The Startup Ideas Podcast - Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)

Starting point is 00:00:00 The next idea, Shopify for X. I think Shopify is an $80 billion company. And when you have an $80 billion company, there's just opportunities to unbundle it. So what is Danny? What's Danny's idea? So she says, there are all these no code tools. They're either too limited or too complex. What you need is a product-specific tool. Like Shopify is no-code e-commerce. Then you would also build no-code marketplaces. This is such a good idea. This is such a good idea. Something like this needs to exist, should exist, will exist. How would I actually go and build something like this? Well, I'd build that. Okay, so a few weeks ago, I had Danny Grant on the podcast. She's someone who I really respect. Sometimes you meet someone or you're listening to someone's podcast or you're watching them

Starting point is 00:01:12 and you just know that this person's got it. They've got the sauce. They know where the world is going. and she had a few ideas that she shared. But afterwards, she sent me a list of 139 different startup ideas. And we never got a chance to go through them. So I figured I'd hop on here real quick, go through some of these ideas. Some of them are kind of big venture-backed ideas.

Starting point is 00:01:37 Some of them are profitable startups. And some of them will just get your creative juices flow in. And I'll tell you how I feel about these ideas. what would I do? How would I start them? And if I just think that they're playing garbage, some of these ideas, I might be like, you know what? I wouldn't, maybe it's a good idea, but it's one of those ideas I wouldn't do. Too much work. So without further ado, let's go into Danny Grant's 139 ideas. Let's pick the most interesting ones or the ones that just speak to me. And let's go through this together and see what we got.

Starting point is 00:02:15 All right. So this idea, idea number one, is there a product doc format just for writing product specs? So you can create Jira's inline, you can have common threads in line, etc. This is pretty darn good idea. You know, there is Google Docs, of course, but there's nothing specific for product specs. So I can imagine a Google Docs for product specs, for PMs, that people would be willing to pay $20 a month for. So I actually think that there's something here. I really like this idea. It's not the simplest idea to do.

Starting point is 00:02:58 Like you actually have to create software. I don't think really anything like this exists. I mean, of course you have product templates, but you don't really have a whole experience dedicated to writing product specs. How would I actually go and build something like this? Well, I'd build the MVP, probably outsource it to an agency to get the MVP up, and I'd partner with a creator. I mean, Lenny Richchitzky would be the dream. So Lenny Richetsky, I think at this point, has the biggest podcast and newsletter for product managers. But who are the aspiring Lenny

Starting point is 00:03:35 Richardskies? So I'd make a list, I'd go to perplexity.a.I. And I'd say, you know, who are the up-and-coming 20 Lenny Richetskisks. And I would go and reach out to them. So I think this is a good idea. Pretty straightforward. Software, catchy, catchy name. You know, I probably wouldn't do this idea if I didn't have the buy-in from two to three or four creators.

Starting point is 00:04:08 So I would create the name. I'd create the mock up first, and then I would actually go and see if I want to build it. All right. So that's idea number one. Idea number two, developer portfolio sites. So she says, help every developer create their own Danny Town. I assume Danny Town is her own portfolio website. So there's a company called Format.com.

Starting point is 00:04:32 And what they do is they're the portfolio builder for creative professionals. So basically what Danny's suggesting is build the format. But com, but for developers. Now, I know someone's listening to this and being like, well, that's GitHub. GitHub already exists. Yes, but it's not as beautiful as a format. And I do think that there's an opportunity to build that for developers. And format's actually massive.

Starting point is 00:04:58 They've got 50,000 plus people who pay to use it. And what do they pay to use it? Pricing was pulled up. They pay $11 a month annually or $20. $4 a month monthly. So this is a huge business. If you assume that the average is, let's say, $15 a month, that's huge. We're talking $750,000 in monthly recurring revenue for something that doesn't cost a lot

Starting point is 00:05:29 of money. And why I love websites, website builders is once you build it, chances are you are not going to churn. So these are beautiful businesses that don't churn very well. think Danny's onto something with developer portfolio sites. I do think it makes sense. And you can probably take, again, you can take that Lenny Richitki strategy, you know, creator led. There are a bunch of developers who have a lot of followers and I'd work with them to create something that would be really cool. So I think the way I would actually build something like this is I would start

Starting point is 00:06:01 by building one really awesome developer portfolio site. So I would reach out to some of these developers and say, hey, I'm a designer. I'd really love to design you, your own developer for aureosite and create something unique, interesting that they've hopefully never seen before.

Starting point is 00:06:27 Get them super stoked about it. And once you refine that, maybe you do it for a few people, then that's when you have the product. And then, you know, that's when you get some of these influencer developers on board and that's when you can actually go

Starting point is 00:06:43 and build out an MVP minimal viable product and start charging for this. So I really love this idea. These are one of the great cash flow ideas. I remember meeting the founder of

Starting point is 00:06:59 of Card C-A-R-R-D.co I think. He had a great business. They're one-page websites. He doesn't, he charges very little. I think it's like nine bucks a year or something. But he had a great business. He bootstrapped it.

Starting point is 00:07:13 One guy. One guy. Living in Tennessee, developer, and millions of people use this. It's crazy. So website builders, I know you must be thinking like, oh my God, that's so 1999. But it works. It really works. And it works really well for different niches.

Starting point is 00:07:36 So really good ideas. on that one. Quick ad break. Let me tell you about a business I invested in. It's called Boringmarketing.com. So a few years ago, I met this group of people that were some of the best SEO experts in the world. They were behind getting some of the biggest companies found on Google.

Starting point is 00:07:57 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

Starting point is 00:08:27 guarantee. Who does that nowadays? So check it out. Highly recommend Boringmarketing.com. So the next idea she has is a blog and a newsletter in a box. So help everyone set up their own AVC.com. So if you don't know AVC.com, it's a blog slash newsletter by Fred Wilson, who's a VC in New York City. He's been doing this for like at least 15, 20 years.

Starting point is 00:08:53 It's super, super simple. I think originally his blog was on Tumblr. Not sure where it is today. But yeah, you know, the idea around, would someone, you know, does someone want a blog in a newsletter in a box? I mean, there is substack, but it's, you know, substack feels very newsletter first. I do think that there's probably an opportunity to build something like this and make it easy for people. Like maybe there's just an idea, maybe the idea is just like you're an agency and you work on top of all these different services and you just set it up for them. You know, you use existing services.

Starting point is 00:09:29 But I'm not a big fan of like, okay, let's go and create the next substack, but like make it more blog first. Because I think that's really hard and you're competing against people who've raised tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars. So don't like that idea. But do like the idea around, you know, we work with Beehive, we work with substack, we work with WordPress. We charge a very small one-time fee to help you get set up for it. And you probably do cold outbound to,

Starting point is 00:10:06 to get people to do this. This is like, you know, definitely a cold outbound, cold email, cold DM, to get people and say like, hey, notice that you don't have a blog set up. I notice you don't have a newsletter. You're missing out. I think you talk about, you use a lot of social credibility around, you know, so-and-so. Lenny Richericki didn't have a blog and newsletter. And now he's making $5 million a year with his blog and newsletter.

Starting point is 00:10:36 And he does it running on a, you know, a free substack and you can do the same. So I think you, the way to do it is you do a mix of the cold DM and then you use your content. Like how do you build an audience and you talk about these stories? And then you follow them to a really cheap offer. One-time offer. Why one-time over monthly for something like this? I just think that it's going to be a no-brainer for people. This is a business that you might.

Starting point is 00:11:06 be able to start on your side. The starting costs are quite small. So cheers Danny for giving us this idea. All right. Let's talk about some ideas I don't really love. So virtual workspace, compete with tandem, which is a tandem is a virtual. Let's check tandem real quick. So I just checked out tandem. I'm pretty sure tandem was like one of those apps that you can see other teammates in like a third space. And they've like, seems like they can, they pivoted to more of like a Slack plus video conferencing. So it's hard, you know,

Starting point is 00:11:50 to build what, what Danny is, you know, suggesting is quite hard. You know, a social app, basically making Slack more social. First of all, you have to like build Slack. So that's step one. And then, so you know, step one is building all the primitives, what people are used to. And then step two is like, okay, now I got to figure out

Starting point is 00:12:10 how can I make this different and interesting in a social experience? So this is one of those ideas where I think, you know, they call it a tar pit idea. It's an idea that seems good on paper. But like once you actually go and go into it, it's actually a bad idea because there's so much investment that you need to put into something like this. And then you have to get people off Slack. You have to get people off Microsoft team. So don't love this idea at all. Other idea, whole world is a silent disco. The problems with Turntable FM is it was too early.

Starting point is 00:12:50 Turntable FM was an idea where people create these virtual rooms and you play music and you can like chat with other people who are in these virtual rooms. You had like your own avatar. It almost felt like a game. So she says, now everyone is walking around listening to music everywhere and someone is going to build

Starting point is 00:13:11 the network DJ station where the whole world is one big silent disco. I just think this is a cool idea. It's a really cool idea. I hope someone does something like this. I actually don't think it's that hard to do something like this.

Starting point is 00:13:25 But getting people, it's not hard to build the thing, Getting, you know, the whole world to get off their current platforms is hard and getting people to pay for it and dealing with the licenses of the music industry. Not so easy. So, a cool idea, hard to execute. Okay, another technical idea, J.S. Fiddle meets Twitter. So J.S. Fiddle is basically, you can write code online, JavaScript, pulls in different libraries, and you can run it. it all online. You don't need

Starting point is 00:14:01 it's on ID or anything like that. So it's very popular. Millions of people use it. But when you look at it, it's really focused just on developers to compile their code. It's not social at all. And you're starting to see a common denominator

Starting point is 00:14:17 with a lot of Danny's ideas to be like technical and social. And she ended up building something in that space, jam. com. Dev, which is around bug tracking. That's social and hundreds of thousands of people, I think, use it. But there's an opportunity here to basically take JS fiddle and make it more like Twitter. So it's half writing code and half meming and remixing. I think that there's something here. I think developers love memes. They love remixing. So I think the idea

Starting point is 00:14:48 around compiling code and having a place where people can talk, meme and remix some of that software is very compelling. The next idea, Shopify for X. I think Shopify is an $80 billion company. And when you have an $80 billion company, there's just opportunities to unbundle it. So what is Danny, what's Danny's idea? So she says, Shopify for making an Airbnb style marketplace. Shopify for making a messaging app. Shopify for making an Instagram like app. There are all these no code tools. They're either too limited or too complex. What you need is a product. specific tool. Like Shopify is no code e-commerce.

Starting point is 00:15:30 Then you would also build no-code marketplaces, no-code messaging app, no-code Instagram. This is such a good idea. This is such a good idea. You know, this idea around marketplace for no-code apps that if you listen to, you know, this idea on this podcast or one of these ideas, you can just like, oh, go to the marketplace, duplicate the idea, and then, you know, just, pay, let's say a monthly fee or a one-time fee for a license to it. I love that. Now, I think bubble is doing pieces of that. So maybe you just build on top of bubble, but something like

Starting point is 00:16:10 this needs to exist, should exist, will exist. So I think this is definitely the direction things are going. Okay, next idea. HQ trivia for dating. Live dating show, mobile HQ style. HQ trivia I think it was like 2018, 19. Literally everyone was playing it. If you don't remember it, it was this guy, Steve Redikowski, I think. Every single day, you get a push notification, and he would do live trivia and they'd give away money. And millions of people played it daily. It was an incredible experience.

Starting point is 00:16:46 And it ended up crashing and burning in a large part because of, it was like a crazy story, actually. The founder, the founder, unfortunately died, and they had growing pains too. And it was, there were drugs involved. It was just crazy. So I don't think the, the point is, I don't think the reason why HQ trivia died is because the format didn't work. And I think someone, my prediction is someone's going to bring back the HQ trivia format and apply it to a new niche.

Starting point is 00:17:20 Maybe it's dating. And it's going to work in 2024, 25, 25, 2026. So HQ dating, I think that live dating, like, this is interesting to so many people. I love this idea. And yeah, you've got to come up with a catchy name. You've got to make it interesting. Like, I think you start in like in Los Angeles or New York. Like, it has to feel almost like a reality TV show because you have to want to, you know, get to know the characters.

Starting point is 00:17:48 But I think this idea, HQ dating is a great idea. And I think like the bigger idea of HQ trivia for X. is a trend that I'm certainly paying attention to. And that's about it. That's about it. So those are some of the more interesting ideas on the list. I'll include the list in the YouTube bio. Sorry, in the YouTube description, these are a few ideas that are just really, really good. Danny, like I said, Danny knows what, you know, she knows, she's got that juice.

Starting point is 00:18:24 She's got that juice. So if you enjoyed that, like this YouTube video, comment on the YouTube video. I read every single comment. And the likes and comments actually make a difference. So I know it's crazy to say, but people are not able to see this video if you don't like and comment. So I appreciate every single one of them. I'll see you in the YouTube comment section. And please subscribe for more of these videos, for more of these startup.

Starting point is 00:18:54 ideas podcast. I hope you loved it. I had fun recording this. I'm going to go and open up a Figma and just start jamming on some of these ideas. So have a good one and I'll see you on the next one. Later.

The Startup Ideas Podcast - Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)

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