The Startup Ideas Podcast - This Google Doc Has $10M Startup Ideas in It (My Secret Sauce)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today I'm going to talk about 17 ways to come up with startup ideas in the AI age. I'm going to go through some workflows. I'm going to go through some tools. I'm going to go through some prompts. I'm going to show you exactly how to come up with really good startup ideas. Let's get into it. You know, and a lot of people listening, they say to me, well, I don't need a startup idea, Greg. I'm already working on a startup.

Starting point is 00:00:31 Well, this is going to help you grow your startup. You know, it's going to, you're going to come up with ideas for, your startup that are going to basically grow the product, grow your customer base. And if you're looking for a startup idea, well, a lot of people here have a nine to five. They're looking for a side hustle. They're looking for just another business, a creative outlet. And I didn't want to gatekeep. So I'm going to go through exactly how I would come up with a startup idea in the AI age.

Starting point is 00:01:04 and I got to hand it to Sam Altman, the co-founder of OpenAI, because he really inspired me to do this episode of the pod. He just posted on his blog, he says, for a long time, technical people in the startup industry have made fun of idea guys. People who've had an idea and were looking for a team to build it. It now looks to me like they are about to have their day in the sun. So if you are an idea, guy or gal, this episode, and pretty much honestly all episodes of the pod,

Starting point is 00:01:39 but this one specifically is a tactical sauce-filled 17 steps, how to come up with startup ideas in the AI age. So the first thing you can do if you want a startup idea is you can literally go into chat GPT and say, give me 10 tedious workflows and then you insert a job title. for example, social media marketer does that AI could automate. And then you just rinse and niche down. So let's actually go and cook that up and see how I would approach it. So I'm going to go ahead and copy the prompt. Give me 10 tedious workflows that a social media manager does that AI could automate.

Starting point is 00:02:26 Now, you're going to want to make sure that 03 is clicked here. Sometimes by default, I think 4O is clicked. But I find for questions like this, you're going to want to use 03. It's just going to be a bit more effective. So it's going to give you, I don't know, around 10, I think, of ideas. So daily content roulette, sifting through trends, brand assets, and half-baked brainstorm docs just to fill tomorrow's posting calendar, captioning Frankenstining, manual hashtag mining, evergreen reedits. So it's going to give you a bunch of ideas that are really, really tedious. And tedious is a synonym for painful.

Starting point is 00:03:08 And if you're coming up with a startup idea that helps solve someone's pain, you will be able to make money from it. So I think that that's why I like to use the word tedious or painful. And then you just got to go through here and pick the one that you think. is the most tedious. And you can even, sometimes I do this and I go like, which one do you think is the most tedious and why? And just let the LLM do the hard work. Now, if you are a social media manager, you probably know this already. But if you're not, you might not know it. And even if you are a social media manager, I, you know, I find it helpful to just ask anyway. So it says,

Starting point is 00:03:57 screenshot and pace reporting. It's peak drudgery. Every platform hides its metric in a slightly different maze. Exports. Break the moment. A filter changes. And one type of slide can nuke everyone's confidence in the numbers. There's zero creative upside.

Starting point is 00:04:13 Just an hour-long copy-paste Jamastics at the exec team skims in 30 seconds. High stakes for accuracy. Low reward for you. And perfectly suited for API-Hungry, APIBot that never misalines a chart. So there you have it. You know what the pain point is. And then you can go ahead and just start prompting it and be like, you know, what would an MVP look like and give me a realistic high growth plan to acquire, you know, 100 customers in 30 days? And it's going to tell you this.

Starting point is 00:04:56 So this is, now you know, you understand a pain point. You know, now you're just like planning the MVP and growth strategy. You can start in chat, GBT. I find Manis also is super helpful. And then you can, and then you start having a plan of what to do. So that's the first way you can come up with a startup idea in the AIH. Quick break in the pod to tell you a little bit about startup empire. So startup empire is my private membership.

Starting point is 00:05:26 where it's a bunch of people like me, like you, who want to build out their startup ideas. Now, they're looking for content to help accelerate that. They're looking for potential co-founders. They're looking for tutorials from people like me to come in and tell them, how do you do email marketing? How do you build an audience? How do you go viral on Twitter?

Starting point is 00:05:48 All these different things. That's exactly what startup empire is. And it's for people who want to start a startup but are looking for ideas, or it's for people who have a startup, but just they're not seeing the traction that they need. So you can check out the link to startup empire.com in the description. Number two, scroll your own chat chattjavee history.

Starting point is 00:06:11 If you're repeating the same prompt weekly, that's a product in hiding in plain sight. So one example of that is, like, I was just scrolling through my chat dbt history before this, and I noticed that I ask chatcheevati to take my content and write it more clearly. If I'm doing a YouTube description, like for example, for this episode, I'll ask it, you know, I'll write something and I'll say make it more clearly, just so people understand

Starting point is 00:06:39 what I'm saying. And by the way, if you're listening to this on YouTube, go ahead and like and comment so I know to continue doing these videos. But yeah, back to the chat chip chipt history thing. This, you know, number two is really only helpful. if you use chat chepti every single day or if you use clode every single day or if you use madness every day you're going to basically know how you're using it and if you're using it a certain way and it's solving a tedious workflow for you for example you know make it more clear make writing more clear

Starting point is 00:07:13 there's probably other people that are suffering in the same way so um you know as an example like yeah there's probably a business that you can create that's like make my writing more clear.com. And it's specifically designed to make writing more clear. And, you know, people like me might be willing to pay for that. So that's what you're going to kind of see with chat EBT is it's going to be like unbundled. There's going to be like very specific vertical agents, vertical SaaS that are specific to that. And, you know, there's an opportunity right now and an arbitrage opportunity, frankly,

Starting point is 00:07:55 where you can go ahead and create that, own that niche, own that headspace, just like the guy from, you know, PDF.AI, you know, I think this guy does like at least a million dollars a year in revenue and it's just chat with any PDF document. And like, of course, you can do this on chat TVT, but he owns like the headspace. Look, loved by millions of happy users. So this could have been found. This idea could have been found via just looking at your history if you're uploading a ton of documents. And by the way, I know that there's someone in the comment section who's going to be like, yeah, but like all the, you know, big ideas have been taking. PDF has already been taking a lot of, you know, a lot of these ideas have been taken. Fine.

Starting point is 00:08:47 Then just, you know, go and niche it down a little more, right? So maybe you don't just do all PDF, but you do. you know, one specific type of finance PDF. Or maybe, and this is a huge opportunity, is you just focus on a specific geography. You do PDF.a.i for Brazil. And that's your business. There's so much opportunity in that.

Starting point is 00:09:12 The third thing is you can go on Google. Yes, Google still exists. And search site, Reddit. Is there a tool? And then your niche. And then you're going to find users begging for tools that don't exist. Let me show you exactly what I mean when I say this. So I'm going to go ahead and copy this prompt here.

Starting point is 00:09:37 I guess it's not really a prompt because it's Google, but you know what I mean? Search site Reddit. Is there a tool and then our niche? Let's just say we're doing a fitness. We're in the fitness niche. What is this doing? This is basically searching Reddit. for free for basically people asking,

Starting point is 00:10:01 is there a tool and then in the fitness niche? So I can go and see, you know, here I can see in the productivity subreddit, you know, what tools do you use to balance and track daily tasks? And this is around work and volunteer, but also family and fitness. So you can see that, you know, there's demand for that sort of thing. Or you can see in the running subreddit, high runners, I'm a software engineer.

Starting point is 00:10:35 I wonder if there's any software tool which potentially is not available and could be helpful in your training and planning communication between trainer and runner. And then you have comments to help influence your idea. This person is saying, I just want a free Strava, you know, like that would be amazing.

Starting point is 00:10:56 Okay, maybe there's an opportunity to create a free Strava and you monetize it a completely different way. And by the way, Strava I think, you know, is like a billion dollar, you know, company. So I think that, you know, the point is, the point is you can search on Reddit and this is going to give you ideas and you do it through Google. And then just write down what you're learning. And it's kind of crazy if you think about it. Like these people are telling you exactly what. what they want. It's literally gold. Number four, audit where you copy and paste between tools, because that friction is a startup idea. If you find yourself, for example, copying and pasting

Starting point is 00:11:39 emails into a CRM, well, that workflow is a tedious, painful thing that you can build software for and charge money for it. So in your own life, whenever you see copy and pasting, there's an opportunity for a startup idea there. Number five, browse Upwork for repeated AI and Grunt Work gigs. If multiple clients want it manual, it's ripe for destruction. I think that's pretty self-explanatory. Upwork is a marketplace for services, and people are paying.

Starting point is 00:12:19 you can see how much people are paying and what they're paying for service. And, you know, I think the opportunity right now is, of all these services that are happening, how can you productize that with AI? So there's certain things that,

Starting point is 00:12:37 you know, I think you could we can do a whole separate Upwork episode if people are down for that. But the point is going through Upwork and just looking what are some repeated tasks and then how can you create agents and AI that can productize that and essentially charge a lot less. And there's your startup idea. Number six, join Discord, Slack groups. Look for does anyone have a tool for complaints? You can even set up an automation

Starting point is 00:13:09 for that on N8N. But basically looking, just doing the hard work of going into groups and just looking and scrolling and seeing if people are asking for tools. And you can just search within the tool, within the group itself. You can, number seven, you can use ideabrowser.com. I built this like for myself. So, you know, idea browser basically is to find, you know, startup ideas from Facebook groups and subredits and Google trends. It's completely free to see the idea of the day.

Starting point is 00:13:44 So, you know, today's idea is AI bulletin boards that actually organize your chaos. So every single day, it's going to look at trends and it's going to give you a free startup idea. And it's going to tell you, you know, what's the feasibility of it, why you should do it. You know, is this a big problem or not such a big problem? It goes through all the subreddits, Facebooks, YouTube to help give you the idea. And then my favorite part is it tells you exactly what the offer should be. So you know, you want to start with a lead magnet. You want a front end offer.

Starting point is 00:14:19 That's like $12 a month. But the point is literally every single day, we're giving out a free startup idea. So all you have to do is just sign up, look at it and be like, is this exciting to me? And if it is, go build an audience and go build a product to do it. Or you might realize, hey, I actually don't really like. this startup idea, but like it, I'd like to take this idea and kind of like put it into a completely different niche. So I find, you know, I subscribe to a bunch of, you know, people or brands and products that help me in my head give me startup ideas. So I recommend you do that as well.

Starting point is 00:15:08 You can join number eight. You can join niche Facebook groups and look for workflow hacking in the comments, build the tool that they're manually creating. So Facebook groups, you know, still has a billion monthly active users, I believe. Don't sleep on them. There's a bunch of, you know, especially older people who are using it. And there's just a lot of alpha, alpha in Facebook groups. Number nine, which is similar to the Upwork thing, which is browse Fiver for all-use chat GBT, quote unquote, services. So these are manual workflows that are apps waiting to be built. So, yeah, that's just like pretty self-examatory, but go on Fiverr.

Starting point is 00:16:02 And yeah, you can just see like what people, what services are here. And then if they have chat GPT in the, like, for example, you know, I'll pay $50 for anyone who writes me an SEO blog post with chat. And I'm going to do it with chat chbt. Like there's people paying for services on Fiverr and people are actually fulfilling it with AI. And it's happening, yeah, it's happening pretty much all over, writing, video, animation, everywhere. So those are opportunities to build startups around there. But I will say that there's a window for that, and that window is probably now.

Starting point is 00:16:51 Number 10, literally talk to business owners about their daily Excel updates, because that's an AI agent waiting to be built. So the reason I put Excel is because, you know, that is, there is a lot, you know, businesses are run on Excel and a lot of ways. ways. So if you just ask local business owners, and by the way, you can pay them. You can say, I'll give you $50, $100 for your time to learn about, you know, how you use Excel. And if there's any way I can make that workflow a lot better for you. And it doesn't just necessarily need to be about Excel, but you can also just, you know, that's one example. You can also just ask them, like,

Starting point is 00:17:36 tell me about, you know, the struggles you have in your business, just generally. Like, literally, how you can come up with startup ideas is by just talking to business owners, maybe paying for their time, taking them out for coffee, reaching out to them and being like, you know, what are some big issues in your business? And then that might give you ideas around your startup idea. And then you might have your first customer there too. Number 11, browse G2 for top rated legacy tools without AI.

Starting point is 00:18:09 And then you can build the AI layer. So G2 is basically a review site for software. So you can see here, Slack has 34,000, four and a half stars, and there's Monday.com. And, you know, so what does this do? This allows you to just see, like, what are the issues with the software? And you can actually go through the reviews. What are the missing features, which is insane? You can actually, like, what do you like best about Slack?

Starting point is 00:18:40 What do you dislike about Slack? And this can help you not only, you know, create a Slack killer or, you know, but it can also, you know, I think the opportunity right now is to create AI first versions of a lot of these software pieces. So think about like, okay, you know, now I have a better understanding what are limiting features and missing features. Now I can actually not only go ahead and create something that's competing, but I can actually create it in an A1. AI first way. Number 12, ask agency owners what clients beg for repeatedly. If it's annoying and repetitive, it's worth turning into software. So that's similar to what we talked about of just asking business owners. But specifically agency owners, I think it's for a lot of people, especially creating some of their first businesses. There's so many agencies. It's an easy

Starting point is 00:19:35 business to create. And it's one of those great businesses where you can actually go and cold email people, cold DM them, they're more susceptible to it. And there's, you know, I think that building software for agencies is a really big opportunity.

Starting point is 00:19:53 So just wanted to include that in there as well. Number 13, read comments on popular YouTube tutorials. So a lot of like videos and episodes like this where, you know, a lot of people will will watch

Starting point is 00:20:11 something like this and you can learn about, you know, what friction points exist and what applications and software, you know, niche applications for software you can create. So I think that watching tutorial videos, software tutorial videos is what also is like a really no-brainer way to come up with startup ideas because, you know, in a lot of tutorials, you know, they're hinting to what they like about certain things, what they don't like, what are their pain points. And I don't think a lot of people actually go on YouTube and look for startup ideas. So think about that one. Number 14, find multi-step tutorials using 8 plus tools and build the one-click version.

Starting point is 00:21:00 So if you stumble across tutorials where people are stitching together a lot of tools, well, you'll come up with a startup idea just there. And people are willing to pay for products that make it really easy and faster. Faster is, we talked about tedious before, but fast is just another code word or synonym for, I will pay you to do it faster. So building the one-click version super, super effective. 15. Scan, LinkedIn, job titles in growing industries.

Starting point is 00:21:37 ask what would make this person 10 times faster with AI. So, you know, take 30 minutes and just, you know, look around and be like, okay, this person is a marketing manager at Procter & Gamble. Okay, what do they do? You know? And like, you can go ahead and ask chat DBT or Manis or Clode. And you can like literally be like, we can do it right now. You know, I just came across this guy with 12 years of marketing experience. He has been at Proctor and Gamble the whole time.

Starting point is 00:22:24 He works in the digital marketing department. So you can look, obviously, you can see what he does. a little bit. A lot of people put a little bit about what they do. So you can just include that there, copy and paste that there. And then just say, what would make this person 10 times faster with AI? And what are you doing here? You're basically leaning on to chat GPT to do a lot of the user research and also act as like an AI co-founder. And it's just, we've gotten to the point where it's just, it's excellent at it. It's just absolutely excellent.

Starting point is 00:23:07 So how do you turn a battle-hardened P&G digital marketer into a 10x machine, June 2025 edition? Spin up a brand tune co-pilot, fine-tune GPT40 on 10 years of, you know, Gillette and Pamper's briefs, dropped in, you know, look at this. This is literally, this is amazing. Build a creative conveyor belt instead of a studio queue, concept, storyboard, mid-jorney v7 mood boards. This would blow

Starting point is 00:23:35 a marketing manager at Procter and Gamble's mind. Like, absolute, this is many, you know, multi-million dollar opportunity for someone to do. Like,

Starting point is 00:23:49 wire gum loop into Braise AI for always-on growth loops. They are not doing any of this. Deploy an insight mining agent. They're not doing that. wrap it in a brand safety compliance guide rail. I'm happy that they included that. So good.

Starting point is 00:24:07 And then lastly, number 17. So find two star Shopify WordPress plugins with high usage, low stars. Sorry. Find two star Shopify WordPress plugins with high usage. So you want low stars, but high usage. That's like the holy grail. So people care about the space, but the experience sucks. Or you clone them,

Starting point is 00:24:32 clone them with AI, use like cursor, you know, bolt, lovable, focus on different geographies and undercut on pricing. So the point is,

Starting point is 00:24:42 you can go on Shopify's app marketplace and you can go on WordPress plugin directory and you can literally see what people think of the software. And then you can just go and build

Starting point is 00:24:59 competing software and undercut them on pricing or focus on different geographies and make the tool better. These are people that have paid millions of dollars to create their software, but now in the AI age, it's a lot cheaper, and I don't know why more people aren't doing this. And there's an opportunity to build like a portfolio of these Shopify and WordPress plugins that are giving you 5, 10, 15K a month each. So I think that this is definitely underrated. did. And you can create even like the beauty is now you can create really, really niche plugins and it's not going to cost you a lot of money to build. I'm even interested in that just for fun. I was talking about an idea in the Shopify ecosystem too today that I would have

Starting point is 00:25:52 never been able to build three years ago because it probably would have cost me 500K million and I wouldn't know if people actually would use the product because it's like a niche or version of something that's popular and has low stars. But now I can actually go and do that. Probably cost me $5,000 to build. So this is designed to give, just get your creative juices flowing to make you smarter about whatever it is you're working on or to help you figure out what you should. be working on. And yes, you can come up with an idea just walking, you know, going for a walk

Starting point is 00:26:36 in the sauna. I don't know. Just in the real world, just it hits you. And those are good ideas, but sometimes. But what I'm saying, the ideas I like to work on are the ideas that I have odds stacked in my favor. So if I know that thousands of people are saying, I want this product, or they're showing me by, you know, low-star reviews that they're dissatisfied with this product. Or I can go on LLMs and it's surfacing all the world's information and it's telling me in a curated way that this is an opportunity. Or I can go on ideabrowser.com and it's just going through Facebook groups and subredits and Google trends and it's handing to me on a silver platter.

Starting point is 00:27:23 I'm going to go and do that. So I'm excited for you and I can't wait to see what you build. Thanks for listening to me. And happy building. I'm rooting for you.

The Startup Ideas Podcast - This Google Doc Has $10M Startup Ideas in It (My Secret Sauce)

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