The Startup Ideas Podcast - The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app

Starting point is 00:00:00 I just brainstorm with one of the smartest people I know about 20 plus dating app ideas. It was a live brainstorm. She had this insight. I opened up a Google Doc. All of a sudden, one idea, three ideas, seven ideas. This is a playbook for how to come up with 20 plus dating app ideas. One of the most proven ways to make money on the internet. I think you'll enjoy this episode.

Starting point is 00:00:45 Lovely to have you here. You are probably, you're probably one of my favorite followers. on Twitter because you're always putting out creative ideas. So I had to have you for the startup ideas podcast. It was only right. I appreciate the sentiment. It's always nice to hear positive things about Twitter and not like terrible things about Twitter. And obviously you're a great follow. I mean, these days you're doing a lot of interesting stuff. I won't like give away the hacks of what I've observed that you're doing. But yeah, always like curious what you're thinking about. love your letter, love when my tweets show up in your letter. So a lot of, a lot of crossover.

Starting point is 00:01:25 Very cool. So let's start with ideas. Okay. Let's start with ideas. All right. So I always have like a bunch of ideas. So I kind of like paired down a few today that I think probably relate to things that people know that I think about as opposed to like the completely off the wall things. And maybe that like anybody could really like take a crack at versus like things that would be hard to do. So, okay, start with a fun one, which is basically like, you know the league, the dating app? I do. It was started like 10 plus years ago at this point. So I mean, I don't think everything has to be like super novel. I kind of think that someone should just like make another the league. Okay. For people who don't know what the league is, maybe explain what it is.

Starting point is 00:02:09 Okay. So the league is basically, it's like a dating app. And I think it was started around 2012 or 2013. And the premise is like, okay, if you're a woman who's kind of like ambitious and you want to get a significant other who is similarly ambitious and also wants to be with a ambitious accomplished partner, like where can you actually find that? I think the kind of filter underlying the premise when it started was a bit around like, okay, if I go to an Ivy League school or have like an Ivy League-esque job. Like, I want to meet people who are similarly, you know, pedigreed in a sense. So that was like the original premise.

Starting point is 00:02:48 And obviously, like, whenever one of these networks gets bigger and bigger, it gets a bit more diluted. They start kind of, like, expanding the criteria. And, like, this actually was pretty successful. And then they ultimately actually sold a match group, I think, like a couple of years ago. And they did some really innovative stuff with pricing, too, which is kind of another tangent. But they started, like, charging, like, hundreds of dollars, which.

Starting point is 00:03:08 was kind of unknown for dating apps and actually were successful with it. $100 a month? I think they tested that, if I'm not mistaken. I don't want to misquote it, so I should probably research it. But I think that's one of the reason that Match was particularly interested in them as well because they started doing really innovative stuff with pricing. And it's a little bit like this is in a sense, like, you know, people are price insensitive for some of these types of products.

Starting point is 00:03:32 Okay, this is crazy. So I just Googled how much does the league membership cost? You'll pay anywhere from $99 a week to $2499. That's $2,49 a month for membership of the league. Yep. Wow. So you can buy a Peloton forever or you could get a membership for a month to the league. That's crazy.

Starting point is 00:03:55 Yeah. I think one of the, from what I remember, one of the interesting things that the league did was they did connect with your LinkedIn. Yeah. I think they like, I don't really know what the interface was like. actually never used it. But I do think they were like instead of going for other socials linking, they were going for like LinkedIn. And, you know, now they've obviously expanded a bit more. But I don't know if that's like an important part of it, to be honest. But I think what's interesting

Starting point is 00:04:23 if I were to think about a 2.0 now is like, and you talk about the sum too, or we all, I think anybody who's spending time online is like, what are the new status markers or like how has status markers evolved? So I don't think it's like as simple as like I had an Ivy League education. anymore or I have this like job at this like consulting firm or investment bank. I think that's kind of opened up a bit. So you could do like interesting things with like honestly you could make probably like a dating app just for people who are YC founders. Like you know, YC would obviously never do that. But like somebody who's in it could probably try to do it. And like that's obviously like one like status filter in the tech startup community now. Obviously there's like Raya, which I think is like a bit more

Starting point is 00:05:08 general like celebrity or adjacent to celebrity, I don't think it's like specific enough on what they're actually trying to filter for. So I think like a lot of people could actually do this in a bunch of different like modern high status niches, I guess. So because I have you here and because I know you know a lot about status symbols and internet status symbols. Oh boy. Yeah. It's coming. This is coming. Can you list four or five, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten status symbols that are more modern internet culture type status symbols. And the reason I say this is because I think people can actually go and create the league for insert status symbols. They could.

Starting point is 00:05:52 Well, you can do like the hard organizational filters, which is like, okay, I see as an example, you could go like bigger orgs or smaller orgs. I think like the Thiel Fellowship would be too small probably. It's probably like only like 100 people or something in there. I don't know. But I think there's organizations like that, so you could do it that way where you're looking for something that's already defined. Or you could obviously do like platforms. So, you know, you have some number of hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter or, you know,

Starting point is 00:06:20 you're trying to get to that on YouTube. So I think you could also do like, all right, obvious status symbol these days is like, what's your follower account like on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube or Twitter? And, you know, it's like kind of funny. I feel like these days people are like, I have a combined 200. 50,000 followers across all platforms. So, like, I don't know, there's some interesting ways to think about it that way. I think those are probably, like, the ones that would be easiest to filter for. But to be honest, I think there's, like, you know, a lot more things where you could be somewhat

Starting point is 00:06:52 subjective by your criteria, which is just like, what influence level do you have or, like, what circles are you in? Like, even, like, looking at the, who else follows this person would be like such an interesting metric to figure out like how much cloud they essentially have or how much status they essentially have even if they only have like 5K followers or 10K followers so I mean I'm not going to lose like 10 or 20 that are strictly visible online

Starting point is 00:07:19 but you kind of get the gist of like where you could actually parse it out and find those lanes don't tell anyone but I've got 30 plus startup ideas that could make you millions and I'm giving them away for free. These aren't just random guesses. They're validated concepts from entrepreneurs who've built $100 million plus businesses. I've compiled them into a one simple database. Compiled from

Starting point is 00:07:50 hundreds of conversations I've had on my podcast. But the main thing is, most of these ideas don't need a single investor. Some cost nothing to start. I'm pretty much handing you a cheat cheat. The idea bank is your startup shortcut. Just click below to get access. Your next cash-loving business is waiting for you. I want to try something new. I've never done this on the show ever.

Starting point is 00:08:19 And I don't know why you're making me want to do it right now. But I am going to share my screen. You have to tell me what you think your top one or two status symbols are that you're seeing these days too. Yeah, we'll jam on that. So what I want to do here is I want to create like a mini one pager for this idea. So basically I buy your insight. So what is the insight?

Starting point is 00:08:46 And by the way, if you're listening to this on audio, like check it out on video. I'll try to, on YouTube, I'll try to explain it. I'll try to say what I'm typing out. So the insight is basically the league was dope. there was something that was working with the league. They ended up selling for millions. I don't know if we know the exact. 30-ish, I think, yeah.

Starting point is 00:09:12 And they didn't raise a lot of money. Yeah, I don't think so. I mean, I know for sure they raised like a seat at the beginning, and I'm sure they did like another round, but, you know, I'm sure they also got a bunch of equity in match when they sold. Their insight at the time, I think, was, go niche, go premium. I really do think that LinkedIn Connect was an interesting filter.

Starting point is 00:09:39 Yeah. Ended up charging, what did we say? Like hundreds a month up to a couple of thousand a month. Hundreds a month up to, I think it was 2499 a month. So completely zapped the business model. So this is really interesting. So like if you're a match group and you have a competitor charging this amount of money per month, you might want to acquire this.

Starting point is 00:10:13 You might. Because whenever you completely change the business model, that's interesting to someone who does acquisitions. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they like started testing some version of this, like on Tinder or, you know, whatever their other apps are, like somewhat soon after this. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. So then it's like, okay, so here's the idea.

Starting point is 00:10:38 I can't write. Here we go. Here's the idea. So what other, okay, what is a list of status symbols that exist today in 2024 and beyond? YC you mentioned. I think it's interesting. So one reason why I say that and why I think it's interesting is like, okay, obviously with a lot of these products, part of the game is like,

Starting point is 00:11:09 how can you actually like get people to be talking about it? Like you could argue that maybe if it's super high status luxury, like, you know, velvet rope stuff, you actually don't want a lot of people talking about it. But I don't know. I kind of think the name of the game these days is you kind of do want it to have some, you know, hanger appeal or whatnot. So like I think the more specific you make it, and the more, like, remarkable in the sense that people want to talk about it, you make it,

Starting point is 00:11:35 like, the more interesting your early attraction will be. I wouldn't necessarily say, like, in the long term, just YC is an amazing, like, you know, dating app. But I think there's something to thinking about, like, not just like, okay, this is a, like, dating out for pedigree people. Like, that's like, okay, cool, you know, but it doesn't, like, quite have the same hook. Totally. Okay.

Starting point is 00:11:58 So I think there might be, you know, these are things that might work, right? Like when you're creating an idea doc, like the idea, you know, what you really want to say is just like, I think these are hypotheses. This might work. I might not work. This is the insight, you know. So I do think that that's, it's worth putting in there. And it's like a TBD. You know, in the future, we'll go explore.

Starting point is 00:12:25 You had a really, really, really good insight, which is people who. how did you describe it? People who follow. Oh, like, yeah, I think, so there's like status where it's like I can wear the status myself or there's status like who am I in the room with, right? And so you're like looking at the people who I'm in the room with and implicitly thinking, I have high status. So online, you know, that'll be like who's followed, who else is following me on Twitter if, you know, like you're following me on Twitter or Paul Graham's following me on Twitter or like Elon Musk is following me on Twitter. It's like, okay, even if I only have like tens of thousands of followers,

Starting point is 00:13:04 maybe I actually am a high status or accomplished like up and coming person that is worthy of being included in some pool. Yeah, that would be, and you maybe you can play like a, make a game of that too, you know? It's like, I only want to date people who, you know, Elon Musk follows or something like that. Yeah. This is already sounding like super like, super like game the system like I'm looking what is it like the trust fund six five like blue eyes finance honestly you probably make an app like for that if you actually wanted to um but at the same time I don't know there's like something between this being crazy and something like also to say that there is a lot of pragmatism in like some of these things that people are actually like

Starting point is 00:13:47 subconsciously if not consciously caring about so yes I think that's right I think that's right Um, what, you know, I'm married by the way, so I don't know. I'm not on the dating scene either. But like, I don't know, enough people are, especially like if you're doing anything in social or if you're online. It's just like you can't avoid being kind of like slapped in the face with this and like loneliness and dating and how to meet people. So I think it's interesting. Like, it's like a giant social experiment. I mean, a minute amount of followers.

Starting point is 00:14:21 Like that was supposed to be Raya in the beginning. whereas like you needed a certain amount of followers basically and you connected with your Instagram like what was what was Raya Raya was basically the league but for like more celebrity yeah ask like more L.A. like Hollywood adjacent yeah I would say and obviously I feel like a lot of tech people have been trying to get onto it and maybe have succeeded or maybe have not succeeded. Yeah I mean you could do levels you could do like you know 10K followers I feel like was a thing for a while and then it's like 100K followers. And now it's probably like a million,

Starting point is 00:14:56 depending on how you slice it. Totally. Why now? Why should this business be created now? Well, it's easier than ever to create software. So it's basically cheap to launch a dating app. Whereas it used to cost a couple million bucks. Yeah, cheap to launch, like so many distribution channels,

Starting point is 00:15:21 you can try to hack to get users, like, although that's, you know, you can talk about retention of those users. But in general, I think there's like a lot more ways to try to get people to use your products. And I think like, you know,

Starting point is 00:15:35 like probably the top, in the top five topics for people between like ages 18 and like 40 is like how to find a partner. So I think people are like, okay, like all the legacy, like wave of dating apps that have been around for the last 10 to 20 years

Starting point is 00:15:54 or feeling increasingly like desperate and inefficient. So I think people are looking for new things. I think like the we want to do it completely on like offline, IRL thing is cool, but I don't think like 100% practical. I do think there's going to continue to be like, you know, an interest in at least doing both things like looking on apps or online and then also doing a lot of the IRL stuff. Yeah, I think that's right.

Starting point is 00:16:21 I think that's right. So here's like, here's, this is what I start with, by the way, when I come up with an idea. It's literally this. What would you add to it or change up about it as a married man? Have you seen this? I'm in, okay. Now I can, Locke's Club. I have not.

Starting point is 00:16:47 So Locks Club is interesting. It's basically Raya or the league. but for Jewish people. Okay. So more of a high-end, more of like a high-end version, like a premium version. And I believe they also launched

Starting point is 00:17:06 recently one for Asians. So they're basically... And it's like owned by the same company. That's cool. Yeah. I think that's pretty smart. Yeah. And is it like in person, online, both?

Starting point is 00:17:20 I think it's online, but they, I think they must do. a lot of events. Yeah. But I think just going premium, like looking at basically going through, so going back to our document, it's like, what's the insight here? It's like go through Match.com and IAC, which is a huge multi-billion dollar conglomerate that owns a lot in dating apps.

Starting point is 00:17:45 IAC's portfolio. And just create premium versions of what you. you see on their website. So if we pull up match.com's portfolio, match group, okay. You see, did you see my screen? Yep. It's like A through Z. Literally A through Z.

Starting point is 00:18:20 Asian people meet. Baby boomer people meet. Black people meet. Catholic people meet. Divorce people meet. India meet. Italian people meet. J people meet.

Starting point is 00:18:32 Et cetera. You get the idea. Oh my god. Do you see this? Veggie people meet? I don't know. Honestly, that's probably like, I don't know how I feel about the name. Like we can talk about names. I think names are pretty important. But I think it's actually a pretty good idea, to be honest. Just go through this and just build premium versions of this. Charge, like, do the league pricing and just CAFO. Don't raise money. Yeah, I think that's the big thing now too, which is like a lot of the bigger ones. they obviously went to raise a bunch of venture money route.

Starting point is 00:19:07 And so they're kind of like locked into that path for the most part. So you can like start again and obviously choose a path that is more sustainable and more profitable earlier on. And then you like don't even really have to get that big to actually make it a good business for yourself. That's right. I still sell it to somebody later. Totally.

Starting point is 00:19:26 And the beauty about some of these businesses is they know how much they'll pay per user, per, you know, multiple of revenue. So it's like when you're ready to sell this business, it's not, oh my God, I got to go, like, run this crazy process. It's like, no, you're doing $2 million. They pay $8.X, whatever, I'm making this up. And you just call them up. You meet them in their office in New York. You get an offer.

Starting point is 00:19:50 You take it and that's it. Yeah. And there's like always buyers, I feel like, because the base for the existing products is going to continue to turn out. They're going to become irrelevant. But like, this is a peroneal. thing and I don't think the online or digital version of it's going to go away. So I don't even feel like it's like it's not super like seasonal or trendy in any way. It's just like I kind of feel like it's like a little bit like restaurants.

Starting point is 00:20:11 You know, restaurants are cool for like two or three years and then they're like you kind of need a new one to try. And like maybe this is a little bit longer than two to three years because like to build up the network and then have the network effects, it's like valuable for longer. But I do feel like it's probably not that much more than like five or 10 years. You know, so. I like it. Cool.

Starting point is 00:20:31 idea. I think it's a good one. To me, like, we have a thing on the show. Is it a sip or a spit? And sip means good. And spit means not good. And it's a huge, it's a sip. This is like, it's validated. It's worked. I think the timing is good. The other idea, okay, can I make this idea even crazier? Yeah, of course. You don't make, people are going to hate this one, but it's an opportunity for someone to do. You just go through, like, that list that we showed on Match.com, and instead of creating a dating app, which is a bit more complex, you have to create liquidity, right, network effects.

Starting point is 00:21:15 Right. And, you know, you target locally first. It's just a bit more complex in terms of the user acquisition. You're trying to make profiles up? I'm going to, I think the idea is you create. Don't give away all my thoughts, but okay, go ahead. It's basically like AI, AI girlfriends and boyfriends, but in those niches. So.

Starting point is 00:21:36 Oh, boy. Okay. Yeah, I know. I know. I had to say it. It's okay. It'll probably happen if it's like, I mean, I don't know. Okay, just like use a generic app and make a character.

Starting point is 00:21:48 But I guess it's like, I guess it's like wanting a therapist that like fits your, you know, preferences similarly. Yeah. I think, uh, 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 00:22:16 And the secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and AI. I 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.

Starting point is 00:22:47 Who does that nowadays? So check it out. Highly recommend boringmarketing.com. Let's just use Lox Club as an example or the Jewish niche. It's like if you're, if we believe that AI I girlfriends and AI boyfriends are going to be a thing. And we don't have to believe it. Like, I can pull it up on Google Trends right now.

Starting point is 00:23:07 I believe that it is going to be an economic thing. What do you mean by that? Well, I believe that people are going to use it and a lot of money is going to be made with it. I don't know if it's going to be like a human improvement engine. I agree with you. I agree. And that's why maybe people listening, like, don't. don't work on it. You know, you don't have to. I wouldn't, I would personally wouldn't want to

Starting point is 00:23:33 work on this, but I do, I do think that there's a huge, huge financial opportunity to go and make millions of dollars doing this. Do I want to do it? Absolutely not. Here's the Google Trends data for AI boyfriend and it's, you know, charts don't, are not nicer than this. What is this tool you're using? Glims. Yeah, I use Glims. It's just, it's like a layer on top of, I'm not affiliated or anything like that. It's just a layer on top of Google trends that adds a few more, like, related trends or what are people talking about on different channels. It also just has these, like, topics, related topics.

Starting point is 00:24:13 And it gets you in these, like, I'll just, like, click into, you know, oh, what's, I know what character AI is, but let's say I didn't. I'd click into character AI and then it would bring me in this rabbit hole. And it just allows me to get really smart about a topic that, I'm trying to learn about. Nice. I'm always like surprised. I mean, I'm not surprised, but I don't think like my approach to ever making things is like look at the trends and the search and like, you know, like it's like that's super diligent.

Starting point is 00:24:44 Yes. Will definitely lead to outcomes. But I think it's like it's kind of the opposite of getting inspiration from something you're observing or thinking or feeling or involved in. and I think for better or worse, I struggle to be inspired enough by data that I find alone. Yeah, well, I think it's a, you know, you have amazing insights. Like you go out in the world,

Starting point is 00:25:08 you get these insights. And I think a lot of people get these insights. Wouldn't it be cool if there was a league 2.0? I'm sure a lot of people think about things like that. Whenever I come up with an insight, my next step is I start writing it down, like I showed on the one pager. I just get all my,

Starting point is 00:25:25 ideas out as quick as possible. And then I'll look and trends. I'll look at Reddit. I'll look at social to validate my what I'm trying to build here. The way I think about it is I don't want to waste like a year of my life

Starting point is 00:25:43 or of course. Or hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars building something and this is really helpful. So point here, AI boyfriend, trending, AI girlfriend. I don't even need to type I know it's going to be, what are you suggesting? Are you suggesting it's going to be even more popular?

Starting point is 00:26:01 That's the tone of your, the tone of your words. I think it's going to be as popular. Okay, all right, fair enough. I actually think of my, who knows? Let's check. I think it's going to be, I think it's going to be as popular. What's the discourse? The discourse is that it's probably supposed to be more popular because there's this

Starting point is 00:26:21 like commentary that there's a lot of men spending time on the internet. So I can't I actually don't have the paid glimpse tool But I mean it looks pretty They're both spiking They're both spiking they're both similar They're both similar Um

Starting point is 00:26:43 My Shout out to a Shout out to I think it's Amanda Bradford Who made the link She said shout out Amanda She's awesome Yeah Yeah she is awesome

Starting point is 00:26:55 So Um point is AI girlfriends, AI boyfriends for Italians, Indians, Jewish people, huge opportunity. We don't want to do it, but someone could do it. Somebody could do it. And I'm sure they will do it. Yeah. And please don't shout me out when you do.

Starting point is 00:27:17 Yeah, me either. Okay. So is that a wrap on the League 2.0? That's a wrap on that. Let's do one more idea. That's it. One more idea. my God. Okay. All right. That was like 30, 30 minute idea. Okay. All right, I'll run through a couple

Starting point is 00:27:32 quickly. Okay. So this is, since we're on the AI topic, this is like a really small idea. Okay. So I don't think we need to dive into this one that much. But do you know this app looks maxing, that whole like looks maxing? That's not the name of the app. I think it was like UMAX or something like that happened for a while. Like covered UMax on the show. Okay. So you definitely know it. Like, I'm like, there's probably a version you could do with AI that's like like RISMA. or like charisma maxing, which is like the product would be that instead of like you taking a picture of yourself, it would be like the AI is listening to conversations that you have, which I know it's like, we've been talking about that for like friend companionship apps and stuff like that,

Starting point is 00:28:13 but this is more like as if it was like looking at your text, but it's actually listening to your conversation. And then it'll like score you on all these different like dimensions of social competence basically. And it'll like it'll say, like, are you being awkward? Are like, were you being charismatic? Like, you reacted like this odd way. And like, I haven't figured out what are all the different metrics. But basically, like, I feel like people want social feedback a lot, but they don't always get the honest feedback. And I wouldn't say this is a durable product, to be honest. But I do think it's like the type of product that could have a moment around this like, you know, charisma or social

Starting point is 00:28:53 skills, awareness, rating, like, trifecta, which I think does play well as far as, like, people sharing stuff like this. And is, would it be like something like a pendant or you wear it and is listening or what do you think? Not, I mean, I think that's like a whole other. It's not like, this is not, in my opinion, serious enough to like merit a hardware product that goes along with it. I think it's more just like, oh, it's like an app. Maybe you can like make it background, listen, like, for some certain conversations, obviously, like, all privacy disclosures. Like, that's not part of this ideation process. But I think it's just like, okay, let's say I was even having an interview or something or I was like meeting somebody new for a date. I could be like,

Starting point is 00:29:38 how did I perform on this date? Like, which obviously the date is not going to tell you how you performed. So I'm a little like not sure if it's, again, the human improvement scale. I don't know how I'd rate this. idea, but I do feel like it could work if you made it the right way. So I think there are people who are interested in like experiments that they think could work for short periods of time. So this would be one of those. I mean, maybe maybe it is helpful in the human improvement because the alternative is nothing or the alternative is, you know, anonymous apps like that are very hurtful to people. You know, people put up, you know, these polls and they get sometimes really, really I think it's helpful, like, short-term, but I guess my comment is, like, I do think, like, social

Starting point is 00:30:27 interaction is a thing that will long-term help you actually improve upon those things. So it's not like you can just constantly be getting a report card on every conversation you're having in me, like, oh, I'm going to, like, look in the mirror and get better at this thing. So maybe it's, like, good for some social awareness. I don't know if it's good for, like, actually putting that into action long-term. Yeah. I do like the insight around report cards for RIS, basically, that's the idea.

Starting point is 00:30:54 Yeah. I think report cards for X, Y, Z in general is like a huge opportunity. People constantly want to know, are they doing good? Are they doing bad? You know, we spend the first 21 years of our lives, if we go to university, 18 years of our lives, let's say, going to school, getting report cards. Did you do good? Did you do bad?

Starting point is 00:31:16 And then, yes, we do have performance reviews at work and stuff like that. But I think people love report cards. I like to know how they're doing. People like report cards. They like astrology-esque things. They like personality test-oriented things. They kind of like IQ test oriented things. I feel like there's probably like some like whole horizontal here that's like related

Starting point is 00:31:39 to all these like it's somewhere between a game and like some tangible information. Yeah. I like it. And if you're, let's say you had. this insight. I know you don't go to like look at data and trends, but like where do you go from here from idea to actually

Starting point is 00:32:00 taking it to the next level? Well, it's probably not like, I don't know, my answer would be just make the thing, which is not an answer that involves a lot of other like research and stuff like that or validation necessarily.

Starting point is 00:32:15 But I also don't think it would be that hard to make. I mean, obviously you need to have like some ability to like build the thing, but I don't know. I think that most of it is just like building the interface that you actually want people to see. So like most of it is thinking through what we're talking about, which is like, what is a report card going to look like? What are like the five or six or ten dimensions on which I'm going to give feedback? And then maybe it would be thinking about like, what are the use cases? So maybe you'd make it easier for someone to use this by saying, oh, this is for an

Starting point is 00:32:50 interview. This is for a date. This is for like a party. This is, you know, like give them use cases so they don't feel like this is not normal for them to use it for a particular situation. And then I think you could easily then like give examples of someone using it for each of those use cases and what that report card looked like and then create a bunch of content on the basis of all those use cases. And obviously that requires a lot of iteration. But then, you know, put it on TikTok, put it on Reels probably like however you can get it out there and if you can make these like compelling little bignettes basically I think that's probably how I would think about actually getting people to use it and then obviously you probably want to make it a like low price one time paid

Starting point is 00:33:31 app if you want to make some money off it. How low price? What are you thinking? Top I don't know like less than five bucks. Yeah. I think by the way like under $5 apps and stuff like that like there's a huge. I think so too. It's like. like a game. It's just like a game, basically. You have to like, obviously, you got to like hook people to want to use it at least for a couple times. Totally. Yeah. So that's, it's not the type of thing that I generally would spend my time doing, but I think there are a lot of people who are really good at this and like really enjoy doing this and would be better than me at doing this. And like you said, I think there's like a lot of versions of this that could be done. Before we end, do you have a question for me? Do I have a question for you? Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:34:16 Um, will you tell me all the secretive stuff that you're working on right now that you don't want to tell, tell anybody that you're working on? Why? I mean, that's the question. That's the question I would ask you if we weren't recording the podcast. That's okay. No, that's, I like that. That's the perfect, you know, I can answer, I can answer, here's how I'll answer it. Okay. So we've been building audiences and communities in a bunch of different verticals. and I practice what I preach. Yes, you do. I am trying to figure out how, which tools can I build for these individual audiences that ideally I can get some SaaS level multiple for some of these businesses and just be in the workflow of people.

Starting point is 00:35:11 be in the daily lives of people. You know, I don't love monthly recurring revenue in the sense of... I have a whole thing on this, by the way. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I love monthly recurring revenue. No, for yourself, but I don't love it like to actually ask a user to do this. Exactly. Okay.

Starting point is 00:35:30 So, yeah, expand on that. Tell me more. I just, I think this, like, I think the subscription fatigue thing is real. Like, and I think that is primarily about monthly. subscriptions. I think that like I kind of I think I made some tweet about this or whatever like I usually like say one sentence things about things that I'm like thinking a lot more about and then later we'll probably write something longer about or do something with but I said something like monthly subscriptions are like situation ships basically in like a lot of users that are signing up

Starting point is 00:36:02 for monthly subscriptions are just like okay I want to try this thing I don't really know if I want to commit to it like either they're trying to kind of do a free trial and cancel it right away or they're like, don't end up doing that. And later, they're like, oh, man, I didn't mean to, like, actually be subscribed. Like, it's just, like, really irritating, I think, for people, and they're kind of in a limbo state. So I do kind of feel like things are going to be pushing towards, like, either, obviously free, people love free, but I think, like, one-time payments, which I think you've talked about before, like, is, like, a very appealing option. I think lifetime, like, subscriptions, which basically is a one-time payment is, like, another

Starting point is 00:36:40 way to market that, which is very appealing. I think annual subscriptions are fine too. I would love to not even have a monthly option. Like if I were like selling something on a subscription basis, I'd be like it's annual or nothing, basically. And I think a lot of people are going to start doing that more. I think there's also this like pay what you want trend that's been happening as well. And I think it's like all from the root of the fact that monthly subscriptions are just like don't feel good to users anymore. And you want to push people to either, like, still be uncommitted entirely or committed entirely in some way. And then, obviously, ideally, you want them to feel like they got a lot more value than they actually paid.

Starting point is 00:37:24 So, yeah, I have this, like, any product that I'm pricing, I would not be at all interested in doing a monthly subscription, like, if I could avoid it. And I think that's a bit of, like, an unfair advantage is if you create a product and you just shift the business model. You know, people are doing subscription, you're now, pay what you want. Now, there's certain businesses that, of course, there's monthly costs. So it might not make sense for every business, and that's fine. But I do think, you know, going back to prioritizing tools, I'm kind of like, what are tools that I can prioritize that I don't have to do monthly recurring? Because I think that they're more interesting to people. So that's my...

Starting point is 00:38:06 Is there an example of that? It doesn't have to be a tool you're making. But what do you think would be a tool that would fit that business model? I mean, Ben Tossel from Ben's Bites. Yeah. He, I just want to pull it up real quick. So he has an AI tutorial, learn AI, basically community and content course thing. He could have easily charged, I don't know, 50 bucks a month.

Starting point is 00:38:39 but I'm pretty sure it's like one-time payment. Yeah, it's $250 one-time. That's not SaaS, right? It's not exactly software. Is it more like content? It's content. It is content. So it's not SaaS.

Starting point is 00:38:52 Yeah. I don't have a SaaS one on top of my head, but they do exist. Someone in the comment section and throw some of those. Yeah. But they're out there. And they're coming more and more every day. Yeah. selfishly I want people to make a lot more interesting content

Starting point is 00:39:13 than just new podcasts. Yours is at least a new format, but I feel like most people are just doing like, let's try to recreate the all-in podcast or let's try to like, so you've been doing a lot more live stuff or you were, which is very cool. I think live is actually still very underdone, in particular from growing channels.

Starting point is 00:39:33 And then obviously you can start doing a lot more asynchronous content. as well. But I want people to, like, do more novel formats, and that could either be, like, towards live and, like, much more unscripted, which I think you're doing. Or it can be, like, more produced and, like, more high fidelity to some extent, which I don't think people are really touching because it requires a lot. I don't know, it kind of, like, requires you to, like, put your heart on the sleeve

Starting point is 00:40:01 a little bit more and, like, put your taste on the line. Like, if you're doing something that's, like, more produced, I feel like, people feel more like they're trying. And so like it feels like bad if people don't like it. But like I really want somebody to do like the daily show, but for like tech slash culture, you know, like tech meets culture. I mean like the be real like spot on SNL that like they did. I feel like that's like you could do a bajillion of those like if you created your own or

Starting point is 00:40:30 I don't know. Just like I think there's like so many even like like architectural digest like home. tours. You could totally take that and do it, but like where startup founders live or like, I don't know if investors are like founders who are actually rich would want to like show you that they have money. If they were willing to, that would be cool. But I just feel like there's so many different spins that like you could do with different parts of like the culture that are still very resonant and it doesn't just need to be like, you know, a group async podcast. Yes. Yeah. So I think really smart, growth tactic and insight, which is

Starting point is 00:41:05 live is pretty untapped. Obviously, it's tapped in some niches, like gaming and stuff like that. But there's whatever it is you're doing, whatever it is you're working on, think about exploring new novel formats. Live is really interesting. And there's kind of, there is like a way that you can, like I was doing lives before. I did a bunch of lives where people would come on to my show and I'd be like, tell me your business and let me like break it down for you. And it was really fun. And I'm going to, I, I will do that again. But my point is it isn't easy to get started. But once I started doing

Starting point is 00:41:51 it like four or five times, I, you know, it got a lot easier. So don't give up in the first time. One of the big things to do, which you kind of probably figured out, is like, I feel like people latch onto a format they think they should do. And then that format probably does not fit their emotional center or like their natural aptitude, like whether it's video or audio or async or live or like short form or long form or group or individual, like whatever the combinations are. And like I think you need to iterate a lot more on that to find where your emotional like center actually is. And presumably I think like live and unscripted and like a little more of that,

Starting point is 00:42:32 I think through observation ended up fitting you. better than previous iterations of things you had been doing, which you could do, but I don't think probably was emotionally the right fit for you. And I think people make, like, they don't spend enough time iterating on formats to find the thing that they're actually better at and can do more sustainably. And then, like, I think people stay too much in the, like, middle of the bell curve, which is like, okay, what are people generally doing? And I think most of the time you should push to some extreme.

Starting point is 00:43:02 Like, okay, everybody is doing group like I think, okay, I should. do like live and like try to solo stream or do one-on-one or like some interesting format or I should like go more produced higher fidelity like less often like I think that's also good too like to try those things where like people haven't really done a lot yet couldn't agree more if you go back to old episodes of this podcast I'm in the first episode please don't because they you can see how unhappy I am you can see that I'm just trying to make it work. And sometimes you have to do that. Yeah. Because on the other side of it could be something amazing. But, you know, the podcast, it was called Where It Happens. It was like highly produced,

Starting point is 00:43:49 which is like not my vibe at all. Yeah. You know, I literally just pulled out like a Google Doc and we just started like jamming. Like that to me was like, that's fun to me. So I think asking yourself like what what would this look like if it were to be fun in terms of content creation is a really important question that people don't ask themselves enough yeah i agree i feel like for the most part should be fun you know we don't need to like go do a tear down of paulgram's like latest essay or whatever but not that one you know he put out another essay like yesterday for the day before yeah it's like when to i don't know what's called something like when to do what you love or something like that so So, you know, there's like some meme about it.

Starting point is 00:44:35 It's like the bell curve. And it's like, oh, like, do what you love on this end and do what you love on this end. And in the middle, it's like basically like figure out what works, you know, or something like that. So I think that applies to this too. You know, it's not like an unheard insight, but I think it's probably like pretty consistent. It's a great place to end. Thank you for spending time with us today. where could people follow your thoughts on the internet?

Starting point is 00:45:04 They can follow me where you spend a lot of time on Twitter. And I write long-form essays like on my blog or whatever you want to call it. It's at Working Theories, T-H-E-O-R-Y-S, misspelled intentionally.com. But, I mean, yeah, just go to my Twitter. You can, like, find my website and all my links. And, yeah, my DMs are open. We'll put the links in the YouTube description. Cool.

Starting point is 00:45:31 Thanks for having me on. This was fun. I didn't get to the back half of my ideas, Doc. So, you know, for another time. Yes. If anybody ends up doing like the League 2.0 and derivatives thereof, I'm sure we would be curious to know. 100%.

Starting point is 00:45:46 Let's make that comment section on YouTube thriving. Thanks again for coming on. And I'll see you later. Okay. Thanks for having me, Greg.

The Startup Ideas Podcast - The blueprint to build a $340k/mo premium dating app

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