The Startup Ideas Podcast - The Science Behind VIRAL Products feat. Soren Iverson

Episode Date: February 7, 2024

I'm joined by Soren Iverson, Designer at Cash App and the indisputable idea machine of the internet. We talk about building products that spread like wildfire, how to test business ideas before launch, how to build a memorable brand, and more. 🚀  My FREE 5 day email course to learn how to build a business of the future using the ACP funnel: https://www.communityempire.co/🎯 To build your own portfolio businesses powered by community you might enjoy my membership.You'll get my full course with all my secrets on building businesses, peer-groups to keep you accountable, business ideas every single month and more!Spots are limited. https://www.skool.com/community-empire-6150/about📬 Join my free newsletter to get weekly startup insights for free: https://www.gregisenberg.com70,000+ people are already subscribed.FIND ME ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenbergInstagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/FIND SOREN ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/soren_iversonLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/soreniverson/If you enjoy the podcast, consider leaving a review to help others discover the show :)Episode Timestamps0:00 How to build better products01:42 Best ideas for hardware/physical products in 202416:31 How to test your product ideas23:11 How to build an appealing brand31:20 Digitizing the real estate experience42:22 Best startup opportunities in the design space53:45 Where to find Soren

Rather than starting with a question of how can I make this thing better, most of my work starts with why does this suck so bad and like how could I make it suck more? I wasn't necessarily creating a product. I was creating the medic content. Exacerbating the pain that people feel, you'll often understand parts of the experience or patterns that lead to that pain. And then you can reverse engineer and kind of do the opposite and make it better. Almost anything is it takes a lot of experience.

experimentation and a lot of throwing stuff against the wall to figure out what's going to react, get a response. If you're working on something and you don't want to put your name on it from the beginning, you should probably reconsider whether or not you actually want to be working on it because you should be proud to put your name on stuff you work on. Soren Iverson. I've been looking forward to this call for a while. You are the idea machine of the internet. Admit it. Just admit it. Yeah, the idea guy. Oh, there he is. I'm excited to chat For people who don't know him

He goes on Twitter He takes apps that people use And then he like kind of remixes it with new ideas And they get thousands of likes and laughs Yeah we're optimizing for Chuckles as much as we are engagement I don't know I think some of the funniest ones are the ones that

Get the least like online traction But you know You can't always have bangers Yeah, you can't always have bangers. We hope for bangers. But today we are on the ideas podcast. And of course, you brought some banger ideas. And I just want to spend some time to jam with you on them. Yeah, so it's good. So let's start with what you're seeing in terms of hardware. Because I don't have a lot of people come on this show and pitch hardware, especially in 2024. When Capital is, is hard to come by and hardware traditionally is an expensive thing to do. So what's exciting you in hardware and why do you think there's startup ideas in the space? So I think there are kind of orders of magnitude when you consider hardware. Like I don't know if you would consider like books, i.e. what I've been doing by bootstrapping an audience and selling a product,

which is really an entertainment product as hardware. But most people that get big on a social network they'll make like a knowledge product or an info product and then it's like a hundred percent margin, right? I think I started making stuff for fun and then people started asking for a product. And so they started asking for a book specifically. So I made that. And it, I mean, the more you order, the cheaper it's going to be. And I think people get really intimidated by the idea of like making a physical object. But the internet is pretty amazing.

And Alibaba, I message. a bunch of different manufacturers. I found a manufacturer that was able to meet my specification requirements, which was like DeBoss foil printing, hardcover, like high quality, like gloss pages and went through a couple rounds of sample testing with them and then got a product that I liked. Meanwhile, I took pre-orders with a payment link and have a new product, right? So I was able to subsidize the initial order cost with the pre-orders that I got.

and then from there I was able to scale it up. So I think even individual people that have an audience and want to do something like that, you can bootstrap that way. I think then you look at AI companies that are going all in on hardware. I think humane, rewind, tab, rabbit. I don't have, I mean, I haven't really used any of these products in person.

I've pre-ordered tabs, so I'm waiting on getting one of those. I've talked with Avi a couple times. I think the thing that, that I respect and find exciting about all the players in the space is that there's a general sentiment that the form factor that we interact with on a daily basis, i.e. phones, is great, but maybe it isn't the thing that will be the container for the next step in software. And so people are really experimenting, like, a pendant on a necklace, something that, like, pins your clothing, a little almost like Game Boy looking thing.

I think, and I mean, Rabbit, I don't remember what the exact post was, but it compared Apple's initial pre-order number, initial order numbers with the order numbers that Rabbit is seeing, and Rabbit's seeing a huge number of orders for their first round, and I know they're ramping up production to try to keep up with that. So I think there's like capital-intensive ways like that,

where you're a funded startup up with a lot of proprietary software and then you're building hardware as a complementary form factor. But then there's the initial path that I mentioned, which is like the individual creator that's working on something. Maybe it's a book. Maybe it's something like I can't remember the designer's name. They make a lot of office supplies and like productivity tools and planners and stuff like that. If you can make a render of it or if you can pay someone of a small and then I want you to make a render for it. There are people either overseas or in the United States that you can almost always find

to make the thing in your head real, which is really crazy to me. And I kind of wish more people were aware of that and kind of took the steps to make things in their head a reality. Because even if some of these AI tools or other projects people take on end up being, if they don't like become massive successes, there's still a lot of the learnings and insight and even like joy and in the long term like nostalgia that comes along with those like i look at like Sega dreamcast for example that was like the first the first like 3d gaming system that had like an open open world RPG Sonic Adventure which is like a game

I grew up on and they ultimately didn't get the market share that Xbox or PS1 has but like you see that logo and you you like feel something deeply and And a lot of that was because Sega was willing to take a huge swing on a new platform and a new tech, new form factor, new hardware. And I think the ripple of the effects of what that even inspires people to make long term, it's hard to understate that. So a buddy of mine created something called Tiny Pod. Have you heard about it?

I had a conversation with someone last week about Tiny Pod. Yeah. Okay. So we'll give him a little shout out. So my buddy Neuerre, he led the design engineering team at Snap. So obviously super smart guy. And he's been always one of those guys. Like he was like a jailbreak guru.

You know, he was like always jailbreaking things. Like always into, you know, pushing the limits on devices. And he started something called. tiny pod and basically what it does is it transforms the Apple Watch into what almost looks like the original iPhone. So you remember like the clicky, you know, circular wheel, I guess for the iPod. Like he basically picture an Apple Watch, you remove the strap and he's got and he has this like case essentially that allows you to use it just like that. And at the surface, you're like, that's kind of cool. It's a case for the, it's a case for the, for the Apple Watch.

But like, I don't really get it. But what he was saying to me was what people are really excited about is the fact that a lot of people are feeling overwhelmed with their phones and they want to leave their phones at home. Some people are getting these like dumb phones or flip phones. But for most people, that's not realistic. The beauty about the Apple Watch, is, you know, you've got your music, you get texts, you get some like core things, but you don't have everything. So what he is saying, like his bet is it's kind of this like perfect, you know, middle in the ground.

So I think you're going to start to, so I agree with your premise with like, I don't think Newar would do Tiny Pod five years ago. I think he would have been like, it's too complicated. How am I going to get this made? How am I going to sell this? But now he uses Twitter to get hundreds of likes on his on his tweets to generate demand. He's probably going to use some fulfillment partner overseas to actually create it. He's going to use probably Shopify to power it and all the apps that they have are on email marketing and customer service and stuff like that.

He's probably going to have a team of customer service overseas. So I think like spinning up these ideas are like, are like, like, spinning up these ideas are like, like, lot quicker. And so I think you're onto something on this hardware bit, which no one's talking about. Yeah, I think the interesting thing, too, is TinyPod is, it's really interesting to me because it's a callback to like the nostalgia of the old iPod. It does attempt to solve the, like, the dumb phone problem in a unique way. It's like, I'm not going to buy a light phone. They're really cool, but like I have all this stuff that's within Apple's like Walt Garden, right? And so rather than trying to build something new, you're trying to play a ball with and subvert the systems that you have.

And I think the idea that you can take an existing device that's extremely popular and turn it into a completely different device. There was another launch a couple weeks ago that was a case for your phone that has like a Blackberry keyboard on it. I don't know if you saw that, which is. The interesting thing about that is in like so many CES articles. Like CES is supposed to be this like only the most futuristic stuff is coming out of CES. And every CES list of the top things, you know, from CES would be like this like quirty keyboard. Yeah. I think I think it's just like with the first, I mean, so people like to especially younger like Gen Z,

Gen A, there's a really strong demand for hyper-personalization of objects that you use a lot. So, like, when widgets came out on iOS, you saw a ton of people going absolutely crazy with, like, custom widget packs, widget apps, just ways to make your phone look like it's your phone and no one else's. I think the idea of TinyPod, and I don't remember the name of the keyboard kind of case, But the idea that you can add an additional layer of customization to a device that you use all the time in order to make it work even better for you is really interesting. And then when you stack like skins on top of that, so like I know TinyPod and that keyboard will be like one, probably one form factor and like a few color skews to start. But with each permutation of that, there are ways you can make it look and.

feel like their own. I remember all the phone cases that had, like they're modeled after anime characters or like whatever and they have like ears on them or, you know, like, I think just the idea of customizing ubiquitous hardware to feel like your own is a really high demand for that. And I think the sky's the limit in terms of like

how you want to be creative and the strategy that you want to use to either change the way people interact with the device, change the way the device look, or kind of some kind of combination of the two. There's a lot of interesting potential that people are just starting to tap into, especially, as you said, as it gets easier to test ideas and validate them before sinking an enormous amount of money into them. So I just pulled up the keyboard company.

It's called clicks, which, by the way, perfect name for this. Clicks for iPhone. to $139, which honestly for a case is pretty expensive. Like I just bought a case for my iPhone, I think it was $40 or $50. So pretty expensive. And but it's not just a keyboard. I'm looking right now. So you have, well, first of all, it says make your statement, you know, it's a state,

to your point, it's like having a statement by customer, you know, by having this. It says gain up to 50% more display to immerse yourself in chats, browsing, live streaming. Real keys make typing feel so natural. Scroll through website. So it's really interesting. I think you're on to something here with these devices have become so ubiquitous. We're looking for ways to make it our own. Nostalgia is coming back.

People are willing to pay for it. It's cheaper than ever to create these things. And the truth is, they can partner with creators. Like someone might be like, well, I don't have, I'm not like Sorin. I don't have hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers. Well, it's like, okay, well, maybe you can connect with someone like Sorin. And maybe you can collaborate, collab with someone like him. And all you need is like a landing page, a little bit of money to, you know, maybe not you in

particular. I don't know if you do those things, but a little bit money to work with a creator and you can, and you can launch. And you have to come, and you have to be original. Like clicks looks like it's it's really interesting. It looks cool. Tiny pod like you go to the website, tinypod.com. Like it gets you excited.

That's the other thing. Like if you're going to create something in hardware, it has to get someone excited. It can't be just like a little bit better. Yeah. I think also looking at the clicks because I pulled up the clicks website while you're talking about it. I think they're actually like opposite ends of the spectrum in a way where TinyPod is kind of solving the pain. you're like, I want, I want to use less of my phone. And clicks is like, I want to use more of my phone.

And it's interesting, right? Because both of those are genuine needs. It's like, okay, you know what? I am realizing that every time I go out to hang out with friends, I'm on my phone 50% of the time. So I'm going to get one of these tiny pods. And that way, like, if people need to get a hold of me, they can. But it's pretty easy to get, like, lost in a device this size.

But if it's like this big, you're not going to want to be, like, hunched over it, right? But then if you are watching a lot of Twitch live streams or you know, you want to spend a bunch of time on TikTok or maybe you write a lot and you actually want a more physical form factor, there is a real utility that both of them provide in different ways. And I think that also speaks to like the iPhone is an amazing multipurpose tool that can do just about anything, but it is suboptimal for certain things. writing, watching video in certain, watching video while writing comments responding to it, things like that. And so, Click specifically identifies the weak point in the hardware and then makes that a selling point of their extension of it, right? Like, Apple isn't going to build a keyboard.

Maybe they will now. But they weren't going to, like, build a keyboard for their phone that had a keyboard. But, I mean, that phone is so popular and somebody are sold every year. that you can build a business on top of that ecosystem pretty easily. And a pretty big business. Like I wouldn't be surprised if Click sells 30,000 units this year. Like, is there 30,000 people that are, you know, first of all, are nostalgic for this and also want to, you know, be faster, want to want a physical form factor out in the world,

like probably, you know. Yeah. Well, especially, especially after the CES coverage. Right. Totally. That's the other thing. It's like how do you how do you reverse engineer your product ideas such that they do go viral and they do get covered? A lot of people, and you're the master at this, but a lot of people create a product and then they're like, okay, let me like send it to a bunch of journalists and then they don't get any love and they don't get anyone writing articles and stuff like that. How do you think about creating a physical product that is going to be shared, shared by? thousands. Yeah, I think, I mean, I think mine is a unique case because I wasn't necessarily like creating a product. I was creating like memetic content. I think one thing that I've seen a lot of people do when they're working on something is they'll throw the idea out there. And if they don't get immediate validation, they kind of just mark it as a loss and move on. And the reality of

almost anything is it takes a lot of experimentation and a lot of throwing stuff against the wall to figure out what's going to react and get a response, right? And I think there's ways you can do that without doing it in a public forum or you can do that by creating a brand or a separate entity if you don't want to attribute your name to it. I will say if you're working on something and you don't want to put your name on it from the beginning, you should probably reconsider whether or not you actually want to be working on it because you should be proud to put your name on stuff you work on. So I think like pure like cycles and getting feedback and refining is something I think a lot of people don't spend enough time doing.

And then I think also rather than starting with the question of like how can I make this thing better, most of my work starts with like why does this suck so bad and like how could I make it suck more? And it sounds like a pointless exercise, but I actually think by exacerbating the pain that people feel, you'll often understand parts of the experience or like patterns that lead to that pain, and then you can reverse engineer and kind of do the opposite and make it better, right? It's actually pretty fun. And I've seen product teams. I had a design manager reach out to me a couple months ago. he said his product team had taken a couple hours and they all worked on like,

how can we take our product and make it like terrible, like way, way worse? And through that, they were able to find like, you know what, this part is actually, this part of our experience is pretty suboptimal. So I think iteration cycles, not giving up too early, going in the opposite direction to figure out and clarify the direction you want to go into. And then I think also more relevant for most people, which are people that don't have a couple hundred thousand followers across social platforms, is find people that are willing to go to bat with you slash for you. The great thing about how ubiquitous like TikTok and micro influencers has become is like even like five years ago to do a social campaign, you need to probably work with like huge names and cost a lot of money. but now some people will just do it for a free product sample and then other people will do it for like a couple hundred bucks but you can work with people that have niche audiences right and that'll actually give you the ability to more analytically test in different audience subtypes right so rather than placing all your chips on one TikTok creator where it could flop you could try it with like five or six and then I also think

even if you don't have the resources to do that, like there's nothing stopping you from creating like multiple social channels to test. I don't remember what the e-com company was, but someone was posting about they created like dozens of different TikTok accounts for their brand. And they had just like ruthlessly tested different brand and product creative until they figured out what hit. And then they doubled down on that. Right. So I think even if people are running a lot of iterations and cycles, they're doing it like within the same like platform or channel rather than really being comprehensive and kind of going to all ends of the internet to figure out there are a lot of people online and there are a lot of people online in a lot of different places. And even if you know that like a certain

cohort is interested in a certain thing, the kind of sub niches of that cohort. And I realize this as that my following was growing, like it is easier often to like find a very small cohort within a large community and then go after them, blow up there, and then kind of parlay that influence into other spheres of influence that are either directly related or tangentially related, right? But you don't learn that unless you have experiment with a lot of different things. What's an example of that happening? Yeah. So, I post these like interfaces every day, right? If I post something that is a satirical concept for Instagram,

like pretty much anyone will understand it because everyone uses Instagram or knows someone that's use Instagram. But like I did a concept that was pager duty. It was a pager duty feature where if you didn't respond to your on-call ticket, it would call your girlfriend. And PagerDuty is a app that really only developers and engineers, primarily people that work at large technology companies would know, right? So in posting that, I got a lot more comments, likes, responses, follows, and DMs

from people that worked within that community. I also saw, I don't remember their name, but there's a account that does something similar to what I do, but they only do it for like Rocket League, and it blew up. Right. So I think I, what I learned from that is like if I want to go after a specific niche or if I want to like tailor my content to people like go to where they are, I, like, find the apps that they would likely be using. And then you can kind of, you're kind of like throwing them a bone comedically. It's like, okay, I know this joke isn't going to hit with a lot of people, but I know like it will really hit with this audience. But then there are other creators that realize like, oh, he can do this. Then I could really go after like this one. this one niche is like rock league thing. Yeah, that's great. And I think you touched on an important point, which is comedy and content.

And, you know, a lot of people listening to this are all like, how do I get my first 10,000 followers? How do I get my first 100,000 followers? And, you know, I think what's interesting about your content is you infuse laughs in it. And you reverse engineer the laugh.

And you can do that with the problem. product, meaning like you can create clicks and maybe that's funny or maybe Tiny Pot is, you know, funny or shareable. And you can also do that with content. So how do you, how do you recommend to people, you know, who are listening? How do you recommend that they structure their, well, firstly, should they structure their content with comedy? And then two, how do you do it?

Yeah. I think it depends on context, right? Like read the room. If you're building a medical technology company that helps people understand. understand their blood oxygen sat levels, you probably don't want to be making satirical concepts that like, you know, like, just know the space. And so if the space that you're working in is like really serious or very heavily regulated, you probably want to stay out of being too funny. I think if you're doing something more consumer focused or something that is a bit more

lax, which is a lot of things, I think so there's the form factor of the comedy and then there's the type of comedy. So those are two kind of discrete things. I think I still, even today, I'm still kind of like finding my comedic voice. I like experiment with a lot of stuff. I know generally like what's on brand and off brand in terms of like, I think of myself as like a comedy show that's like PG that skews to PG 13 sometimes.

Like people could take their kids to a comedy show that I did on the internet and it's fine, right? I'm not going to be making anything that's like rated R. And I'm also not going to make stuff that's like Pixar level, like accessible for anyone. So I almost think about when you're doing comedy, thinking about like if you were a movie, what would you be rated? Or like if you were a song, would you be explicit or not? That's an interesting like framework because it immediately takes a lot of stuff off the table or puts a lot of stuff on the table. And then I think like generally most of my work starts with a real world circumstance

or situation, and then identifying if and how that interacts or intersects with the technology that we use, and then constructing the, like, joke around that. So, for example, last summer, we were flying back from a trip, and we were super late, and we were running to catch our next flight, and this person, like, shoved their way through us and, like, sprinted. It was very aggressive. I was like, okay, I get it. Like, we're going to make the flight, though, so, like, don't have to be, like, crazy about it.

So, and then in my head, I'm like, oh, like, I'd fight this person if I had to. You know, there's like a passing thought, like an intrusive thought. And I think most people, like, dismiss their intrusive thoughts. But I'm like, wait a minute. There's, like, an idea in there somewhere. And it's like, okay, what if when United over books or flights, you had to, like, physically fight the person for a seat, right? And then that became, like, an insane concept that people were, like, how, like,

like what is wrong with you? How did you come up with this? I think part of it is just like living and observing life and then zooming in on like points of friction. It's been interesting because philosophically that's like helps me just like deal with stuff more because I'm like anything that is weird or wild that happens. It's like something that you could potentially create a bit out of. But I think like once you start like looking through things with that lens, it's kind of something that is like hard to turn off. So I think there's that. piece. And then I think there's the form factor. So the there's people like Nick Huber or like Alex Cohen where most of their comedy is like text based, right? So I think Alex Cohen and maybe someone

else created it. But there's the meme of a company does layoffs or launches some crazy product feature. And then he's like, I just got laid off. I was the PM in response. That was it responsible for and it's like whatever horrible feature. And so there's like like text bits that you can make. And I think anyone can like write. Right. So I think like the lowest, not the lowest form of comedy, but like the easiest and most successful way is like taking existing frameworks and then iterating on them. So like if you see a format that is popular, like you can jump on that bandwagon, right? Another one is current events. Like anyone can see a current event and then capitalize on it. So I did a campaign with Duolingo where I was just making concepts.

And serendipitously, like, we had just approved for posting the Duolingo option to serve and translate divorce papers. And then, like, the day after that, Trudeau separated with his partner. And so Duolingo posted it. And it, like, blew up, right? So I think, like, reading the room in terms of just, like, the sentiment of all of social in the world events is another way. I'm trying to think what else. Yeah, I think those are the two, like, good entry points. It's just, like, a good sense of, like, current events and then also, like, identifying

trends and then capitalizing and iterating on them. When you see a lot of people that will just yoink people stuff and post it, I think that's, like, a really low move, but, and also it erodes your, if you're doing that as a brand, it's going to erode a lot of trust. And then I think one other thing, and this is more with, like, brands that are established, but I think it is an interesting thing to call out. So Duolingo is known for having an unhinged brand. I think all of us owe a great debt to Wendy's

because Wendy's was the first company to be like self-aware on the internet and like really kind of like go after people. Shout out Wendy. Shout out Wendy. Shout out Wendy. And then recently someone put me on to Ryanair, their Instagram and TikTok. feed is like the wildest thing I've ever seen because people know that they're like if anyone's

ever flown right air it's the worst it's so cheap like the seats are uncomfortable like their flights are always late it's just the worst but instead of them trying to like apologize or compensate for that they like take the knife and like twist it so there's like a reel where it's like how to sit and then it's like it shows first it shows a person with like no leg room and then it shows was like Benji, a dog, learn to sit. And then it's like, this other person, like, whoever, learn to sit. And then it's like, you can too. And it's just ruthlessly like mocking their customer base, which you would think for a lot of,

a lot of brands wouldn't be able to do that. But I think Ryan Air is like in a really unique position where they've identified like, here's a sentiment that we have about our brand. And rather than like shying away from it, even though it's negative, we're like doubling down on it. because and the interesting thing is people in the comments were actually in certain instances defending Ryanair because flights used to be so expensive that they couldn't fly and even though Ryanair has like a crappy product it's a cheap product right so um in a way they're hyper aware of their like unique selling point and even though there's a lot of problems that come as a

side effect of their unique selling point rather than trying to shy away from those or like protect themselves they're owning it um So yeah, that was a bit of an all over the place answer. But I think it's a pretty nuanced conversation about how to do comedy, depending on what you're doing. It's what I wanted, honestly. That's exactly what I wanted. I wanted to crawl around your brain to see how you think about, you know, creating content. So that was helpful.

I want to move on to for real estate pros. Because I didn't really expect you to have a real estate idea. Talk to me about that idea. I think so, I mean, it's interesting, right? Because people are going to like tune to this podcast and you're like, what am I listening to? So we don't need to spend too much time on this if we don't want to. But like every other person that had a little bit of money to invest in the 2010s, people thought they were real estate investors. I've done a little bit primarily in like single family rentals.

But then last year, I haven't really posted about this. but I dipped my toes into the Airbnb market with the first property. And I think their Airbnb generally has a great platform for guests, obviously. They have a good general platform for hosts. And then companies like local prop management companies and then companies like Vakasa are going after the idea of like turnkey management. And then you also have like a data aggregation. or a integrator platform like AirDNA, which is trying to kind of pull higher level insights for people to make like market level decisions on what's up and coming, what's slowing down,

and like just general sentiment analysis. I do think something that going through the process has been painful for myself is like tax optimization and hyper local services that are really comprehensive in helping you understand the financial picture and then walking you through that and digitizing a lot of it. I think part of that is just the nuance of working local locale. But I do think right now we're seeing this trend where, I mean, I think Nick Huber is an example of this. And there's other people like that where they talk about like boring businesses, which is more

generally something super low level. Like anyone can grab a lawnmower and start mowing lawns. But I think if you start to digitize that or any other kind of manual business like that, it becomes a lot more appealing to kind of the next generation of people. Like if I needed to get plumbing work done, like we ended up working with the plumber they work with because they primarily communicate via text and have a really good digital experience, right? Like a lot of people just don't have that.

And so I think with some of the intricacies of prop management and specifically as it comes at Airbnb and navigating the local stuff. So I've been from like pest control to landscaping to taxes. All of those are like disparate pieces. And often components of that are still very manual or physical. Or if not, they're actually not all like bundled into one full package. So I think like people that really could roll up multiple kind of like boring businesses

stacked on top of each other and then like brand it into one service with a really smooth digital experience. I think just generally anything in the real estate space, there are a lot of people competing in terms of providing like a good customer experience, but the idea of a good user experience is still something that is pretty suboptimal. And so I think it's like a longer term play and you'd obviously need a little bit more capital, but even starting with like one component of that process and then like perfecting it, I think you could either go broad, right? Like you could specialize in one component of that and then go across an entire market,

or you could really go hyper-local and try to dominate one specific market by like stacking all the services on top of each other and providing a best-in-class experience. I think there are these like larger Airbnb prop management companies that are trying to go nationwide. And the reality is they don't understand the intricacies of the local market. And from what I've seen in a lot of local markets is that they have like one or two very entrenched players that handle most people if if they do it all.

And so I think it's just an area that's like still right for a lot of competition. Yeah. So like we often forget real estate is like a multi trillion dollar asset class. And the way it, the way we interact with it is still so archaic. And it's crazy because people have been actually like I've heard people say that exact same line, like 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago now. But it still kind of sucks to find a plumber or manage your Airbnb or what have you. I have a someone who like manages my my vacation home in Quebec in like the mountains. And the guy doesn't text,

A. B, he doesn't speak one word of English. Now, one. one word. Thankfully, I speak some French, but I prefer to just, you know, be in, you know, waiting in line for a coffee and just texting in English versus, like, calling him up, doesn't have his cell phone, I have to call his home line. It's like crazy, right? So I think what you're saying is, is the experience needs to be digitized, but it also needs, like, the nuances of what like Gen Z and millennials expect from, from a product. because these are people who grew up on Instagram, people grew up on TikTok. So the products that they're used to need to need to have some of that jazz.

I think there's a couple of components too. I think part of it is also education. So you can learn pretty much anything you need to. But a lot of that knowledge is still like going on to a government website and then reading an FAQ or like downloading a giant PDF and reading that. and there's a lot of people that go after the same content types of there's a million people making content about how to make a cool like dashboard design in Figma but the level of intent and production around more of the nuances of like oh okay if you are filing taxes for an Airbnb here's what they're taking away out of the app

transaction and like breaking that down like you're a five-year-old right like there I think part of it is like season people are going to figure that out and they're going to go through like a couple of reps to learn all of those things but I still do think that just generally education curriculum around more historically complex areas is something that there's still opportunity for people to invest time and resources into and then I also think that even in the last couple of years like tech has progressed so much so fast that the example of the person that manages your company or your your house even if they're not so let's just imagine what they do text or someone else that has someone that they do text but they're texting in a different language like real time transcription

of language from one to another is something that is basically doable now and so the idea of oh I used to have all these service people that didn't speak English and coordinating efforts with them was really difficult. And now it really is one language. You can put whatever input you need to in English. It'll be spat out in French and vice versa. So I think those changes have really only come about within the last couple of years. And so taking all of those things and then packaging them into an experience, I think it's like anything you're just going to need to kind of continue to run cycles and improvements upon it. And I think, yeah, 10 or 15 years ago, manual businesses and doing anything real estate was really, really rough.

And I think there has been a lot of progress, but there's always progress to be made. Yeah. And I think, you know, the way, the way you figure out where the progress to be made is is you actually go and do the thing. So you become a property owner. And as you become a property owner and you rent it out, you look at all the different products that you're using to facilitate it. and all the different pain points you have and just write out all the pain points. The big idea of becoming a property owner isn't necessarily the real estate, in my opinion. It's figuring out all the different pain points in the real estate process, the different products that need to be made. And then figuring out how can I make this in a user experience so that it's so seamless and it's going to make, you know, the existing product feel like so antiquated. and then you go and like spin something up.

Yeah. Yeah. I think part of it is by either feeling that pain yourself and then documenting or I mean, likely a lot of people are like, I can't just go start like buying up properties, right? I think if you do want to get started in that space specifically, like I think there's something to be said for working in the space, like working for a prop management company.

And if that's even too like high lift or high commitment, I think there are a million different message boards and forums you can look at across the internet where you'll see people experiencing any number of frustrations or complications. I mean, there's like the idea of like Reddit unbundling, right? The whole products have been spun up by like people picking up her Reddit threads or talking to people about the space and like gaining a deep level of understanding about the space by surrounding yourself with people and learning from those people. So I think even if you don't want to kind of put yourself in the driver's seat of having

all the responsibility of owning the thing and then managing that thing and then figuring out all the pain points surrounding that thing and then going from there, there are ways to move in that direction and expose yourself to that space without the risk and upfront investment that would typically require. Totally. Like the minimal viable product for building something in the space isn't going, raising money or taking your own money to go buy a property. It's teleport yourself onto places like Reddit, onto Twitter, onto Facebook groups, learn as much as you can through through that, through the problems. But then surround yourself with a group of people who have been in the driver's seat because you need someone in the driver's seat to really understand

the nuances so that you can incorporate it into the product. So I totally agree with you. startups could launch, you know, for under $100 and they're just a wait list and a landing page to get to get some interest. So I think in real estate too, I don't think that's the case. I don't want to leave this conversation without the third sort of set of business ideas, which is business ideas, startup ideas in the design space. You know, you spend a lot of time with design tools. You have a deep, you know, a deep relationship with the design community as and a lot of designers follow you and interact with you. So where do you see the opportunity in terms of, you know,

building startups that is for platforms, design platforms, but also for the design community? Yeah. So I think I'll tackle this in two things. Like first I'll start with like, I'm a designer and I want to start a business. What should I do? And then I'll do like I'm a founder wanting to serve the design space.

What do I do? Individual designers, I mean, there are, you can kind of go anywhere out. I think, like, as a freelancer, you, and I know this because I lived it, like, anyone that wants to start freelancing, you start from nothing unless you were born into a, like, long line of respected designers, which, like, isn't a thing with product design. But you start and you have no leverage. So I took on my first job, it was like, I probably worked, like, a couple days, like, literally, like, 48 plus hours, like learning after effects and all the stuff. And it was a project in high school that I did for a friend and I made like 25 bucks and got into a concert for free. It was like a lyric video for a band. But at the end of that, I had a project and I had social proof or like a testimonial from that person that I've worked with.

And I was able to use that to command a slightly higher rate. And then I did that over and over and over and over and over and over again for a decade. And like throughout that, I'd identified like, I want to do this type of work. I don't want to do this type of work. So for people that are like, I want to start freelancing, but I want to increase my rate, like, how do I do that? The answer really is you do a lot of work. You build trust with a lot of people and you get referrals. And then you put in the effort for a lot of time.

I think if you want to build a business, I was having this conversation with a friend yesterday. Like there's creative resourcing or creative resources and tools, which I think is a really difficult uphill battle to fight. But you can make icon packs. you can make illustration packs, you can make website templates, you can make app templates. I think the reality is people are looking for custom bespoke stuff. Like, yes, a lot of people will pay for site templates. Like I know there's a guy on Twitter that he makes site templates on Framer and is doing really well for himself.

And then there's like craft work or invado. There's like these aggregators. I think trying to go out as an individual is really tough because you're fighting against the distribution that these huge platforms have. That's where if you are really good at like icon illustration, for example, going out as like an independent designer in doing that, like it's Bonnie Kate Wolf. Like she did icons for Discord for Netflix, really specializing. There is a small client base for that. But if you want to be like, oh, I just make icons and they're kind of generic, like you're going to be fighting against an aggregator.

And that's really tough. There's knowledge products. So like Brett from Design Joy has a course about making an agent. I think the hard thing there is you usually have to do something that creates a lot of social proof before you can build and sell a course. Same with educational products. You have to have a lot of experience. So I think for a lot of designers, a lot of designers want to have like a cash flowing business like right out the gate. And I think realistically, like I would encourage people to become really, really strong designers before they do that. and then by doing a bunch of different design work,

you also figure out what you like and what you're good at, and then you can lean into those things more. And when you do decide that you want to make a business around those, they'll often have more skill and you'll be able to execute faster at a higher level of quality, rather than like spinning your wheels on trying to create a business when you haven't developed a high enough level of expertise. On the startup side, I think,

So there's like the tooling that people use every day, right? So it was Photoshop, then it was Sketch, and then for a hot second, it was Envision, and then Figma came up and like A Envision's lunch for lack of a better way of saying it. And then Figma is really the dominant player in terms of collaborative product design and like web design tooling. I think Adobe still has its place in the world. Like I still use Adobe products. Like I think especially with the AI advancements that they've made, like my wife was working on, she designs stuff as well.

She's more on the marketing side, but she was designing something yesterday, and I showed her the quick select, and then you can generate a prompt, like change someone's jewelry. And it's just, I mean, that used to take a compositor hours, right? And so I think Figma and Adobe will have kind of both their respective places.

I think they're both enormous companies and they're both set to do really well in the coming years. I think in terms of where things are going, I don't have like a crystal ball where I know what's going to happen. I think there's like interesting trends. So it used to be that designers became, so designers in like agencies became UX designers or UI designers. and then slowly over the 2010s, that title converged into like product designer. And now we're seeing this world where like front end engineering

or researchers or product managers, one of those kind of components are fusing with product designer. So like design technologist or design engineer is a popular term where it's a designer that can design things, but they can also prototype them. So I think the disciplines are going to collapse more.

I mean, a capitalist society, things are efficient, and so it's going to find the most efficient way to get things done, which is often like a hybrid PM designer or a hybrid designer marketer or a hybrid designer engineer. So I think the question becomes who's building the tooling for a designer and a marketer, arguably it's Canva. Who's building the tool for a PM designer? I think that's a really interesting question because there's a lot of like data and insights and research aggregation. I actually have a friend, so shout out Treg. He's working on a startup called Divinate, which is like an AI-based research tool for designers and product managers. And then things like Swift UI, Rsell, there's a lot of replet. There's a lot of companies working on design engineering tools.

In terms of how to or what to build in that space, I think there's also a lot of really interesting stuff happening in the Gen. MySpace, like Photoshop has so much baggage from 20 years of being a photo editing and compositing tool that I don't remember what the tool was called, but there was like a recent design tool that came out that was a really interesting, like, way to generate assets, quickly edit, and improve them and like cycle through iterations. And so I think that space is still very. early. And I think we're at the point similar to like what I talked about with AI hardware, where a lot of people are like throwing a lot of stuff at the wall in terms of Gen AI. And I think we're still trying to figure out like how to correctly augment and connect to like the current designers workflow. Right. Because like Figma was a step like better than envision. And so it was a natural thing for like the whole industry to shift. I think the needs of the industry now are there are more fragmented needs. And so I'm guessing like niche products will pop up around the design marketing, design engineering,

design and product of use cases. And then also just gen AI on top of that. I think it's probably more helpful for me to give that summary of the space as someone that is in the space rather than me telling every person listening to this to build a Gen AI startup. And I think I think I have a better sense of how the individual designer should do it rather than like, oh, I'm a tech founder and I'm trying to figure out what's a build. I also think that whenever there's a new role that's created, design engineer, there's an opportunity to build content, community, paid community around it. So for example, Lenny Richitsky, many people know him, multi-million dollar your business servicing product managers, but who's going to be the Lenny Richetsky for product

engineers. Yeah, yeah. I think that's right because there's design engineers. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's like a lot of design content and there's like a lot of how to code content, but it's like designers coding. There's less there. So I think you're right. Like people starting to meld those and build community and content around those is a huge opportunity. Yeah. I also think digital assets, you mentioned that in the beginning around templates and and stuff like that for platforms is one of those things that there's always opportunity to create those things. But you are right. The platforms make it harder to, you know, unless you have a big audience to sell. So there are, but I still believe that there's like a, you know, tremendous

opportunity still in those spaces. And I think the way to think about it is, you know, maybe don't create a WordPress theme because people have been creating WordPress themes for 20. years and it's probably saturated at this point like what's been you know what's something new uh so you've talked a lot about framer in the past you know that ecosystem is growing very quickly web flow that ecosystem is growing very quickly how you create stuff for them yeah yeah i think that's right and i even think like design x code is like one of the first people to really like package design and coding tutorials is like one thing but i still think there's a lot of space where it's like there's not really a place that I know, like, oh, as a designer, you should go to this place to get this, like, kind of custom

component for Xcode. It's like, oh, you're building this app and you need, like, a custom nav bar, like, here, start with this thing, right? Like, maybe you pay five bucks for, like, all this boilerplate Swift UI that looks really nice and it's like a level better than a lot of the out-of-the-box components. But I think, like you said, it's like people are just now, there's just now a level of critical mass of interest there. So I don't think people have like started to invest in like the content community around that.

Opportunity. That's why people listen to this. You know, ding, ding, ding. All right. Soren Iverson, it's been real. Thanks for coming on the show. You are the Larry David of design Twitter in a good way. That is a great compliment.

Soren, where could folks find out about you? And I think you have a new book coming out too. So maybe you can plug that as well. Yeah. So, I mean, you can find me basically wherever you are on the internet, X, Twitter, whatever you want to call it, threads, LinkedIn, Instagram, sometimes TikTok. I'm still, I still don't know how to use TikTok, so bear with me. And then, yeah, I'm working on a book. So as we speak, I have the pre-orders for the second version up. Like if you go on any of my social links, he'll be able to find that and pre-order it.

And then those should start shipping either late February or early March. Amazing. I love it. I'll keep following. I'll grab the book. I subscribe to you on Twitter and the email as well. Daily ideas. It gets me going.

As someone who, I mean, I'm in the business of creating new concepts through one of our businesses, which is called LCA, and it's an innovation agency. So we work with a lot of the companies that you, you mock up stuff. And that's originally how I actually heard about you. Oh, really? Yeah. One of the,

one of the big companies that we do innovation product design work. So we like invent the future, some of the biggest companies in the world. And one of them, I was in their Slack. They invited us into our Slack. And they sent something that you did. And I was like,

who's this guy? And I've been hooked ever since. wild yeah so thank you very much i'll catch you later man thanks for having me