've been following your stuff for a while as well. And it's it's been super cool to just jam and talk product with you. Like such a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. The pleasure is all mine. Awesome.

The Startup Ideas Podcast - pov: brainstorming $1M+ startup ideas with Daniel Dalen

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